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One season. Countless stories.Discover the 2026/27 season in interviews, portraits and background stories
Behind every concert programme lie countless stories – about the composers, the works, the performers, the historical context and the musical questions that extend far beyond a single evening. Here, we explore them.
Each card offers a different way into the season through a featured concert. Browse the cards, follow your curiosity, and see where it leads.
What you (might) not know about Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky’s unmistakable musical voice helped shape the sound of Romanticism. But who was the man behind the music? Explore some of the lesser-known aspects of his life and work.
“I threw my tailcoat into the audience and said ‘Adieu!’”
While Brett Dean played viola in the Berliner Philharmoniker for 14 years, he was also composing and improvising in Kreuzberg clubs. He left the orchestra in 1999 to focus on his international career as a composer. For the 2026/27 season, Brett Dean will be Composer in Residence with his former orchestra.
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.
Five things to know about “Also sprach Zarathustra”
Beyond its iconic opening lies one of Richard Strauss’s most remarkable orchestral works. Here are five things to look out for.
Not of this world
Fate dealt Lili Boulanger a cruel hand. The first woman to win the coveted Prix de Rome, she was only nineteen when she effortlessly outclassed every male entrant in the 1913 competition; but within a mere five years, she was dead.
Variants and versions of Bruckner’s symphonies
Anton Bruckner did not make it easy for his contemporaries – nor for future generations. He worked on his symphonies again and again, revising and shortening them. Performers are spoilt for choice.
Italy’s great orchestrator
A quiet observer, he listened to the world around him with a painterly sense of sound. Ottorino Respighi loved transforming everyday scenes into music. His Rome Trilogy remains one of the most successful orchestral cycles of the early twentieth century. A portrait.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Ballet
Tchaikovsky revolutionised ballet music, refusing to accept that it was merely accompaniment. A love story.
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.
Portrait of Martha Argerich
Pianist Martha Argerich has been an artistic companion of the Berliner Philharmoniker for many years – like Daniel Barenboim, her childhood friend.
A Finn in Berlin
Jean Sibelius is regarded as Finland’s great composer, yet Berlin is rarely associated with his name. In fact, the city played an important role in his artistic development.
Mahler the bookworm
Mahler’s music is unimaginable without his love of literature. Books were more than a source of knowledge and pleasure: they were his intellectual sustenance and a mirror of his deepest personal experiences.
People around Mahler
Meet the friends, colleagues and contemporaries who shaped Gustav Mahler’s life and work.
“It was love at first note”
How does chief conductor Kirill Petrenko introduce the Berliner Philharmoniker’s 2026/27 season? At a press conference in the Philharmonie, he spoke about the works that matter most to him — from little-known musical depictions of nature to an “Everest of music” and music “as if from another world”.
It doesn’t get more modern than this
Beethoven was not just a revolutionary in terms of his music: as a thinker, too, he was far ahead of the rest of society – independent, almost anti-authoritarian and profoundly humanistic. What Beethoven still has to say to us today ...
The Misfit
Anton Bruckner never quite found his place in Vienna’s cultural circles. What drove this remarkable outsider?
On hunting and gathering
Thomas Larcher is one of today’s leading composers. His music combines a tonal language rooted in tradition with an iridescent sound world, often inspired by nature. A portrait of an artist who defies easy categorisation.
Behind the music: Solo horn player Yun Zeng
Yun Zeng joined the Berliner Philharmoniker as principal horn in the summer of 2025. This season, he performs Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 4 with the orchestra. Meet Yun Zeng in our video and find out more about the musician behind the music.
“A whole Beethoven in this Frenchman”
Composer, critic, librarian, eccentric, visionary: Hector Berlioz was a man of many talents and contradictions. A portrait.