Composer

The cellist Rostropovich brought something out in Britten. The famously reserved composer responded to the cellist’s ebullience and demonstrative nature across a series of full-blooded works. Discussing whether Britten would write him a concerto, Rostropovich declared “Write for the cello everything that your heart tells you, never mind how difficult it is; my love for you will help me to master every note, even the most impossible ones”. Britten followed these instructions to the letter: difficult, at times, but full of heart, the Symphony for Cello is a bold, brave and sometimes boisterous encounter between cello and orchestra.

Aldeburgh Festival I: Cello Symphony

Snape Maltings

The two closely related powerful women, whose graves now lie right beside each other in London’s Westminster Abbey, were “Of One Blood”, so of the same blood. Both were of course as conceivably far apart as possible during their lives. Elizabeth I ruled for almost half a century as Queen of England and Ireland, while Mary Stuart reigned over Scotland for a quarter of a century. A bitter power struggle between the Protestant hegemony and the Catholic opposition and ultimately the pressure of parliament forced the English Queen to have Mary Stuart executed.

Of One Blood

Max-Joseph-Platz

As spring gathers apace in May, the Komische Oper presents one of the twentieth century’s pivotal masterpieces: Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. A ballet depicting a springtime sacrificial ritual, it’s still one of the modern repertoire’s most imposing works, featuring intricate rhythms and bold melodies. The American conductor Tito Muñoz is also bringing us a fascinating work from across the Atlantic. While Stravinsky was scandalizing early twentieth-century Europe with his expressionist ballets, the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas—much less well known in Germany—was crafting his own orchestral masterpiece, Sensemayá, likewise inspired by ancient dance rituals. In addition, the soprano Josefine Mindus returns to the Komische Oper with Brett Dean’s contemporary Shakespearean meditation And Once I Played Ophelia. And what better way to conclude the evening than with Charles Ives’ existential inquiry, The Unanswered Question?

Spring!

Schiller Theater

For more than two decades, Magdalena Kožená has captivated global audiences as one of the world's leading voices. The New York Times once described her unique presence as "vocally elegant, emotionally direct, and stylistically accomplished." In the intimate atmosphere of the small hall, the versatile singer, accompanied only by Daniele Caminiti's sensitive lute playing, presents a program of Baroque classics such as Purcell's world-famous lament "When I am laid in Earth" and arias by the composer and prima donna Barbara Strozzi.

EPSG:4326

Magdalena Kožená / Song recital

Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

From tranquil fields and springs to turbulent storms and a raging bushfire, this program’s full impact can only be felt live. Copland’s Appalachian Spring radiates airy optimism, Beethoven’s "Pastoral" Symphony captures nature’s beauty and power, and Brett Dean’s Fire Music envelops the hall, depicting destruction and rebirth in surround sound.

Appalachian Spring and Beethoven 6 with Alsop (EARTH | Songs)

Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall

The Music Center at Strathmore

The unique timbre of the viola—rich, dark, and soulful—has made it the instrument of choice for composers seeking to add even more luscious beauty to chamber ensembles. CMS proudly offers a one-of-a-kind program that includes a pair of violas in every work: from Vaughan Williams’s haunting Phantasy Quintet, to violist-composer Brett Dean’s poignant lament, to Mozart’s joyful and uplifting C-major Quintet, one of six he composed that truly put the viola quintet on the chamber music map.

Beethoven, Mozart, and Vaughan Williams

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

Viola Celebration: The unique timbre of the viola — rich, dark, and soulful — has made it the instrument of choice for composers seeking to add even more luscious beauty to chamber ensembles.

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

California Institute of Technology

CMS Lincoln Center

Marko Letonja | Beethoven & Dean

The Bell, Bremen

Back by popular demand for their third appearance on our series, the Belcea Quartet returns with the kind of electrifying intensity that makes time stand still. “Still playing like a young quartet, seizing the music’s energy, shocking us out of our seats” (The Guardian), this ensemble jumpstarts our 132nd Concert Classics Series with a program that pulses with boldness and invention. They trace a line from Mozart’s daring “Dissonance” Quartet to Beethoven’s final opus, where the string quartet is completely reimagined—raw, transcendent, and teetering on the edge of the unknown. Adding a jolt of the here and now is a new work by Australian composer Brett Dean, written for the Belcea Quartet. Music that questions, upends, and electrifies—played with a fire that cannot be extinguished.

Belcea String Quartet

Richardson Auditorium

Viviane Hagner presents

The Grand Ducal Salon Building

The human voice, the most natural instrument, has inspired chamber music for centuries, bringing melodic beauty and the unique musicality of languages. This program celebrates the range and timbre of the voice as the ideal chamber collaborator. Music@Menlo debut artists include soprano Tony Arnold, “a luminary in the world of chamber music and art song” (Huffington Post), Met Opera mezzo-soprano Maire Therese Carmack, and baritone John Moore.

