Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin is a renowned modular performance venue, famous for its unique oval shape and flexible seating arrangements. Designed by Frank Gehry, it serves as the home of the Barenboim-Said Akademie, offering a space that enhances acoustics for a diverse array of musical performances and cultural events.
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According to Jörg Widmann, Beethoven’s Opus 130 represents the “string quartet of string quartets.” His own Eighth and Tenth Quartets were written in response to the Viennese master’s late work, in particular its famous slow movement, titled “Cavatina.” The New York–based Juilliard String Quartet frames Widmann’s “Beethoven Studies” with their historical model, including both its traditional version and the Grosse Fuge, the work’s original finale.
Composer, multi-instrumentalist, and lyricist Ben LaMar Gay creates brilliant electro-acoustic collages in which sound, color, and space interact through the prism of folklore. Building on an improvisational foundation, his music expands beyond genre limits. At the Pierre Boulez Saal, he will lead an ensemble of his international family of collaborators in a program that includes new compositions from his ongoing series The Manipulation of Lines and Breff.
When Fabian Müller made his Pierre Boulez Saal debut in January 2022, his memorable performance of Beethoven’s monumental “Hammerklavier” Sonata confirmed his reputation as one of the outstanding pianists of his generation. Now the ARD Competition winner, who was born in 1990 in Beethoven’s hometown of Bonn, takes on the challenge of presenting all the composer’s sonatas as a complete cycle. Dubbed the “New Testament” of piano music by Hans von Bülow— Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier was known as the “Old Testament”—the 32 works will be heard over the course of eight Sunday-afternoon concerts. Completing the individual programs are short pieces newly composed by Müller himself, in which he expresses his reflexions on Beethoven’s sonatas.
In the popular series of Academy Concerts, students of the Barenboim-Said Akademie introduce themselves to their audiences as part of their curriculum, performing repertoire they have been working on during their studies, in preparation for entering the international music scene. These one-hour chamber-music programs, which are particularly suitable for visits with school classes, will be announced at short notice.
History in ComicsBook Launch of the Graphic History Oberbrechen: A German Village Confronts Its Nazi PastReading and Discussion No period of German history has been studied more thoroughly than the Third Reich, and no era has more frequently been the subject of scholarly, non-fiction, and fiction books as well as films and TV shows. As the publication of Oberbrechen: A German Village Confronts Its Nazi Past impressively demonstrates, however, new approaches may lead to new perspectives on the Nazi era and its aftereffects. Oberbrechen examines the complex relationships between Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants of the eponymous Hessian village. The book is conceived as a graphic history, exploring the microcosm of a village and showing how “one’s own” history of violence was being negotiated during the Nazi era and how the local population dealt with the ubiquitous yet largely unspoken presence of the Shoah. One question stands at the center, exemplified by the village of Oberbrechen, which is equally relevant for many other places in Germany: How did the different degrees of participation in anti-Jewish exclusion, and the individual local experiences of violence, affect subsequent encounters between those driven out and those who remained, as well as their family members, in the years after 1945? Authors Stefanie Fischer and Kim Wünschmann will discuss these topics with Stefanie Schüler-Springorum and Jacob Eder. Stefanie Fischer is a senior lecturer at the Technical University of Berlin’s Center for Research on Antisemitism. She has published numerous studies on German-Jewish history and the history of the Holocaust. Among her most recent publications are Jewish Cattle Traders in the German Countryside (2024) and “Jewish Mourning in the Aftermath of the Holocaust: Tending Individual Graves in Occupied Germany, 1945 – 1949” (in: Aya Elyada, Kerry Wallach, eds., German Jewish Studies: Next Generations, 2022). She is also co-editor of the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book. Kim Wünschmann is director of the Hamburg Institute for the History of the German Jews. Her work is focused on German-Jewish history and Holocaust Studies, the history of law and diplomacy, as well as comics and graphic novels. Her publications include Before Auschwitz: Jewish Prisoners in the Prewar Concentration Camps (2015) and “Gezeichnete Erinnerung: Zeitzeugenschaft und Geschichte in Comics und Graphic Novels” (in: Matthias Bahr, Peter Poth, Mirjam Zadoff, eds., Aus der Erinnerung für die Gegenwart leben, 2022). Stefanie Schüler-Springorum is an historian who has been director of the Technical University of Berlin’s Center for the Study of Antisemitism since 2011. From 2001 to 2011, she served as director of the Hamburg Institute for the History of the German Jews, and from 2009 to 2019, as chair of the Scholars’ Consortium at the Leo Baeck Institute. Since 2012 she has been co-director of the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies in Berlin-Brandenburg. Her areas of research include German-Jewish history, the history of National Socialism and the Holocaust, as well as Spanish history. Presented in GermanFeaturing a musical performance by Barenboim-Said Akademie student Ali Hayyan (piano) Supported by Fulbright Germany
Danish composer Louise Alenius challenges the conventions of classical performance practice with her daring and experimental works. Her latest piece now receives its world premiere at the Pierre Boulez Saal: Apatiens anatomi (“The Anatomy of Apathy”) was written for Trio con Brio Copenhagen, which continues its tradition of presenting a new composition from its homeland in Berlin every season. The program also includes Beethoven’s youthful Opus 1 and Tchaikovsky’s romantic Piano Trio, composed in 1882.
