The Berliner Philharmoniker are at home all over the world. Follow the orchestra on tour with their blog! Lots of photos and videos give you an impression of their travels to the great concert halls and of the work of the musicians both on-stage and behind the scenes.
This year's European concert finally takes the Berliner Philharmoniker to the legendary Sagrada Família in Barcelona after two years of waiting. The programme includes – befitting the venue – among others Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's “Coronation” mass, as well as Valentin Silvestrov's “Prayer for the Ukraine” and Tōru Takemitsu's Requiem for strings.
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In April 2023, the Berliner Philharmoniker will move to their second home: the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, where the Easter festival will take place. The opera production on the programme with Kirill Petrenko is Richard Strauss' psychologically multi-layered, sound-swallowing “Die Frau ohne Schatten”.
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In November 2022, the Berliner Philharmoniker embark on a very special concert tour: the first USA tour under the direction of chief conductor Kirill Petrenko. The journey will take them from New York to Boston, Chicago, Ann Arbor and finally to Naples FL.
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On 28 August, the Berliner Philharmoniker and chief conductor Kirill Petrenko start this year's festival tour, which traditionally takes them to the Salzburg and the Lucerne Festivals. The tour will conclude with a guest performance at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in London. The first concert programme, conducted by Kirill Petrenko, features Mahler's Seventh Symphony. In the second concert programme, Daniel Harding will conduct Bruckner's Fourth Symphony and Schnittke's Concerto for Viola and Orchestra with soloist Tabea Zimmermann.
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This year’s concert was originally scheduled to take place at the Odesa National Academic Opera. The concert plans stayed in place for as long as possible, but a performance in Odessa has now become unthinkable for the foreseeable future. So instead of the Black Sea, the Berliner Philharmoniker will be guests on the Baltic Sea, in the Latvian city of Liepāja. In one of the world’s most spectacular venues, the Great Amber Concert Hall, music will be performed that gives voice to the idea of self-determination and independence.
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Peter Tchaikovsky’s music is at the centre of the programme for the Easter Festival in Baden-Baden: Kirill Petrenko will perform the opera Pique Dame with the Berliner Philharmoniker in a production by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier. Iolanta - also a work by the Russian composer - will be performed in concert performance. Visitors can also look forward to a diverse chamber music programme and exciting educational projects for young music fans.
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From 15-19 February 2022, the Berliner Philharmoniker and principal conductor Kirill Petrenko will travel to Austria, Slovenia and Croatia. Starting with two concerts at the Musikverein in Vienna, followed by trips to Ljubljana and Zagreb. In addition to Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto with soloist Sir András Schiff, the orchestra will perform Josef Suk’s “The Ripening”, Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s “Photoptosis” and the First Symphony by Witold Lutosławski.
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The Berliner Philharmoniker and Kirill Petrenko will be guests in Northern Europe from 16-20 November 2021 with a total of four concerts. The programme includes Felix Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10. For the first time, the orchestra and its chief conductor will perform at the Musikhuset in Aarhus, at the Malmö Live Konserthus and at the Musikkens Hus in Aalborg. This short Scandinavian tour will be complemented by a matinee concert at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg on 20 November. The final performance will be a concert at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome on 21 November.
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Baden-Baden in November – you wouldn’t normally expect to find the Berliner Philharmoniker and its chief conductor Kirill Petrenko there at this time of year. But this year, everything is different. After the planned Easter Festival in April had to be cancelled due to the pandemic, the orchestra will now have an autumn residency in the Baden-Württemberg spa town. On the programme: chamber music, two concert programmes and the performance of Tchaikovsky’s opera “Mazeppa”.
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Even in 2021, the Berliner Philharmoniker and chief conductor Kirill Petrenko will set off on a festival tour immediately after the opening of the season in Berlin: it traditionally takes them to the Salzburg Festival and the Lucerne Festival. The tour concludes with a guest performance at the Philharmonie de Paris. The two tour programmes subtly contrasts music of the Romantic and Modernist periods. The first programme juxtaposes Carl Maria von Weber’s Oberon overture and Paul Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis; the programme also includes Franz Schubert’s “Great” C major Symphony, considered the epitome of a Romantic symphony. The second programme features Slavic composers, with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy Overture Romeo and Juliet, Sergei Prokofiev’s First Piano Concerto and Josef Suk’s tone poem Pohádka léta (A Summer’s Tale). The soloist in the piano concerto is Anna Vinnitskaya, who is accompanying the Berliner Philharmoniker on tour for the first time.
