ConcertPulse
cappella academica, Christiane Silber
Konzerthaus Berlin, Großer Saal (Berlin)
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Sofia Gubaidulina's ‘Fairytale Poem’ from 1971, with which the Konzerthausorchester and Joana Mallwitz begin their concert, is, according to the composer, about a little piece of chalk with big dreams of marvellous things that it wants to draw. Unfortunately, it is only used as blackboard chalk at school and is eventually thrown away. A boy finds it and begins to draw castles, gardens and sunsets on the street. The chalk is too happy to realize that it is finally disintegrating. Shostakovich's first cello concerto from 1959 shows how the composer was finally able to utilise a wealth of long frowned upon modernist techniques after the death of Stalin. The cellist of the century and dedicatee Mstislav ‘Slava’ Rostropovich became the great midwife. With us, artist in residence Sheku Kanneh-Mason takes on the solo part.Tchaikovsky dedicated the Fourth Symphony, premiered in 1878, to his confidante and patron Nadezhda von Meck. They never met, but exchanged 1200 letters. He wrote to her about the last movement of the Fourth: ‘If you don't have enough reason to find happiness in yourself, mingle with people, see what a good time they are having, how they abandon themselves completely to joyful feelings!’ One can only add to that: Welcome to the Konzerthaus, mingle with our audience!
Agata Zubel's “Mother Lode III” (Hauptader 3), which explores the effects of spatial sound, is followed by the world premiere of a concerto for two percussionists and ensemble by Latvian composer Jānis Petraškevičs. Composer Anna Korsuns compares her work “Plexus” (network mesh) to “a complex network of sounds that is constantly in motion and forms an organic structure.” The final piece is Georg Katzer's “Godot kommt doch, geht aber wieder”, a musical game with expectations and surprises.
Three sets, ranging from experimental soundscapes and electronic compositions to hypnotizing beats, each in combination with visual forms of expression - a broad spectrum of audiovisual performance art and artistic reflection await you on the opening evening of our festival! “mirror//flesh” for trumpet and electronics questions the relationship between artist and audience and addresses self-reflection in the performing arts. The interplay of sound, space, light and choreographic elements dissolves the boundaries between listening and watching. “Resonance of Berlin”, an audiovisual homage to Berlin, uses AI-supported sound and image compositions to present an artistic ‘city map’ that captures personal and collective perceptions of the metropolis. The performance allows the audience to experience its complexity in a new way and invites them to reflect on the influence of perception on artistic creation.Istanbul Ghetto Club, a multidisciplinary Berlin music collective with a sense of humor and an erotic touch, combines Anatolian, Greek and Mesopotamian melodies with modular synthesizers, visuals and performing arts. They hide behind masks and veils, but have nothing to hide. Anatolian Acid” emerges from tradition and zeitgeist, sweeping the audience away in a live performance and inviting them to dance. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Music and image in close connection: In her cycle, the internationally acclaimed Berlin artist Jorinde Voigt captures each Beethoven sonata bar by bar and transforms the music into aesthetically expressive drawings using an algorithm. The sonata marathon presents everything together for the first time: Each Beethoven sonata played is accompanied by the corresponding score-like drawing. At the same time, a solo exhibition of Voigt's 32 originals will take place in the Beethoven Hall.
From the awakening of spring to the intensity of summer and the darkness of winter - ‘ANNO’ evokes the course of a year with Vivaldi's ‘Four Seasons’ and turns this extremely well-known music into something new once again. Combined with electro-acoustic compositions by Anna Meredith and a light show, the result is a one-hour concert performance that brings together electronic and baroque, complex and catchy. Anna Meredith is a composer, performer and producer. Her music moves between contemporary music, pop, electro and experimental rock. The B'Rock Orchestra from Ghent describes itself as a ‘forward-thinking period orchestra’ - an unusual baroque ensemble that performs on historical instruments with a view to the present and future. They characterise their style as ‘intuitive, ambitious and accessible’ and are always on the lookout for artists with whom they can realise visionary projects. Perfect for our festival and as a partner for Anna Meredith!