“Parental Leave” concerts are aimed at all new mothers and fathers (as well as uncles, aunts, grand parents…) who would like to experience music together with their babies in a relaxed setting. The number of seats is limited, and all amenities to make your visit as pleasant as possible are provided in the lobby. These concerts, featuring Pierre Boulez Saal artists performing excerpts from their programs, are approximately 45 minutes long and intended exclusively for visitors with babies aged 12 months and younger.
For several years, Schaghajegh Nosrati has championed the music of French composer and pianist Charles Valentin Alkan, contributing to his rediscovery with an acclaimed recording of several of his piano works. As the final piece of her solo recital, she has chosen Alkan’s unconventional and highly virtuosic “Symphony for Solo Piano.” The program also includes works by Bach, Bartók, Haydn, and contemporary German composer Charlotte Seither.
From January 2025, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden will present György Kurtág’s only opera Fin de partie, based on Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. During the run of performances, the Staatskapelle and a group of vocal soloists bring Kurtág’s 1990 Beckett homage What Is the Word to the Pierre Boulez Saal, continuing the annual tradition of the orchestra’s guest concerts. Kurtág’s fascinating score is framed by works of Béla Bartók and Franz Schubert. Young British conductor Finnegan Downie Dear, who led the Staatskapelle’s previous Pierre Boulez Saal appearance, returns to the podium. Presented by the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in cooperation with the Pierre Boulez Saal. Tickets are available exclusively from the Staatsoper Unter den Linden: staatsoper-berlin.de
Most recently heard at the Pierre Boulez Saal during the Mendelssohn Festival in December 2023, Clara-Jumi Kang and Sunwook Kim return as a duo to perform four works exploring the full range of the violin sonata repertoire. Bookending their program with a Beethoven classic and an early masterpiece by 23-year-old Richard Strauss, they also present Ottorino Respighi’s 1917 Sonata and the idiosyncratic Fourth Sonata by Mieczysław Weinberg, written in 1947.
For his first Pierre Boulez Saal appearance as a leader, Canadian guitarist and oud player Gordon Grdina has assembled an international group of artists from diverse musical traditions who perform together for the first time. RU’YA (“foresight” or “vision” in Arabic), featuring Belgian-Tunisian vocalist Ghalia Benali, blends sound, poetry, and the human voice in an experimental musical setting that bridges continents, cultures, and genres. Inspired by poems from Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Tunisia, Egypt, and Belgium, RU’YA creates a musical world of unity, joy, and shared humanity.
Roberta Mameli, Margret Koell, and Michele Pasotti—previously heard at the Pierre Boulez Saal as part of various Early Music formations—make their debut as a trio, presenting a musical homage to matters of the heart. In vocal works by composers such as Giulio Caccini, Luigi Rossi, and Barbara Strozzi, the tender interplay of words and sounds reveals the depth and richness of human emotion as it was celebrated in 17th-century music and literature.
In 2013, Jörg Widmann composed his first—and to date his only—song cycle. Das heiße Herz (“The Hot Heart”) is based on the works of a wide range of authors, including Clemens Brentano, Heinrich Heine, Klabund, and Peter Härtling, as well as lesser known poems from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Christian Immler and Andreas Frese, who have won acclaim for their collaboration on the cycle’s premiere recording, perform Widmann’s songs opposite works by Schumann and Mahler.