Let’s Add Voices!

Menlo School Campus

"Never change a winning team" – not only a valid motto in sports, but also for one of the most popular concert formats of any festival summer: Mozart Night and Eberbach Monastery. Works by the great master Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart will be performed in the unique atmosphere of the monastery. The concept is as simple as it is proven: serenades, solo concerts, or symphonies in the cloister accompany chamber music performances in various rooms of the monastery complex, with the audience being able to choose where they would like to stroll and listen during the second part of the event. Here, the location and sound complement each other to create a unique concert experience.

Mozart Night

Eberbach Abbey

With Brett Dean and the Affinity Quartet, five musicians will represent Australia in this concert. As a viola virtuoso and highly acclaimed composer, Brett Dean captivated Rheingau audiences as a Focus Artist with numerous concerts in the region since 2018. For this concert project, which can only be heard here, he brings not only the award-winning Affinity Quartet but also – alongside magnificent European chamber music works – his own composition "Hidden Agendas," for which the ensemble was awarded the Special Prize for Best Interpretation of a Contemporary Work at the Salzburg International Mozart Competition. As distant as the Australian continent may seem, on this evening the culture of this country can suddenly be experienced up close.

Brett Dean, Viola Affinity Quartet

Schloss Johannisberg

viola

Hall 1 / Tabakquartier

Join us for an unforgettable evening of contemporary chamber music at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, featuring the works of Jessie Montgomery, Jörg Widmann, and Tan Dun. This special event, part of our tribute to Beethoven's enduring influence on modern composers, showcases pieces of bracing individuality from around the globe, including a performance by the esteemed Juilliard String Quartet.

**Event Details:**
- **Date:** Tuesday, May 13, 2025
- **Time:** 7:30 pm (2 hours, including intermission)
- **Venue:** Alice Tully Hall, 1941 Broadway at W 65th St, New York, NY 10023

**Program Highlights:**
- Jessie Montgomery's "Duo for Violin and Cello" (2015)
- Evgeny Kissin's "Trio for Piano, Violin, and Cello" (2022)
- Brett Dean's "Quartet No. 2 for Strings and Soprano, And once I played Ophelia" (2013)
- Jörg Widmann's "String Quartet No. 8, Study on Beethoven III" (2019/20)
- Tan Dun's "Concerto for String Quartet and Pipa" (1999)

**Featuring Performers:**
- Tony Arnold, Soprano
- Gloria Chien, Piano
- Kristin Lee, Violin
- Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu, Violin
- Paul Neubauer, Viola
- Sihao He, Cello
- Wu Man, Pipa
- Juilliard String Quartet, Ensemble

This concert promises to be a night of profound musical exploration, connecting Beethoven's legacy to the vibrant, diverse voices of today's leading composers. Don't miss your chance to experience the innovative spirit of chamber music in the heart of New York City.

**Tickets:** Available soon. Stay tuned for the sale date and ensure you're part of this musical journey that bridges the past, present, and future.

Montgomery, Widmann, and Tan Dun

Lincoln Center

Subscription Saturday 09 - Real Filharmonía de Galicia - Jessica Cottis

Opera Palace of A Coruña

Nature, its beauty, its endangerment: These are the themes of our Biennale and of this concert, which takes us around the world. It begins with a new work by Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen, whose work is strongly inspired by her native Lapland. Brett Dean’s Fire Music in turn refers to a devastating bushfire in Australia in 2009. Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring takes us on to North America, while Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Chôros No. 10 echoes the birdsong of the Amazon. Marin Alsop makes her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Biennale “Paradise lost?” Marin Alsop conducts images of nature

Berliner Philharmonie

No, barroom jokes about the violin's big sister are not being rehashed here. Instead, the menu at the NDR "Bratschenwirtschaft" contains nothing but exquisite musical ingredients. Viola à la carte, so to speak. The menu is served in the small broadcasting hall by concentrated viola power: the entire vocal group of the NDR Radio Philharmonic Orchestra plus an academic performer. Fritz Stenger-Lutz, also a former violist in the orchestra, will be presenting the program.


Bratschenwirtschaft: A chamber music program just for the viola

NDR Concert Hall | Small Broadcasting Hall

Experience an extraordinary evening of classical music at the "Conciertos Extraordinarios" event, part of the Ibermúsica 2024-2025 season. This special concert will take place on Sunday, 9th February 2025, at 19:30h in the prestigious Auditorio Nacional de Música de Madrid. 