Love, loneliness and human finiteness: eternal themes run through the 16 songs of Robert Schumann's famous ‘Dichterliebe’ (Poet's Love) on poems by Heinrich Heine in a seemingly harmless folk song tone. In a double sense, everything is in flux here: the inner life of the protagonist, who vacillates between pain, doubt and happiness, and the mythical world of the past - symbolised by the Rhine, which winds its way through several verses. Composer Christian Jost took a close look at the work and embedded it in a completely newly composed soundscape. The harmonies and the spirit of Schumann are preserved, space and time are dissolved: ‘With Schumann and Heine, each individual song is self-contained. Each one is a frozen memory, the atmospheric condensation of a journey into the inner life of its protagonist, whose spiritual landscape unfolds before us piece by piece. In my work, the 16 songs of the cycle appear like islands, surrounded by the sounds and harmonies of which they are the nucleus and inspiration.’ Christian Jost does not tell a chronological story in his work. Supported by the projections of Katrin Bethge, individual windows into the human soul open up again and again in surprising ways. The Horenstein Ensemble already performed the world premiere in 2017.
Under the direction of Joana Mallwitz, the Konzerthausorchester will perform the world premiere of the orchestral version of a work by Lera Auerbach, to whom the Konzerthaus is dedicating a “Creative Portrait” this season. The composer was inspired by Modest Mussorgsky's “Pictures at an Exhibition” and texts by Jorge Luis Borges for “Labyrinth” (2018). In it, she sends listeners on a mysterious journey with a dream wanderer, during which they encounter a series of mythical creatures.
Our second Visual Music Night Werner-Otto-Saal offers you a poetic-synaesthetic experience in three sets. “Poème” is the debut album (2022) of the Berlin trio Reich / Baumgärtner / Pringle, who create a sound network of dense, playful communication in the rare combination of piano, violin & drums/percussion. Their unmistakable joint sound entices you to pause and listen, is multi-layered, delicate, irrepressible and concise. ChunLi Wang's visuals add another playful layer to this set, creating fluid transitions between technology and anthropology, opening up a poetic immersive world. The novel song cycle “Sing Nature Alive” composed by McIntire is based on poetic lyrics about the love of nature and the urgency of the climate crisis. Rachel Fenlon interprets it with voice, piano and live electronics, complemented by Macmillan's nature videos. Voice and piano combine with field recordings of water, nature and breathing to create a continuous dream-like texture. Moving, haunting and thought-provoking, the “songs” emerge in full form or rise up as traces, only to sink back into the blur. The second Visual Music Night ends with “Rückverzauberung”, an almost hour-long ambient trip through more than three centuries of music history: medieval lute and flute sounds interweave with baroque falsetto song fragments, bells and horns to create amorphous, abstract soundscapes. Small spinet and harp loops tumble intoxicatedly over feverishly beautiful violin surfaces. Atonality and euphony flow effortlessly into and out of each other. Voigt's principles of loops and deconstruction redefine old sound worlds. Ali M. Demirel enriches the set with his live visuals, in which the wonders of nature with their sometimes microscopic patterns are revived into abstract images.
This exhibition promises a diverse experience, blending visual art with music by Modest Mussorgsky, orchestrated by Maurice Ravel. The music transports us to France, Poland, and Ukraine, introducing characters like playing children, a dwarf, a witch, and intriguing locations such as an old castle and a hut on chicken legs. Even unhatched chicks make an appearance, creating a feast for the senses.
At our Espresso Concerts in the early afternoon, we serve two kinds of caffeine – one made from Arabica beans and, of course, a cup of musical espresso: outstanding young talents present surprise programmes that really wake you up!
The one-hour short concerts ‘8Zehn30’ on Thursdays from 18:30 at the Konzerthaus Berlin are always short and sweet: let go of everyday life and simply immerse yourself in 60 minutes of music without a break - regardless of whether the end of the working day is already in sight or another evening shift has to be put in. The orchestra musicians of the Konzerthausorchester Berlin accompany their audience through a short(er) concert evening - from the personal introduction to the after-concert drinks at the bar in the Beethoven Hall.This time it's off to Italy - with Hector Berlioz's wanderer Harold, embodied by the solo viola of Antoine Tamestit and in an original Italian overture by Gioacchino Rossini.
