© Berliner Festspiele / Musikfest Berlin, Illustration: Alexandra Klobouk
Stories in the Poster 2026
The Musikfest Berlin 2026 opens with Le Grand Macabre. The opera by György Ligeti depicts a grotesque vision of the end of the world. Life has gone off the rails in the completely run-down and corrupt Breughelland. The new poster with an image based on Berlin displaying the different Musikfest Berlin performance locations also reveals signs of disruption: the roofs are shaking and the ground trembles. The 24 figures on the poster including historical individuals alongside composers, singers, instrumentalists and conductors of our time also appear to be undertaking great efforts to orient themselves in this exceptional situation.
1
GyörgyLigeti–LeighMelrose–SarahAristidou
Le Grand Macabre
Grotesque, crazy and at the same time horrifyingly topical, is a vehement parody of totalitarian rule, mismanagement and corruption. The British baritone Leigh Melrose in his role as Nekrotzar, the messenger of death, plans to announce the end of the world, but is prevented from doing so by human weaknesses and an excessive enjoyment of life. The soprano Sarah Aristidou, based in Berlin, takes on two different roles: the seductive Venus Mescalina and Gepopo, chief of the political police, whose vain attempt to stop Nekrotzar is a caricature of a totalitarian system which is musically developed ad absurdum by György Ligeti develops with a cynical sense of humour.
2
BrittanySmith–LizaLim–WolfgangAmadeusMozart
Dreams
The vibrant soprano Brittany Smith, a member of the Cape Town Opera ensemble, has emerged from Cape Town to appear to great acclaim on international concert stages and is considered one of the most exciting personalities on the South African opera scene. She is singing the role of Clara in the opera Porgy and Bess at the Musikfest Berlin 2026. The opera begins with the lullaby Summertime which was the first piece George Gershwin composed for the work and recurs throughout the storyline like a leitmotif. The lullaby oscillating between hope and melancholy expresses a longing for a better life and has become well-known far beyond the confines of the operatic world.
The Ancient Greek poet Sappho is enthroned on the poster on top of the Berlin Victory Column. Emotions are brought vividly to life in her poetry: she expresses how feelings can seize and overwhelm the body, causing it to tremble. Her name is simultaneously the title of the orchestral work Sappho/ Bioluminescence by Liza Lim. Sappho’s words “Let loose your longing” are placed at the top of the score above the musical text. The Australian composer talked to Martina Seeber about the yearning of the classical poet and the role played in Lim’s music by the Hawaiian bobtail squid, a luminescent cephalopod. This conversation is available in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library.
The popular German children’s TV character Die Maus (The Mouse) is paying its first visit to Berlin! The Mouse is delighted to join children and their companions in the Philharmonie Berlin to listen to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s wonderful music. Anyone familiar with the German TV programme Die Sendung mit der Maus will however realise that this is only the starting point. The concert audience can look forward to games, a great deal of fun and a whole series of quiz questions associated with the Austrian composer. The Mouse has of course brought something very special to the concert: the singalong song Die magische Mozart-Maus (The Magic Mozart Mouse). Do you recognise the melody?
3
JoannaMallwitz–HansWernerHenze–75 YearsoftheBerlinerFestspiele
Anniversary
Joana Mallwitz, chief conductor of the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, is tackling the monumental Sinfonia N. 9 written by the composer Hans Werner Henze who emigrated to Italy: the Italian wording of the title already indicates the composer’s deliberate distance to the Germanic symphonic tradition. The seven-movement work for chorus and orchestra is focused on the politically left composer’s profound personal confrontation with Nazism. At the same time, Henze also saw the Sinfonia N. 9 as a type of stocktaking of his creativity and a “reckoning with a despotic, incalculable world with which we are assaulted”. In commemoration of the centenary of Henze’s birth, the Musikfest Berlin will present a number of his works, two of which were originally created in response to commissions by the Berliner Festwochen.
Henze composed Musen Siziliens in an unorthodox instrumentation featuring two pianos, choir, wind instruments and timpani: the work was premiered in 1966. In an interview available on the Berliner Festspiele Media Library, the two pianists Andreas Grau and Götz Schumacher talk about their long-cherished dream to perform this work which is being fulfilled at the Musikfest Berlin 2026.
The pianist Tamara Stefanovich is well known for taking on technically and emotionally challenging works close to the limits of feasibility. At the Musikfest Berlin 2026, she is devoting herself to Hans Werner Henze’s Tristan for piano, orchestra and electronics – a work based on a fateful love story only finding fulfilment in death. As if the music had been a premonition, Henze’s life also became overshadowed by tragic circumstances. Tristan became a type of requiem for the composer – both for the unexpected death of his close friend and the destruction of political utopias of his generation through the military putsch in Chile.
