This family concert celebrates the joys of the Christmas season with music by Shostakovich, Barber, Vaughan Williams, and others. It evokes the atmosphere of Christmas markets, gingerbread, roasted almonds, singing, bells, and snowy landscapes.
This family concert celebrates the joys of the Christmas season with music by Shostakovich, Barber, Vaughan Williams, and others. It evokes the atmosphere of Christmas markets, gingerbread, roasted almonds, singing, bells, and snowy landscapes.
One of the greatest poets of all time, William Shakespeare is at the center of the season’s first Lied und Lyrik program. Roderick Williams and Julius Drake trace the Bard’s musical heritage in English, German, and French settings from three centuries, with Toby Jones returning to read Shakespeare’s original texts.
A very British evening: Stephanie Childress, a young conductor from London, performs works by three of her fellow countrymen. For a five-movement work commissioned by the Rural School Music Association in 1950, Ralph Vaughan Williams took on a baroque concerto grosso in his very own musical language. This allowed him to divide the musicians taking part in the concerto - mostly beginners, some advanced players and only a few who had mastered their string instrument to a high standard - into the groups “concertino”, “ripiendo” and “ad lib”. The latter group only played on empty strings, which, according to the composer, could be omitted if necessary. The soloist in Britten's highly demanding Violin Concerto from 1939 is 23-year-old Dutch violinist Noa Wildschut, who our audience already celebrated in the Great Hall in 2016 and 2019. Edward Elgar's famous “Enigma Variations”, premiered in 1899, characterize thirteen people from his circle and ultimately himself. But their identity is not the original “Enigma”. According to the composer, the structure conceals a kind of musical riddle, about which various theories have been put forward to date.
A very British evening: Stephanie Childress, a young conductor from London, performs works by three of her fellow countrymen. For a five-movement work commissioned by the Rural School Music Association in 1950, Ralph Vaughan Williams took on a baroque concerto grosso in his very own musical language. This allowed him to divide the musicians taking part in the concerto - mostly beginners, some advanced players and only a few who had mastered their string instrument to a high standard - into the groups “concertino”, “ripiendo” and “ad lib”. The latter group only played on empty strings, which, according to the composer, could be omitted if necessary. The soloist in Britten's highly demanding Violin Concerto from 1939 is 23-year-old Dutch violinist Noa Wildschut, who our audience already celebrated in the Great Hall in 2016 and 2019. Edward Elgar's famous “Enigma Variations”, premiered in 1899, characterize thirteen people from his circle and ultimately himself. But their identity is not the original “Enigma”. According to the composer, the structure conceals a kind of musical riddle, about which various theories have been put forward to date.
A very British evening: Stephanie Childress, a young conductor from London, performs works by three of her fellow countrymen. For a five-movement work commissioned by the Rural School Music Association in 1950, Ralph Vaughan Williams took on a baroque concerto grosso in his very own musical language. This allowed him to divide the musicians taking part in the concerto - mostly beginners, some advanced players and only a few who had mastered their string instrument to a high standard - into the groups “concertino”, “ripiendo” and “ad lib”. The latter group only played on empty strings, which, according to the composer, could be omitted if necessary. The soloist in Britten's highly demanding Violin Concerto from 1939 is 23-year-old Dutch violinist Noa Wildschut, who our audience already celebrated in the Great Hall in 2016 and 2019. Edward Elgar's famous “Enigma Variations”, premiered in 1899, characterize thirteen people from his circle and ultimately himself. But their identity is not the original “Enigma”. According to the composer, the structure conceals a kind of musical riddle, about which various theories have been put forward to date.
You can simply go to a concert at the Philharmonie, spontaneously, during your lunch break – and with free admission: every Wednesday at 13:00 between September and June. The programme lasts 40 to 50 minutes: chamber music, piano works or a percussion duo – everything from Tchaikovsky to tango. Members of the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Karajan Academy regularly perform, as well as guests from the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, the Staatskapelle Berlin and the Berlin music conservatories. As can be expected at a lunch concert, catering is available from 12 noon until shortly before the concert begins.
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