The 12 Cellists of the Berliner Philharmoniker are a prominent institution on the international music scene – and have been now for 40 years! The ensemble is celebrating its birthday with a tour through its successful history with works by Julius Klengel, Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Astor Piazzolla and Ennio Morricone. The evening’s guest artist is the soprano Annette Dasch.
More than most other conductors of our time, Gustavo Dudamel knows how to inspire orchestral musicians and audiences with his energy. Together with the Berliner Philharmoniker, he devotes himself in this concert to Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra – a work of musically powerful optimism. The soloist in Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto is Leonidas Kavakos.
Many music lovers and musicologists consider Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah to be the most important of the Romantic period, yet the work is comparatively rarely heard. In this recording from May 2009 you have the opportunity to experience it in a concert with the Berliner Philharmoniker, an exclusive group of soloists and conductor Seiji Ozawa.
Claudio Abbado conducts a concert full of sensitivity, including Robert Schumann’s Second Symphony. He is joined by two top-class soloists in works by Alban Berg: mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter and violinist Isabelle Faust.
For many, it is the operatic event of the season: Bizet’s Carmen at the Salzburg Easter Festival with the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, with Magdalena Kožená and Jonas Kaufmann in the leading roles. After the festival, the musicians present their interpretation to audiences in both the Philharmonie in Berlin and in the Digital Concert Hall.
Sir Simon Rattle was in no doubt: the performance of the St Matthew Passion which he realised together with Berliner Philharmoniker and American star-director Peter Sellars in 2010 was for him “the single most important thing we ever did here”. By popular demand, a recording has now been released on double DVD and Blu-Ray.