In celebration of its 75th anniversary, the Berliner Festspiele has also scheduled events beyond the confines of customary performance locations which will take place in different venues across urban Berlin: the artist Akira Takayama invites the audience of What if Berlin to the circular railway Berliner Ringbahn which also runs symbolically through our poster illustration. Guided tours focused on the 27 circular railway stations will be offered on four weekends: experienced city tour guides will present unrealised projects from the past which have been discovered in the archives of the Berliner Festwochen, Berliner Festspiele, other cultural institutions and artists in Berlin and placed within a contemporary context by Takayama. Would you like to find out more about the chequered history of the Berliner Festspiele? In 75 Jahre Freiheit versuchen (75 years experimenting with freedom), Matthias Pees, artistic director of the Berliner Festspiele, will present the history of the Berliner Festspiele which were originally named Berliner Festwochen on their foundation in 1951.
4
KarlheinzStockhausen–SusanneKennedy–GeorgBaselitz–IsabelleFaust–SirSimonRattle
Out of this World
Karlheinz Stockhausen is operating within remote cosmic spheres in his opera Mittwoch aus Licht (Wednesday from Light). The ‘Lucicamel’ on which the composer is seated in the poster arrives from space in one of the scenes and is capable of decoding short-frequency waves. Many of Stockhausen’s works revolve around the concept that music exists far beyond terrestrial spheres. Instead of the sweets called ‘Kamellen’ distributed in the Cologne Carnival processions, the composer who is renowned as a cosmic visionary throws a multitude of small, brightly-coloured planets into the audience.
The spectacular core of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s opera Mittwoch aus Licht is the famous helicopter string quartet, bringing the celestial music symbolically back to earth. On 5 September 2026, four helicopters will fly over Schönhagen in Brandenburg, around 50 km from the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where the opera premiere will be celebrated two weeks later – in the production by Susanne Kennedy and Markus Selg.
On the poster, Georg Baselitz is operating his “Devil” which he created for Igor Stravinsky’s Tale of the Soldier from the sky. A year before his death in April 2026, the painter, sculptor and graphic artist designed highly enchanting marionettes, utilising the simplest materials and reducing the figures to their essentials. “I wished to create puppets whose characters are not identifiable through their physiognomy. I therefore limited myself to a small range of colours: the Devil is red, the King is yellow and so on. It is the colours themselves which determine the figure and the rest is left to the Narrator.” With consummate inventiveness and artistic flair, Dominique Horwitz leads the audience through the imaginative world of the Salzburg Marionettentheater which gave the premiere of this production at the Salzburg Festival in 2025.
The Soldier exchanges his violin for a magic book which can foretell the future, but the deal with the Devil takes a different direction than anticipated… Dominique Horwitz as Narrator guides the audience through Igor Stravinsky’s Tale of the Soldier which the composer initially conceived as a piece for travelling theatre, ultimately creating a work which was to be “read, played and danced”. The figure of the Soldier is additionally represented by the violin which is played here by Isabelle Faust alongside a star-studded ensemble bringing the enchanted world of marionettes vividly to life.
Isabelle Faust makes an additional appearance onstage at the Musikfest Berlin as soloist with the Freiburger Barockorchester under Sir Simon Rattle in a performance of Robert Schumann’s powerful Violin Concerto which in the words of the soloist is above all “celestially beautiful”.
5
YvonneLoriod–KentNagano–SofiaGubaidulina
Faith
During her lifetime, the pianist and legendary piano teacher Yvonne Loriod, born in Paris in 1924, was renowned as the outstanding performer of music composed by her husband Olivier Messiaen. More than 80 years after its composition, her own work La Sainte Face will receive its premiere, performed by Sarah Aristidou and the WDR Sinfonieorchester under the direction of Kent Nagano. In this 15-movement composition for soprano and orchestra, the then 21-year-old Loriod created a sensational musical description of the Saint’s Face. Kent Nagano was one of the first to set eyes on her manuscripts which had long remained unknown. Since their rediscovery, he has become an advocate for the performance and recording of Loriod’s compositions.
“While I am composing, I pray” revealed the composer Sofia Gubaidulina who died in March 2025. Her religiously influenced works were included on the “black list” in the Soviet Union. After the end of this regime, Gubaidulina relocated to a small village close to Hamburg in 1992 where she remained for the rest of her life. Gubaidulina once said: “I have always considered the innate mysterious and veiled tone of the viola an enigma”. Her works constantly revolved around spiritual issues, as is the case with her Concerto for Viola and Orchestra performed here by the London Symphony Orchestra’s principal viola player, Eivind Ringstad.
