Concert information
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Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 is his most popular – not least for its famed Adagietto, a musical declaration of love to Alma, his future wife. The work traverses contrasting emotional worlds: sorrow and optimism, existential fear and zest for life, doubt and tenderness. The evening opens with Joseph Haydn’s Sinfonia concertante, in which four members of the Berliner Philharmoniker enter into a virtuosic dialogue with the orchestra – charming, lively, and full of wit. On the podium is Andrés Orozco-Estrada, General Music Director of the City of Cologne, Gürzenich-Kapellmeister and Music Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, who is stepping in for Iván Fischer.
Artists
Berliner Philharmoniker
Andrés Orozco-Estrada conductor (replacing Iván Fischer)
Noah Bendix-Balgley violin
Bruno Delepelaire cello
Jonathan Kelly oboe
Stefan Schweigert bassoon
Programme
Joseph Haydn
Sinfonia concertante in B flat major, Hob. I:105
Noah Bendix-Balgley violin, Bruno Delepelaire cello, Jonathan Kelly oboe, Stefan Schweigert bassoon
Interval
Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 5
Additional information
Duration ca. 2 hours and 15 minutes (incl. 20 minutes interval)
Dates and tickets
Main Auditorium
40 to 114 €
Introduction
19:15
with Ulrike Timm
Series L: Concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker
Main Auditorium
40 to 114 €
Introduction
19:15
with Ulrike Timm
Series D: Concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker
Main Auditorium
40 to 114 €
Introduction
18:15
with Ulrike Timm
Series E: Concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker
Background
Haydn meets the market
A composer, an impresario and the rise of the modern concert industry
When Joseph Haydn first set foot on English soil at five o’clock on the afternoon of 1 January 1791, a new year – and a new chapter in his life – began. His arrival would also help reshape the concert business.
The Fragility of Love
Gustav and Alma Mahler
Should she really say yes? The 22-year-old Alma, idolised by Vienna’s avant-garde artists and a talented composer herself, is faced with a difficult decision. Gustav Mahler, the up-and-comer from the provinces, offers her a life full of music, but no artistic equality. About one of the most famous love affairs in classical music.
Biography
Andrés Orozco-Estrada
Andrés Orozco-Estrada was born in Medellín, Colombia, and studied conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, where he has been professor of orchestral conducting since 2022. His previous appointments include music director of the Houston Symphony and chief conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, the Vienna Symphony and the RAI National Symphony Orchestra.
His conducting has been acclaimed for its energy and structural clarity. Since autumn 2025, he has been general music director of the City of Cologne and Gürzenich Kapellmeister. In autumn 2026, he became music director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He also directs the Filarmónica Joven de Colombia. “Making music accessible to everyone is something I care about deeply,” he says.
His guest engagements take him to orchestras including the Munich and Vienna Philharmonics, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, and to opera houses such as the Vienna State Opera, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, the Semperoper Dresden and La Scala, Milan. He made his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in 2017.
Noah Bendix-Balgley
“For me, playing is about sharing thoughts and emotions with fellow musicians and with the audience,” says Noah Bendix-Balgley. Born in North Carolina, Bendix-Balgley joined the Berliner Philharmoniker as first concertmaster in 2014, having previously served as concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Alongside his work with the orchestra, Bendix-Balgley appears internationally as a soloist, both with the Berliner Philharmoniker and with other orchestras..
A committed chamber musician, he performs in several ensembles, among them a trio with pianist Robert Levin and cellist Peter Wiley and Philharmonix, a genre-bending septet whose members include musicians from the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Vienna Philharmonic.. Bendix-Balgley is also closely involved with traditional klezmer music. He has performed with groups including Brave Old World, taught at workshops across Europe and the United States, and composed the klezmer violin concerto Fidl-Fantazye, performed at the Philharmonie Berlin in April 2023.
Bruno Delepelaire
Bruno Delepelaire has led the cello section of the Berliner Philharmoniker as principal cello since 2013. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Philippe Muller, at the Berlin University of the Arts with Jens Peter Maintz, and with Ludwig Quandt at the Karajan Academy – a path that led him straight into the Berliner Philharmoniker. He has taken part in masterclasses with François Salque, Wen-Sinn Yang and Wolfgang Boettcher, and gained his first orchestral experience with, among others, the Verbier Festival Orchestra and the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra.
He has won several prizes, both as a soloist and with his string quartet, Quatuor Cavatine, and can also be heard as a chamber musician with the Berlin Piano Quartet and the 12 Cellists of the Berliner Philharmoniker. As a soloist, Bruno Delepelaire has appeared with numerous symphony orchestras, including the Berliner Philharmoniker: when John Williams made his conducting debut with the orchestra in 2021, Delepelaire played the solo part in Williams’s Elegy for cello and orchestra. He owes his path to the cello to his grandmother, an enthusiastic amateur cellist: her playing made such an impression on him at the age of five that he simply had to learn the instrument himself.
Jonathan Kelly
Jonathan Kelly has been principal oboe of the Berliner Philharmoniker since autumn 2003 – fulfilling a dream he had held since his youth. Born in Hampshire, Kelly was so captivated as a teenager by a recording featuring Lothar Koch, the orchestra’s principal oboe at the time, that he took up the oboe with the aim of one day playing with the Philharmoniker himself. First, however, he studied history at the University of Cambridge, before training as an oboist with Celia Nicklin at the Royal Academy of Music in London and with Maurice Bourgue at the Paris Conservatoire.
After completing his studies, Kelly became principal oboe of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, where he remained for ten years. During this time, he also performed regularly as a guest with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He was further a member of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, with which he gave the world premiere of Thomas Adès’s Sonata da caccia, among other works. Alongside his work as a soloist and orchestral and chamber musician, Jonathan Kelly teaches at the Karajan Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker. For many years, he also taught at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin. Today, he holds a visiting professorship at the Royal Academy of Music in London and regularly gives masterclasses at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan.
Stefan Schweigert
“Every day with music is a new attempt, and nothing is set in stone. It’s the moment that counts!” says Stefan Schweigert, principal bassoon of the Berliner Philharmoniker since 1985. Born in Kaiserslautern, Schweigert – who also enjoys a successful career as a soloist – spent twelve years as a member of the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin and performed regularly with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He has also taken part several times in Gidon Kremer’s festival in Lockenhaus. Alongside his work with the orchestra, Stefan Schweigert is active with András Schiff’s Cappella Andrea Barca ensemble of soloists and with Sabine Meyer’s wind ensemble.
As a teenager, he came to the bassoon almost by chance: “I really owe it to my music teacher, who needed a bassoon for our school orchestra.” By the time Schweigert began his studies with Klaus Thunemann at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, he was already a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Germany. In 1987, he became a tutor at the Karajan Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker, and he also taught as a professor at the Freiburg University of Music. The principal bassoonist gives masterclasses in Germany, Spain, Japan and the USA: “No one can achieve anything from within themselves without inspiration.”
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