Musikfest Berlin 2025: Festival opens on 30 August with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and conductor Klaus Mäkelä
Klaus Mäkelä with Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam at Musikfest Berlin 2022
© Berliner Festspiele, photo: Fabian Schellhorn
On Saturday, Musikfest Berlin 2025 will open with a concert by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by its Chief Conductor Designate Klaus Mäkelä at the Philharmonie Berlin. The concert will be broadcast live on radio3 by rbb and nationally as part of the ARD Radiofestival. In addition to international guest orchestras, ensembles and soloists, the festival will also welcome the composers Helmut Lachenmann, Younghi Pagh-Paan, Robin de Raaff and Lisa Streich and Francesca Verunelli.
Until 23 September the Berliner Festspiele’s international festival of orchestral music, presented in co-operation with the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation, will invite to a festival programme of over 30 concerts in the Philharmonie Berlin, in the Chamber Music Hall and Konzerthaus Berlin. With more than 120 works by some 70 composers, the festival programme presents music stretching from the Italian Renaissance through the classical and romantic orchestral repertoire to 20th century modernism and beyond, right up to the latest compositions of our own time. Berlin’s great ensembles can be heard alongside guest orchestras and musicians from Paris, Rome, London and Ghent, from the Netherlands, Sweden, South Korea and Ukraine.
On the opening weekend, the festival will start with two orchestras from the Netherlands: in addition to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir will make its festival debut with Chief Conductor Karina Canellakis. Their programmes include works by the composers Luciano Berio and Pierre Boulez, whose centenaries are being celebrated by the international music world this year, as well as music by Béla Bartók, Olivier Messiaen, Robin de Raaff and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
The top French ensembles from the musical metropolis of Paris will also be welcomed: the two flagships of historically informed performance practice, the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées with Philippe Herreweghe – along with Collegium Vocale Gent – and the orchestra Les Siècles with Ustina Dubitzky and Franck Ollu conducting and the soloists Isabelle Faust and Sarah Aristidou. There will also be performances by leading representatives of the modern symphonic ensemble: the Orchestre de Paris with Esa-Pekka Salonen and his new concerto for the Berliner Philharmoniker’s horn soloist Stefan Dohr and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France with Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla as well as a work by the Lithuanian composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis. The orchestra will also perform Luciano Berio’s “Voci” with the violist Antoine Tamestit, one of six orchestral works by the composer that will be heard at the festival marking his centenary. And the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia also visits from Rome with its new Music Director Daniel Harding and the London Voices to perform Berio’s “Sinfonia” and his “Folk Songs” with the mezzo soprano Magdalena Kožená.
The grand maître of musique concrète instrumentale, Helmut Lachenmann, celebrates his 90th birthday this year. At Musikfest Berlin, among other works, two of his large-scale orchestral pieces will be performed by the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. The festival’s finale will also honour the South Korean composer Younghi Pagh-Paan, whose 80th birthday will be marked by the Busan Philharmonic Orchestra. Both composers will attend the concerts of their music at the Philharmonie Berlin. And numerous composers of younger generations are also represented at Musikfest Berlin: Ondřej Adámek, Mark Andre, Unsuk Chin, Pascal Dusapin, Robin de Raaff, Rebecca Saunders, Lisa Streich and Francesca Verunelli. In addition, the Ensemble Senza Sforzando will visit from Odessa accompanied by contemporary Ukrainian composers. And on 11 September, the 90th birthday of Arvo Pärt, the RIAS Kammerchor will devote a portrait concert to the great Estonian composer.
Towards the end of the festival, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra conducted by Karl-Heinz Steffens will present the concert world premiere of the constructivist Bauhaus opera “Parabola and Circula” by Marc Blitzstein – a co-operation with the Bauhaus Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung.
Among the Berlin-based orchestras, the Berliner Philharmoniker will present two concert programmes in a total of five concerts. In addition to “Rituel” by Pierre Boulez and a world premiere by Ondřej Adámek, the orchestra will play works by Igor Stravinsky, Pascal Dusapin, Johannes Brahms and Bernd Alois Zimmermann. The latter’s sarcastic ballet music for King Ubu will be performed by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin with conductor Anja Bihlmaier together with Shostakovich’s 9th Symphony. Meanwhile, Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony will be conducted by Vladimir Jurowski in both Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin’s concert programmes for the festival. The conductor Elim Chan can be heard at the festival with the Staatskapelle Berlin and violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and the Konzerthausorchester and the Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin with Berio, Hosokawa and Mahler. The BigBand der Deutschen Oper Berlin will also celebrate its 20th anniversary and expand our view of Paris as a musical city with music by Michel Legrand, Miles Davis and Jacques Brel among others.
Broadcasts: The opening concert and concerts by the RIAS Kammerchor, the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Big Band of the Deutsche Oper will be broadcast live on the radio. Recordings of ten more concerts and the Quartett der Kritiker discussion will be broadcast on Deutschlandfunk Kultur or radio3 by rbb.
Current press photos are available for download in the press section from the day after each concert.
You will also find all press releases issued in connection with the festival and the press contact details there.
Musikfest Berlin is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
In cooperation with the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation.
Media partners: radio3 vom rbb, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, arte, Dussmann das Kulturkaufhaus, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Monopol – Magazin für Kunst und Leben, Tagesspiegel, Wall and Yorck Kinogruppe.
Press contact
Anna Hinz, Patricia Hofmann, Toni Zahn
presse@berlinerfestspiele.de
+49 30 254 89 223