Berliner Philharmoniker 
Backstage-Storys

Paradox on the Podium

Conductor Eun Sun Kim makes her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Franz Schubert: Music like an Infinity Symbol

His music can suspend all sense of time, as if, while exploring the streets of a large city, you gradually lose yourself in the moment.

The sound of crime and retribution

Richard Strauss’ »Elektra«

Ludwig van Beethoven the pianist

Ludwig van Beethoven was a piano prodigy; he enjoyed the greatest successes of his early career as a pianist. However, as his hearing deteriorated, this changed.

Gustav and Alma Mahler

Should she really accept his offer of marriage? At twenty-two, Alma was an extraordinarily beautiful and charismatic woman. Mahler was a social climber from the provinces.

Jonathan Kelly: If I were not a musician ...

In this section, we introduce members of the Berliner Philharmoniker and their extramusical passions. Today: Jonathan Kelly has a green thumb.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and the Berliner Philharmoniker

Art is sometimes a step ahead of politics. On 8 February 1888, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky stood at the podium of the Berliner Philharmoniker as the conductor of his own works.

Arnold Schönberg in exile

In the 1940s, composers, writers, visual artists and other intellectuals who had fled the Nazis gathered in Los Angeles.

Brightening up sleepless nights

The mysteries of the “Goldberg Variations”

Verdi’s Messa da Requiem

Fear of death and the end of the world in Italian. Verdi's Messa da Requiem is a showdown between art and the church.

Schoenberg’s Slap-in-the-Face Concert

A memorable Schoenberg performance in 1913

Between morbidity and life force

The fin de siècle

The storm in music

Especially with thunder and lightning, composers can impressively let their creativity and feeling for striking sound effects run free.

If I were not a musician ...

Double bass player Matthew McDonald loves poetry – and not only in music.

The composer Marianna Martines

Composing child prodigy, harpsichord virtuoso and singer: in 17th century Vienna, her domestic academies were musical hotspots.

In celebration of Hans Scharoun

A declaration of love to his most famous building: the Philharmonie Berlin.

Mysterious symphonies

Mozart’s Symphonies Nos. 39 to 41 are regarded as the pinnacle of his instrumental oeuvre - and are at the same time shrouded in mystery.

Who was Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved”?

Beethoven dedicated the first print of his Seventh Symphony to Antonie Brentano. Was she perhaps his “Immortal Beloved”? To this day, the mystery has not been completely resolved.

Yearningly successful

His two-and-a-half-year stay in America was an ambivalent time for Antonín Dvořák – characterized by triumphs, enthusiasm about new impressions, but also yearning for his Bohemian homeland.