The program promises an eclectic and thrilling lineup of compositions, featuring works by Klengel, Blacher, Williams, Rota, Gershwin, Shearing, Tiziol/Ellington, Dean, Giraud, Salgán, Kaiser-Lindemann, Piazzolla, and McCartney. From the stirring "Hymnus" by Klengel to the timeless "Yesterday" by McCartney, the evening is set to be a memorable journey through classical and contemporary music, including pieces like "Catch me if you can" by Williams and "Fuga y Misterio" by Piazzolla.

Tickets are available for purchase, with prices including a 10% VAT but excluding handling fees, which will be applied at the time of payment. Ibermúsica reserves the right to modify the program if necessary and promises to provide a substitution of equal or superior quality in the event of an artist's inability to perform. The concert will start promptly at 19:30h, and late entry will not be permitted.

This event is a must-attend for classical music enthusiasts and those looking to experience the magic of live performance in one of Madrid's most iconic venues. Don't miss your chance to be part of this exceptional musical evening.

Classical Music Concerts Season Ibermúsica

National Music Auditorium

With Gustav Holst’s atmospheric 1916 orchestral suite The Planets, Daniel Harding embarks on a cosmic musical journey through our solar system. Each of the seven planets has its own musical character, from rugged Mars to mystical Neptune. Holst was greatly inspired by Arnold Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces, which oscillate intriguingly between late Romanticism and Modernism. Completing the programme, Brett Dean’s Komarov’s Fall was commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker in 2006 as a musical “asteroid” to Holst’s Planets.

Daniel Harding conducts Holst’s “Planets”

Music can be like water for us: sometimes it ripples along quietly, but often a tiny impulse is enough to set it in motion. Then high waves appear as if by themselves and suddenly break over us. Or a raging storm develops. Selected musical works that describe such timeless natural phenomena are poetically combined in this concert program. We recognize the fascination with nature in the classical sounds of Joseph Haydn, as well as in the powerful words of a slam poetry text or the noisy, dynamic music of a contemporary composer such as Brett Dean. The concert thus becomes a homage to the existential and changeable element of life that connects us all, in all its beautiful, terrible, inspiring and worthy of preservation manifestations.

2nd Symphony Concerto: Wavelength

Opernplatz

Fathers and their children

St Mary’s Church

Finally making its PUC debut after a pandemic cancellation, the U.K.-based Doric Quartet has been at the helm of a new generation of string quartets, winning countless accolades for its riveting interpretations and inimitable sound. We will have the extraordinary opportunity to get to know these musicians through a new work specifically written for them by Australian composer Brett Dean—a musical exploration of what he describes as the “strangely fascinating and invariably unsettling political climate” of this decade. Yet the Doric Quartet has chosen to complement that work with Beethoven’s optimistic, whimsically exuberant Quartet Op. 18, No. 5, and Schubert’s hauntingly transcendent final quartet — a piece which the Brentano Quartet’s violinist Mark Steinberg once described as ending “with a feeling of acceptance and hope.” In the hands of these exceptional young players, our 130th Concert Classics series will end on a most poignantly uplifting note. 

Doric String Quartet

Alexander Hall

Following his 2022 CSO debut with Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto, British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor returns to Symphony Center with two of the composer’s commanding solo pieces. Completing the program is Liszt’s wild and visionary Sonata in B Minor paired beautifully with a new work by Australian composer Brett Dean. “Grosvenor’s playing is thoughtful and fresh, with flecks of rubato, quizzical pauses and tumbling fast-fingered runs” (The Times of London).

Benjamin Grosvenor

Symphony Center

Former SPCO Artistic Partner Douglas Boyd returns to conduct and collaborate with Principal Oboe Cassie Pilgrim on Richard Strauss’ virtuosic Oboe Concerto. Short Stories-Five Interludes for String Orchestra written by London Philharmonic Orchestra composer-in-residence Brett Dean tells atmospheric, abstract tales that are open to the listener’s interpretation. The program closes with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s beloved Symphony No. 39 which features a grand opening, energetic cascading lines and a mischievous ending.

Cassie Pilgrim Plays Strauss’ Oboe Concerto

Ordway Center for the Performing Arts

CONCERT PROGRAM VI: Chamber Music Now

Today’s Music Concert 2023

Real Collegio

Discover the captivating sounds of contemporary music at Real Collegio! Join us at 12:00 for a groundbreaking concert featuring works by Jörg Widmann, Unsuk Chin, Johnathan Harvey, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, and Brett Dean. Experience the extraordinary talents of Yejin Gil, Adrian Brendel, Joanna MacGregor, and Carter Muller as they bring these innovative compositions to life. Witness the Italian premieres of Birtwistle's enchanting pieces and Dean's poignant "Huntington Eulogy." Don't miss this unique musical journey!

Today’s music Concert

Catherine Larsen-Maguire makes her debut with Ensemble 10:10, not only bringing music she is passionate about by Brett Dean, Andrea Tarrodi, Charlotte Bray and Jessie Montgomery, but also presenting gripping new sounds from Ailís Ní Ríain and Claire Victoria Roberts to carry on the ensemble’s inspiring tradition of commissioning composers from the North West.