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Our first Germany Tour with chief conductor: Kirill Petrenko leads us for five concerts to Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne, Frankfurt and Dresden. The program contains works by Igor Stravinsky, Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Sergej Rachmaninoff. The tour start at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg (17. February). It continues in Hanover's Kuppelsaal (18. February), followed by the Cologne Philharmonie (19. February) and the Alte Oper in Frankfurt (20. February). We will make our debut at the new Kulturpalast Dresden (21. February) as last stop of this tour.
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Travelling to Japan is always a treat! Our first Japan tour with honorary member Zubin Mehta with concerts in Nagoya, Osaka, Fukuoka, Kawasaki and Tokyo. On the program: “Don Quixote” by Richard Strauss with our first principal cellist Ludwig Quandt and our first principal violist Amihai Grosz as soloists, Ludwig van Beethoven's Third symphony and Anton Bruckner's Eighth symphony. This is our first pure Japan tour since 15 years.
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After the inaugural concerts of our new chief conductor Kirill Petrenko, we start our traditional festival tour. This year, we are performing at the Salzburg Festival, the Lucerne Festival and the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest. We will be presenting two programmes: Alban Berg’s “Lulu” Suite with soprano Marlis Petersen as the soloist, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Rundfunkchor Berlin (in Salzburg and Lucerne) and the George Enescu Philharmonic Choir (in Bucharest). The soloists are Marlis Petersen, Elisabeth Kulman, Benjamin Bruns and Kwangchoul Youn. The second programme sees violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja performing Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto followed by Peter Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony.
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The European concert 2019 takes place at the Musee d'Orsay's sculpture hall. Daniel Harding conducts works by Wagner, Debussy and Berlioz. Soloist is the Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel. After the concert in Paris the tour continues to Turin and Lugano.
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Giuseppe Verdi's “Otello” is the focus of our 2019 Easter festival, with the Berliner Philharmoniker playing under the baton of Zubin Mehta. The main characters are sung by Stuart Skelton (Otello), Sonya Yoncheva (Desdemona) and Vladimir Stoyanov (Iago), directed by Robert Wilson. “You are driven by your demon and I am that demon” gloats Iago in Otello. These words are the inspiration for many of the programmes of the “Master Concerts” series, in which chamber ensembles from the Berliner Philharmoniker and other members of the orchestra will appear. Two orchestra concerts with symphonic repertoire are conducted by our chief conductor designate Kirill Petrenko, one with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and one with pianist Lang Lang. Riccardo Muti conducts Verdi's Requiem with, among others, Elīna Garanča.
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A short trip through Europe is our first tour in 2019. We will be joined by conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who has been a regular guest and good friend of the orchestra since his debut in October 2010. The tour takes us to four newly-built concert halls that have been completed within the last five years: the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the National Forum of Music in Wrocław, the NOSPR Concert Hall in Katowice and finally the Philharmonie in Paris. The programme includes works by Debussy and Prokofiev.
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After the traditional kick-off concert in Frankfurt/Main, our big Asia tour this year sees the orchestra playing in Bangkok, Taipei, Kaohsiung, Shenzhen, Xi'an and Beijing. Besides Taipei and Beijing all concerts are debuts in the respective cities. We are extremely happy, that Gustavo Dudamel, with whom we are already celebrating 10 years as guest conductor, joins us on this tour. We perform works by Bernstein (with soprano Tamara Mumford), Shostakovich, Mahler and Mozart (with pianist Lang Lang).
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Our first tour with chief conductor designate Kirill Petrenko started with a benefit concert for the Berlin castle as prelude. We travel on to the Salzburg Festival, the Lucerne Festival and the BBC Proms in London.
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Our last tour with Sir Simon Rattle as our chief conductor with concerts in London, Vienna, Amsterdam, Cologne, Madrid and Barcelona. On the programme, two new “tapas” by Hans Abrahamsen and Jörg Widmann as well as Johannes Brahms’s First Symphony, Witold Lutosławski’s Third Symphony, and Anton Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony with the finale by Samale et al.
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