Founded in 2019, Trio Orelon has been one of the best-kept secrets of the chamber music scene for some time, but that is about to change: ever since winning the ARD Competition in 2023, the three musicians have received international acclaim and invitations to some of the world’s most prestigious concert halls. Consisting of Marco Sanna (Italy), Arnau Rovira i Bascompte (Spain), and Judith Stapf (Germany), an alumna of the Barenboim-Said Akademie, the ensemble makes its Pierre Boulez Saal debut with an ambitious program of works by Schumann, Weinberg, and Rihm.
Countertenor Christopher Ainslie—who made his debut with the Boulez Ensemble last season—and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin present a selection of arias from the operas of George Frideric Handel that celebrate the joys and sorrows of love. The musicians are joined by students of the Barenboim-Said Akademie who will work with the ensemble for first-hand training in historical performance practice. Instrumental pieces by Handel’s London contemporaries frame the operatic excerpts.
Many a leading artist’s career might have turned out differently if it had not been for the Young Classical Artists Trust. “Without YCAT I’d probably still be wondering whether or not I should be a singer,” says Ian Bostridge. Since 1984, the British organization has supported rising young artists embarking on an international career by providing opportunities to perform as well as assistance with management and marketing. For its 40th anniversary, current and former participants gather at the Pierre Boulez Saal to present a program of large-scale chamber works by Franz Schubert and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor as well as a new composition by current YCAT Composer Fellow James B. Wilson.
“No other composer has had a more profound influence on me and taught me more than Gustav Mahler,” says Thomas Hampson. Having won universal acclaim for his performances of Mahler’s songs, the baritone has also immersed himself in the composer’s life more thoroughly than almost any other singer. Joined by his longtime piano partner Wolfram Rieger, he takes the audience on a musical journey to Mahler’s eventful times that also includes works by his contemporaries Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, Alexander Zemlinsky, Anton Webern, and Richard Strauss, as well as his personal companion and wife Alma Mahler.
“Fold by fold”—pli selon pli—Pierre Boulez reveals a portrait of the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, arguably the most important literary influence on his music, in his eponymous work for soprano and orchestra. Michael Wendeberg, who worked closely with Boulez as pianist of the Ensemble intercontemporain, conducts excerpts from the composer’s most expansive score, in the piece’s Pierre Boulez Saal premiere. The program also includes the 1965 ensemble work Éclat as well as compositions by Maurice Ravel and Austrian composer Thomas Wally, born in 1981.
When Fabian Müller made his Pierre Boulez Saal debut in January 2022, his memorable performance of Beethoven’s monumental “Hammerklavier” Sonata confirmed his reputation as one of the outstanding pianists of his generation. Now the ARD Competition winner, who was born in 1990 in Beethoven’s hometown of Bonn, takes on the challenge of presenting all the composer’s sonatas as a complete cycle. Dubbed the “New Testament” of piano music by Hans von Bülow— Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier was known as the “Old Testament”—the 32 works will be heard over the course of eight Sunday-afternoon concerts. Completing the individual programs are short pieces newly composed by Müller himself, in which he expresses his reflexions on Beethoven’s sonatas.
“Traveler, there is no road. You make your own path as you walk.” Inscribed on the wall of a Spanish monastery, these words were discovered by Luigi Nono in the 1980s and became a kind of motto for his late works. The search for an unattainable music of the future also infuses his penultimate score La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura, composed in 1988–9. Carolin Widmann and the SWR Experimentalstudio bring the piece to the Pierre Boulez Saal. Widmann complements Nono’s meditation on space and sound with works from the 18th and 21st centuries by Telemann, George Benjamin, and Swiss composer Helena Winkelman.
The music of Robert Schumann has long been a major influence on Jörg Widmann’s own compositions. Joined by Sir András Schiff and Antoine Tamestit, he now brings three of Schumann’s works to the Pierre Boulez Saal that draw inspiration from poetic and non-musical ideas and reflect the Romantic fascination with the world of fairy tales. Alban Berg’s aphoristic Four Pieces of 1913 provide a striking contrast. The program concludes with Mozart’s “Kegelstatt” Trio, the historical model for the unusual combination of clarinet, viola, and piano.
