Musikfest Berlin 2025: The Complete Programme Has Been Announced
Musikfest Berlin 2025: The Complete Programme Has Been Announced
The Musikfest Berlin will take place from 30 August to 23 September 2025, presented by the Berliner Festspiele in cooperation with the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation.
The major orchestras of Germany’s musical capital are joined by more than 17 international guest orchestras and ensembles from the Netherlands, from France and Belgium, from Italy, Sweden, South Korea, Ukraine and Germany to perform over 30 concerts offering a multi-faceted programme that ranges from the music of the Italian Renaissance and classics from the 19th century and the early modern era to the sound worlds of composers of our own time.
To coincide with the publication of the full programme, advanced ticket sale also opens today.
In the programme for Musikfest Berlin 2025, France’s musical hub Paris features particularly prominently with guest performances by five orchestras and ensembles based there: the Orchestre de Paris will come to Berlin with conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France with conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla – a Musikfest Berlin debut – and also making its debut at the festival is the vocal ensemble Les Cris de Paris. As leading exponents of historically informed performance practice, there will be chances to hear both the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées and Les Siècles. The latter will give two concerts, with Ustina Dubitsky conducting works by Beethoven and Berlioz and with the conductor Franck Ollu and the soprano Sarah Aristidou performing the song cycle “Pli selon pli” by Pierre Boulez to mark his centenary.
The Berliner Philharmoniker will honour Boulez with his extensive and spectacular composition “Rituel” and the world premiere of “Between Five Columns” by Ondřej Adámek, composed “in memoriam” of Pierre Boulez. Another work written as an homage to Boulez, “L’Azur” by the Dutch composer Robin de Raaff will be performed together with Boulez’s cantata “Le soleil des eaux” by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra with its Chief Conductor Karina Canellakis in the orchestra’s Berlin debut. To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the Deutsche Oper Berlin BigBand will explore French jazz, with music by Michel Legrand, Miles Davis, Jacques Brel and Serge Gainsbourg, among others.
Like Pierre Boulez, the Italian composer Luciano Berio would also have turned 100 this year, and Musikfest Berlin honours his achievements in five concerts, including the opening concert of the festival with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and its Chief Conductor designate Klaus Mäkelä, the performance of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia from Rome with its new Chief Conductor Daniel Harding, two of the guest orchestras from France and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin conducted by Michael Sanderling. The Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Anja Bihlmaier will perform a work by the American composer Olly Wilson along with Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s “Roi Ubu”, while the Staatskapelle Berlin will tackle compositions by Dvorák and Bartók with the Hong Kong-born conductor Elim Chan.
A guest performance by the Busan Philharmonic Orchestra will celebrate the work of South Korean composer Younghi Pagh-Paan, born in 1945. The RIAS Kammerchor will present a concert for Arvo Pärt to mark his 90th birthday on 11 September. To celebrate the 90th birthday of Helmut Lachenmann, his work will be heard in concerts by the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, the EnsembleKollektiv Berlin, the Ensemble Modern and by the soloists Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Mark Simpson and Jean-Guihen Queyras.
This year’s anniversary celebrations for Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Arvo Pärt and Younghi Pagh-Paan will be complemented by numerous works by composers representing younger generations: as well as Ondřej Adámek, Robin de Raaff and Esa-Pekka Salonen, there will be compositions by Mark Andre, Unsuk Chin, Pascal Dusapin, Toshio Hosokawa, Rebecca Saunders, Lisa Streich and Francesca Verunelli plus contemporary works by Ukrainian composers in the concert given by the Ensemble Senza Sforzando from Odessa.
In addition to all this, the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra visits from Sweden with its Chief Conductor Karl-Heinz Steffens to present the world premiere of a genuine discovery: the first and probably only Cubist Bauhaus opera, “Parabola and Circula” by Marc Blitzstein from 1929/30 – co-hosted by the Bauhaus Archive/Museum for Design.
Photos of the participating artists, orchestras and ensembles are available to download from Musikfest Berlin’s Press Area. Here you can also read our press releases.
To the Press Area
Accreditation for Musikfest Berlin 2025 opens on Thursday, 5 June. The festival programme can be read online and in the programme brochure which has just been published.
Tothe programme brochure
Funding & Media Partners
Musikfest Berlin is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
In cooperation with the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation.
Project-related partners and sponsors of Musikfest Berlin 2025 are listed in the respective programmes.
Media partners: radio3 of rbb, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, arte, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Monopol - Magazin für Kunst und Leben, Tagesspiegel, field notes/inm, Wall and Yorck Kinogruppe