6
AntoninArtaud–KiyokazuKanze
Powerful
“Everything must be brought precisely into riotous order!” maintained the French author, actor, director and theatre theorist Antonin Artaud. It was Artaud’s forceful, percussive and violent language and his theatre of cruelty which provided such great inspiration for the composer Wolfgang Rihm: “I have a visionary idea of sound which is curiously located somewhere between rigour and exuberance, roaring sparseness and steely opulence and between harshness and a glowing sensuality.” In Tutuguri, the then 30-year-old composer transformed the ‘feverish pulse’ of the eponymous poem by Artaud into breathtaking music with a forceful battery of percussion.
The Dance of the Lions performed at the end of the Japanese Shakkyō drama is one of the spectacular highlights of Nō theatre. This traditional form of Japanese theatre was created around 700 years ago and is considered one of the oldest across the globe. The guest performance by the Kanze Nō Theatre from Tokyo transports the audience into a different world. The extensive stage at the Philharmonie in Berlin is provided with its own roof supported by four wooden pillars, in which the ancient fir tree Matsubame represents a symbol of eternity, longevity and the divine origin of theatre. The principal actor Kiyokazu Kanze, the 26th grand master of the Kanze School, is a descendent of the founder of Nō theatre. One day after the performance, Kanze will present a unique insight into the world of Nō theatre in an educational event specially for children and young adults.
Further performative and artistic contributions from Japan can also be experienced in the anniversary year of the Berliner Festspiele with its Focus Japan.
7
JordiSavall–BrettDean
Romantics
Jordi Savall is a visionary who has followed a path between different cultures as a viol player, conductor, researcher and educator for more than 50 years, simultaneously founding a variety of new ensembles which have revitalised the field of ancient music. At the Musikfest Berlin, he will dedicate himself to the music of Felix Mendelssohn whose tonal world contains reminiscences of the paintings of William Turner: “The music of Mendelssohn and paintings of Turner communicate a highly similar vision of nature which is full of colour and atmosphere.” Mendelssohn visited the Hebrides off the West coast of Scotland at the age of 20. He processed his impressions in his eponymous concert overture and in the Scottish Symphony. Turner also captured the rugged landscape with its jagged cliffs, constantly fluctuating light and the wide expanse of the sea in his paintings.
Brett Dean, composer in residence at the Berliner Philharmoniker, has a special connection with the orchestra: prior to achieving an international reputation as a composer, he played viola in the orchestra for 14 years. Now he takes up his place as conductor of the ensemble. The soprano Jennifer France explores his tonally multilayered works And once I played Ophelia and Conversations with Schumann. The Australian-born musician can also be experienced as a viola player in the Late Night of the Berliner Philharmoniker where he performs in piano quartets by Robert Schumann, Cathy Milliken and himself.
8
CathyMilliken–OlgaNeuwirth–MatthiasPintscher
Turning Points
A yellow feather, the feeling of lost balance and the featherlike ribbons of sound of the Armenian duduk all served as sources of inspiration for the Australian composer Cathy Milliken. Her new concerto for cor anglais why feather yellow will receive its premiere at the Musikfest Berlin performed by Sir Simon Rattle, the Berliner Philharmoniker and the soloist Dominik Wollenweber. Cathy Milliken has a close connection with the Berliner Philharmoniker – not least through her supervision of the orchestra’s educational programme over several years. In a conversation with Olivia Artner entitled “Auf ungewohnten Wegen” (On unaccustomed paths), the composer originally from Queensland and now resident in Berlin reveals the origins of her most recent orchestral work.
When Olga Neuwirth meets Matthias Pintscher, they do not only play music – a dreydl is spinning between them on the poster. For the Austrian composer, this traditional Jewish spinning top symbolises the unceasing rotation of life and the “fatal cycle of destiny”. Her work of the same name, based on a Yiddish children’s song will be performed at the Musikfest Berlin by the Kansas City Symphony under its chief conductor Matthias Pintscher. He and Olga Neuwirth have been long connected through an intensive artistic dialogue to which a further joint chapter is added in this concert.
9
Epilogue
The Illustrator
This is the third time that Berlin illustrator Alexandra Klobouk has created a poster for the Musikfest Berlin. In the video making-of-Wimmelbild (making of the poster) available in the Berliner Festspiele media library, she reveals an insight into the process of creation and talks about working with pencil and ink.
Alexandra Klobouk © Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn
Copyright: © Berliner Festspiele / Musikfest Berlin, Illustration: Alexandra Klobouk
10
Epilogue
The Puzzle
Copyright: © Berliner Festspiele / Musikfest Berlin, Illustration: Alexandra Klobouk