Born in Palestine and based in Europe since 2002, composer, singer, and musician Kamilya Jubran is among the leading figures of the experimental Arabic music scene. For her Pierre Boulez Saal debut, she per forms two contrasting sets: Together with her longtime musical partner, Swiss trumpet player and sound artist Werner Hasler, she presents Extend WA, an exploration of improvised musical dialogue born out of their album WA (“and” in Arabic). For the concert’s second half, the duo is joined by cellist Soizic Lebrat and bassist Charlotte Testu, collaborators from Jubran’s project Terrae Incognitae featuring female musicians from different backgrounds, in the world premiere of a new piece titled Bast (Arabic for “expanding” or “widening”).
With the “invention” of opera in the early 17th century came a major change in the prevailing musical taste: instead of writing elaborate, polyphonic madrigals, composers increasingly featured the solo voice in the new genre of the monody and began creating dramatic ensemble pieces. Gabriele Palomba and his ensemble La Venexiana shine a spotlight on this turning point in music history, performing late madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi and works by some of his younger contemporaries, including Tarquinio Merula, Alessandro Grandi, and Maurizio Cazzati.
In celebration of the Pierre Boulez centenary, Tamara Stefanovich performs the composer’s Second Piano Sonata of 1948, one of his defining early works. Known internationally for her interpretations of modernist and contemporary repertoire, the pianist pairs it with a selection of avant-garde experiments on the sonata form from the early 20th century—including Scriabin’s mystic “Black Mass,” written in 1911, Busoni’s fantastical, atonal Sonatina seconda, and youthful works by Alban Berg, and Dmitri Shostakovich.
Last season, Julia Hamos made a highly successful debut performing Ligeti’s virtuosic Piano Concerto with the Boulez Ensemble. For her first solo recital, the young Hungarian-American pianist, who studied with Sir András Schiff at the Barenboim-Said Akademie, has chosen rarely heard pieces by Kurtág and Janáček, in a program bookended by Mozart’s A-minor Sonata K. 310 and Schumann’s monumental C-major Fantasy.
Orlando, the eternal adventurer: in a highly original program for mezzo-soprano and guitar, Ema Nikolovska and Sean Shibe trace the legendary troubadour’s story through space and time. Journeying from the medieval Chanson de Roland to Ariosto’s famous epic, to Virginia Woolf ’s 1928 novel, they explore fantastical worlds and encounter the great adventures of life: love, conflict, and the search for one’s own identity. Works by Franz Schubert, Detlef Glanert, Thomas Adès, and others, as well as newly commissioned pieces by Sasha Scott and Cassandra Miller provide the musical tapestry.
When Fabian Müller made his Pierre Boulez Saal debut in January 2022, his memorable performance of Beethoven’s monumental “Hammerklavier” Sonata confirmed his reputation as one of the outstanding pianists of his generation. Now the ARD Competition winner, who was born in 1990 in Beethoven’s hometown of Bonn, takes on the challenge of presenting all the composer’s sonatas as a complete cycle. Dubbed the “New Testament” of piano music by Hans von Bülow— Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier was known as the “Old Testament”—the 32 works will be heard over the course of eight Sunday-afternoon concerts. Completing the individual programs are short pieces newly composed by Müller himself, in which he expresses his reflexions on Beethoven’s sonatas.
“Parental Leave” concerts are aimed at all new mothers and fathers (as well as uncles, aunts, grand parents…) who would like to experience music together with their babies in a relaxed setting. The number of seats is limited, and all amenities to make your visit as pleasant as possible are provided in the lobby. These concerts, featuring Pierre Boulez Saal artists performing excerpts from their programs, are approximately 45 minutes long and intended exclusively for visitors with babies aged 12 months and younger.
Pierre Boulez’s Livre pour quatuor is among the most complex chamber music works of the 20th century. At the same time, the score—left unfinished by the composer—also has a fragmentary quality. The JACK Quartet, regularly heard at the Pierre Boulez Saal over the last few seasons, performs individual movements from Boulez’s only string quartet, pairing them with recent works by Eva-Maria Houben and Anthony Cheung, among others, and the String Quartet in Four Parts by Boulez’s contemporary John Cage.
A few days before Pierre Boulez’s 100th birthday, Matthias Pintscher and the Boulez Ensemble celebrate the composer, who passed away in 2016, with a perfor mance of sur Incises, his last major ensemble work. The program also includes Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp as well as Pintscher’s own beyond II (bridge over troubled water). Scored for the same combina tion of three instruments, it received its premiere as part of the digital Festival of New Music in the summer of 2020 and is now heard live at the Pierre Boulez Saal for the first time.
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