Ensemble 10:10

Yoko Ono Lennon Centre

Performances by the Iranian-born harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani leave critics breathless and audiences rapt—his light touch and superhuman agility conjuring interpretations that are “exquisite beyond measure” (Los Angeles Times). Esfahani—a highlight of the 2020–21 Cal Performances at Home streaming series—bristles at many of the conventions of historical performance, and enjoys programming Baroque works alongside contemporary compositions. Here, in addition to music by Bach and Scarlatti, he pairs three of William Byrd’s pioneering and virtuosic 16th-century keyboard works with a new composition by Australian composer Brett Dean. Dean’s ByrdSong Studies, for solo harpsichord with prerecorded voices, celebrates Byrd’s unique and influential style, and the transgressive mass settings Byrd wrote for clandestine Catholic services during the Protestant Reformation.

Mahan Esfahani, harpsichord

University of California, Berkeley

Pianist Jonathan Biss returns for the final installment of Beethoven/5, a multi-year commissioning project between Biss and the SPCO, pairing Ludwig van Beethoven’s five piano concertos with newly commissioned piano concertos. The project’s finale features one of Beethoven’s most beloved piano works, the Emperor Concerto. Writing a musical response to the Beethoven work is Brett Dean, “A voice of fertile imagination, originality and expressive subtlety” (Chicago Tribune). Francesco Lecce-Chong will join the SPCO to conduct this special program in his subscription concert debut.

Beethoven/5: Jonathan Biss Plays Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto

Ted Mann Concert Hall

Composers often look over their shoulders. To memorialize friends who had died in World War I, Ravel took refuge in the airy, graceful forms of the French Baroque. In Pulcinella, Stravinsky melded Classical poise with modern rhythms and harmonies. And in Carlo, Brett Dean elaborates on music of love, death and guilt by the notorious madrigalist (and murderer!), Carlo Gesualdo.

Ravel & Stravinsky

Benaroya Hall

The award-winning ORA Singers celebrates its 10th anniversary year with a choral highlights programme featuring key works from its first decade. Alongside Renaissance polyphony by Tallis, Byrd, Gibbons, Victoria, Palestrina and others sit 10 contemporary pieces from its ground-breaking 100 commissions catalogue, including the world première of its 100th commission – In Manus Tuas by Brett Dean.

ORA Singers; Suzi Digby OBE conductor

Wigmore Hall

“The best trumpeter in the galaxy.” That’s what critics call Swedish Håkan Hardenberger. Over a 40-year career, he has expanded the boundaries of what the trumpet can do – and inspired composers to write new music for the instrument.

Hakan Hardenberger

Aarhus Music Hall

Ola Ince directs a new staging of two dramatic song cycles drawn from Elizabethan sources by Brett Dean. Lotte Betts-Dean and Jennifer France star in this new work of theatre exploring the fates of Mary, Queen of Scots and Shakespeare’s Ophelia, alongside the Doric String Quartet.

Good Sometimes Queen

Royal Opera House

In music of expressive beauty and visceral intensity, Brett Dean makes a heartfelt case for letter writing. A violin concerto in all but name, The Lost Art of Letter Writing draws inspiration from quotations from famous historical letters, from Brahms to Clara Schumann, Van Gogh to a colleague, Hugo Wolf to his brother-in-law and the outlaw Ned Kelly to the Australian government.

London Symphony Orchestra/Maxime Pascal

Barbican Centre

For the final instalment of our 2026/27 New Dimensions series, we journey deep into Beethoven’s creative universe, exploring the influences, ideals and innovations that shaped his world, and how they resonate today.

Composer

Brett Dean

Events

Upcoming events

Oct 24, 2026

ORA Singers; Suzi Digby OBE conductor · Wigmore Hall

Oct 30, 2026

Hakan Hardenberger · Musikhuset Aarhus

23 - 29 Jan, 2027

Good Sometimes Queen · Royal Opera House

Feb 11, 2027

London Symphony Orchestra/Maxime Pascal · Barbican Centre

4 - 5 Mar, 2027

Beethoven Deconstructed · Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Past events

Jun 17, 2026

Aldeburgh Festival I: Cello Symphony · Britten Sinfonia

May 10 - Jun 29, 2026

Of One Blood · Bayerische Staatsoper

Future and recently performed repertoire

Viola in String Quintet No. 1 by Brahms

Rheingau Musik Festival

Viola in Two Songs for Voice, Viola and Piano by Brahms

Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

Viola in String Quartets by Haydn

Rheingau Musik Festival

Viola in String Quartet No. 3 by Dean

Rheingau Musik Festival

About

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