Off to Italy! If not in person, you can at least escape the grey of Berlin for a while with the Konzerthausorchester, Joana Mallwitz and our former artist in residence violist Antoine Tamestit. First, Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi will take you through picturesque Ligurian villages. The 21-year-old Felix Mendelssohn also fell in love with the southern landscape: ‘There is music in it, it sounds and resounds from all sides.’ He wrote to his sister Fanny: ‘In general, composing is now fresh again. The ‘Italian Symphony’ is making great progress; it will be the funniest piece I have written.’ However, the first version was only completed with great effort in the Berlin winter of 1832 - you would never know that from listening! Hector Berlioz travelled through the Abruzzo mountains. Impressions from this tour and inspiration from Byron's poem ‘Childe Harold's Pilgrimage’ resulted in a stylistically unique symphony in which the solo viola seems to embody the thematically rather static traveller, while the orchestra seems to embody the romantic, roaring world, including a serenade to the lover and a description of a robbers' camp.
Off to Italy! If not in person, you can at least escape the grey of Berlin for a while with the Konzerthausorchester, Joana Mallwitz and our former artist in residence violist Antoine Tamestit. First, Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi will take you through picturesque Ligurian villages. The 21-year-old Felix Mendelssohn also fell in love with the southern landscape: ‘There is music in it, it sounds and resounds from all sides.’ He wrote to his sister Fanny: ‘In general, composing is now fresh again. The ‘Italian Symphony’ is making great progress; it will be the funniest piece I have written.’ However, the first version was only completed with great effort in the Berlin winter of 1832 - you would never know that from listening! Hector Berlioz travelled through the Abruzzo mountains. Impressions from this tour and inspiration from Byron's poem ‘Childe Harold's Pilgrimage’ resulted in a stylistically unique symphony in which the solo viola seems to embody the thematically rather static traveller, while the orchestra seems to embody the romantic, roaring world, including a serenade to the lover and a description of a robbers' camp.
“Yol - The Path” by Zeynep Gedizlioglu describes the path of a sound, but also the artistic path of the Berlin composer of Turkish descent. Born in Moscow, Alexandra Karastyaneva Hermetin grew up in Sofia and now lives in Vienna. Her piece “Polynj” (Wermut) cleverly surrounds the solo tone of the cello with the timbres of the rest of the ensemble - a work in a reduced, impressive tonal language, whose motifs seem to move around a mysterious core. Michael Quell's “energeia aphanés” is also on the trail of a secret: it deals with “black energy”, which plays a central role in theories about the universe. Invisible and not directly detectable, “energeia aphanés” is the force that holds the structures of the universe together. We see the trace of its presence, but not itself. Next on the program is the world premiere of Makiko Nishikaze's “fantasie-fuge”, which is based on Bach's unfinished Fantasia and Fugue for Organ BWV 562. Nishikaze first orchestrated it for ensemble, then wrote it to completion and finally transformed it entirely into her own sound cosmos. The final piece is Helmut Zapf's composition “Heimat”, in which he asks about the location of himself and his musical world and provides a possible answer.
At our Espresso Concerts in the early afternoon, we serve two kinds of caffeine – one made from Arabica beans and, of course, a cup of musical espresso: outstanding young talents present surprise programmes that really wake you up!
776 / 1500 Übersetzter Text The Alinde Quartet, named after Franz Schubert's song „Alinde“, is currently working with Hänssler Classic and Deutschlandfunk on the challenging project of recording all of the string quartets by the composer, who died at an early age. The unique point: Each CD also features a commissioned composition inspired by Schubert, bridging the gap between past and present. All six parts should be available by Schubert's 200th birthday in 2028. In addition to two Schubert quartets - including the famous „Death and the Maiden“ - this concert will feature a work inspired by the composer as well as a quartet by the young Barcelona composer Marc Migó, which is based on the Catalan folk dance Sardana.
