Concert information
Artist in Residence
Info
Violinist Janine Jansen, Artist in Residence for the 2025/26 season, has won acclaim around the world for the emotional depth and musical intelligence of her playing. Under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle, she performs Sergei Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto, a work that blends lyrical intimacy with modernist pyrotechnics. The evening also showcases the sensuous side of 20th-century music: in his famous Harmonielehre, John Adams combines minimal music with impressionistic colours, while Percy Grainger’s Lincolnshire Posy uses English folk melodies to invoke the English countryside.
Artists
Berliner Philharmoniker
Sir Simon Rattle conductor
Janine Jansen violin
Programme
Percy Grainger
R. Mark Rogers
Lincolnshire Posy
Sergei Prokofiev
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 1 in D major, op. 19
Janine Jansen violin
Interval
John Adams
Harmonielehre
Additional information
Duration ca. 2 hours and 15 minutes (incl. 20 minutes interval)
Main Auditorium
39 to 111 €
Introduction
19:15
Series G: Concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker
Main Auditorium
39 to 111 €
Introduction
19:15
Series M: Concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker
Main Auditorium
39 to 111 €
Introduction
18:15
Series B: Concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker
“Perfection can be a trap”
An interview with Janine Jansen
The violinist Janine Jansen is the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Artist in Residence for the 2025/26 season. In this interview, she talks about feeling free on stage, performing at family gatherings, and changing priorities in her life. First, however, we discuss the legendary violins that have accompanied her throughout her career.
Biographies
Sir Simon Rattle
From his earliest childhood, Simon Rattle was captivated by music. He began studying percussion at the age of four, later adding piano and violin, and by the time he was sixteen, he was already a student at the Royal Academy of Music in London. His work with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – first as Principal Conductor and Artistic Adviser, then as Music Director – brought the Liverpool-born conductor international fame. At his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1987, he won acclaim for his energetic conducting style, his artistic vision, and his charisma. In 2002, Simon Rattle became the orchestra’s Chief Conductor.
During his sixteen-year tenure, he and the musicians laid important foundations for the future, including the launch of a pioneering education program. Under his direction, the orchestra’s repertoire expanded significantly, embracing both early and contemporary music. Artistic highlights of this period include symphonic cycles of Sibelius, Mahler, Brahms, Schumann, and Beethoven, as well as Peter Sellars’ staged performances of Bach’s St Matthew and St John Passions and the introduction of the Late Night concerts. Even after the end of his tenure, Sir Simon Rattle – Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra from 2017 to 2023 and, from the 2023/24 season, Chief Conductor of the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra – has remained closely connected to the Berliner Philharmoniker.
Janine Jansen
For Janine Jansen, encountering music is an existential experience. As she admits, this can be exhausting. “But,” she adds, “I want that intensity. As a musician, I always want to give everything and never hold back.” Her playing has won wide acclaim for its flexibility and eloquence. She is supported in this by her violin, the “Shumsky-Rode” Stradivarius, which, in her words, allows her “to shape and transform a sound within a millisecond.” Janine Jansen was born in Soest, near Utrecht. After completing her studies and making her debut at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam in 1997 at the age of 19, Jansen embarked on a breathtaking career. Her debut album was released in 2003, and her recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons the following year was an international success.
Today, Janine Jansen performs regularly with the world’s most distinguished conductors and orchestras – including the Berliner Philharmoniker, with whom she first appeared at the Waldbühne in 2006. She is Guest Artistic Director of the International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht, which she founded in 2003, and has been Professor of Violin at the Haute École de Musique Vaud Valais Fribourg since 2019. Jansen has received numerous awards, among them the 2018 Johannes Vermeer Award from the Dutch government and the 2020 Herbert von Karajan Prize from the Salzburg Easter Festival.
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