Mahler Chamber Orchestra

Do nomads have a home? The Mahler Chamber Orchestra may not return to Berlin every year, but it does so time and again for the Musikfest Berlin. The international orchestra has established a reputation for being constantly on the move, and its motto of “live … play … dream” has elevated it to one of the world's best orchestras. This Musikfest Berlin concert season, British conductor and composer Sir George Benjamin join them during their visit to the River Spree.

In writing a new concerto for this outstanding chamber orchestra, George Benjamin pays tribute to the musicians with whom he has enjoyed an inspiring and successful collaboration that began in 2012 with the premiere of his opera “Written on Skin” in Aix-en-Provence. George Benjamin succeeds repeatedly in making an orchestra shine. He designs soundscapes imbued with a love for each individual instrument. This is the best possible prerequisite for a “Concerto for Orchestra”.

Igor Stravinsky’s “Movements” for piano and orchestra – performed here with pianist Tamara Stefanovich, who is as spirited as she is experimental – is not a classical solo concerto either. The uncompromisingly short work is by far the most radical from his late creative phase: compact, “antitonal”, often intimate in chamber music terms, and with a piano part that shrugs off all clichés of virtuosity. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra presents Benjamin’s new orchestral concerto alongside Stravinsky’s “Movements” and works by the Baroque master Henry Purcell as well as the British composer Oliver Knussen: a combination that promises unexpected contrasts.