Kirill Petrenko conducts Mozart, Berg and Brahms

(photo: Monika Rittershaus)

Kirill Petrenko travels through the German-Austrian musical tradition with works that again and again look into the abyss. Mozart’s Symphony No. 29, for example, intrigues as a result of its mixture of lightness and subliminal despair, while in Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra, echoes of waltzes and marches are distorted into nightmares and seem to anticipate the catastrophes of the 20th century. Finally, Brahms’ Fourth Symphony is one of the most sonorous and magnificent works of the late Romantic repertoire but which at the same time is suffused with a touching melancholy.

Berliner Philharmoniker

Kirill Petrenko conductor

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Symphony No. 29 in A major, K. 201

Alban Berg

Three Pieces for orchestra, op. 6 (revised version from 1929)

Johannes Brahms

Symphony No. 4 in E minor, op. 98

Kirill Petrenko on Alban Berg

In this video with flautist Jelka Weber, the chief conductor gives an introduction to the Three Orchestral Pieces op. 6. With exclusive insights into the rehearsals.

Dates and Tickets

Biographies

Kirill Petrenko

Kirill Petrenko has been chief conductor and artistic director of the Berliner Philharmoniker since the 2019/20 season. Born in Omsk in Siberia, he received his training first in his home town and later in Austria. He established his conducting career in opera with positions at the Meininger Theater and the Komische Oper Berlin. From 2013 to 2020, Kirill Petrenko was general music director of Bayerische Staatsoper. He has also made guest appearances at the world’s leading opera houses, including Wiener Staatsoper, Covent Garden in London, the Opéra national in Paris, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and at the Bayreuth Festival. Moreover, he has conducted the major international symphony orchestras – in Vienna, Munich, Dresden, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Rome, Chicago, Cleveland and Israel. Since his debut in 2006, a variety of programmatic themes have emerged in his work together with the Berliner Philharmoniker. These include work on the orchestra’s core Classical-Romantic repertoire, most notably with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony when he took up his post. Unjustly forgotten composers such as Josef Suk and Erich Wolfgang Korngold are another of Kirill Petrenko’s interests. Russian works are also highlighted, with performances of Tchaikovsky’s operas MazeppaIolanta and The Queen of Spades attracting particular attention recently.

Background story

The genesis of Alban Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra

Special exhibition

Before the concert visit the special exhibition Woman to Go