The ordeal of some Jewish composers who were able to escape the Nazi persecution of the Jews did not end with the defeat of Hitler's Germany. Only a few years after the end of the war, an anti-Semitic campaign began in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries, which lasted until Stalin's death in 1953. Many Jews were sentenced to prison or even death in sham trials, and countless others lost their livelihoods. Composers were also affected. Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996), for example, who fled from his home town of Warsaw to the USSR in 1939, was imprisoned in Moscow. The composer, pianist and professor at the Kiev Conservatory Matwey Gosenpud (1903-1961) was dismissed without notice in 1948 and went to Kazakhstan to escape imminent arrest. Evgeniya Yakhnina (1918-2000), who came from Kharkov and worked as a composition teacher at a Moscow music school, also lost her job and was excluded from musical life for five years. Pianist Jascha Nemtsov and soprano Alice Lackner will perform piano and vocal works by these composers. Nemtsov will also be in conversation about the historical context with the renowned Stalinism researcher and Professor of European Contemporary History at the Viadrina University Frankfurt (Oder) Claudia Weber. In cooperation with musica reanimata – Förderverein zur Wiederentdeckung NS-verfolgter Komponisten und ihrer Werke e.V.
Congratulations, dear Christoph Eschenbach: we are honouring our former chief conductor, who led the Konzerthausorchester Berlin from autumn 2019 to summer 2023, on his 85th birthday with a concert in which he will be conducting in the Große Saal, of course.For this special occasion, he has chosen a work of a composer who had late start: Anton Bruckner (1824 - 1896) did not begin writing symphonies until he was over 40 years old. The fact that he, like Beethoven, came up with a total of nine ‘cathedrals of never-before-heard sounds’ (Lorin Maazel) despite this is a real miracle - and doubly so in view of his self-doubting character: he actually completed the final version of the Sixth within two years. He called it his ‘cheekiest’ symphony, and as such it does not rise slowly from a musical primordial fog, but begins directly and with an accentuated rhythm. It was premièred in parts in 1883, heavily abridged in 1899 and not performed in its entirety until 1935. Bruckner was only able to hear it once in its entirety during an orchestral rehearsal.
After the great success that the South African cellist, singer and composer Abel Selaocoe had at Konzerthaus last spring with the Bantu Ensemble and „Ancestral Memories“, we are delighted to welcome back this crossover artist between the musical cultures of European classical music and South Africa. Virtuoso on his instrument and with an expressive voice, with which Abel also masters an overtone singing style called Umngqokolo, he creates intense music full of suggestive and expressive power. This time he performs together with the experimental Aurora Orchestra, which plays by heart and whose programme includes Beethoven's Seventh alongside Abel's work „Four Spirits“.
At our Espresso Concerts in the early afternoon, we serve two kinds of caffeine – one made from Arabica beans and, of course, a cup of musical espresso: outstanding young talents present surprise programmes that really wake you up!
Not only as a big symphonic ensemble, but also as the Konzerthaus Chamber Orchestra our Konzerthausorchester musicians come together several times each season – this time under the direction of of our First Concertmaster Suyoen Kim. They choose the pieces and instrumentation for their concerts themselves.
Do you ever wonder during a symphony concert im Großen Saal how the Konzerthausorchester actually manages to play together so perfectly? What does a conductor and the individual musicians in the instrumental groups contribute? Successful orchestral playing, like successful coexistence in a democratic society, is based on listening to each other and creating polyphony together. In our workshop, you can literally experience this for yourself - even without any previous musical knowledge. First, the Konzerthausorchester and conductor will perform a symphonic piece. In a moderated discussion, the musicians and conductor Sarah Ioannides demonstrate the skills required to play together. Under the guidance of a music teacher and coaches from the orchestra, you will form a workshop orchestra and gradually work on important skills of ensemble playing in subgroups: passages of the piece will be broken down to its musical essence and precisely imitated using body percussion, gestures and simple conducting techniques. In the finale, the Konzerthaus orchestra and workshop participants sit opposite each other in orchestral formation and create the music together. The orchestra plays the original unaltered, while the workshop orchestra intervenes at the appropriate points with its imitations. Experience how important each individual is for the overall success and what it means to be part of the orchestra.