Composer

Memory’s power to free the imagination stands behind countless works of art, with recollections of the four seasons occupying a special status among the most potent of creative catalysts. Louise Alder, acclaimed by The Times as ‘a terrific talent, combining a big lustrous voice with flawless intonation and a keen intelligence’, and Joseph Middleton take a voyage around the cosmos of songs inspired by ever-changing seasonal landscapes, moods and states of mind.

EPSG:4326

Louise Alder soprano; Joseph Middleton piano

Wigmore Hall

From C.P.E. Bach’s counterpoint to the contemporary gestures of Thomas Adès, clarinetist and NWS alum Miles Haskins joins the Fellows to trace the evolution of the Baroque.

Reserve your seats today and enjoy unbeatable savings by subscribing to New World Symphony’s Chamber Music Series. Starting at just $10 a concert, the 2026-27 series features five glorious afternoons with the music of Johannes Brahms, Claude Debussy, Amy Beach, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and more.

The Baroque + Neo-Baroque

New World Center

The title may sound playful, but Antonín Dvořák’s Scherzo capriccioso surprises audiences with its dramatic energy, dance-like vitality, and imaginative orchestral writing – and will receive its first performance by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. It will be followed by a work of particular significance to Chief Conductor Sir Simon Rattle: Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, To the Memory of an Angel, composed after the death of the eighteen-year-old Manon Gropius, daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius. Soloist Isabelle Faust will bring to this profoundly moving work the balance of grief, consolation, and remembrance that makes it so extraordinary. Finally, Franz Schubert’s “Great” Symphony in C major, with its epic scope, points far into the future. It represents the pinnacle of the composer’s symphonic output – and serves as the concert’s monumental conclusion.

Sir Simon Rattle & Isabelle Faust

Munich Residence

«I saw Wozzeck on stage, before the war, and made such an incredible impression that I decided to set it to music immediately». So wrote Alban Berg to his friend and colleague Anton Webern in 1918, at a time when his name was only known in the small circle of Schoenberg's pupils. International fame and affirmation would arrive a few years later and precisely thanks to Wozzeck, an opera inspired by Georg Büchner's novel of the same name, which would soon become a symbolic work of the early 20th century as well as an emblem of expressionist theatre. In Büchner's text, Alban Berg had in fact identified themes particularly dear to expressionist poetics such as nightmare, mental alienation and brutal murder. The opera in three acts and fifteen scenes premiered at the Berlin Staatsoper on 14 December 1925 to great acclaim. Berg conceived the opera as a system of closed forms where each scene of each act refers to a formal structure of the Western instrumental tradition such as the suite, the rhapsody, the march, the passacaglia, to name but a few, revised through a livid and anguished orchestral writing. On the vocal side, the almost spoken chant in Wozzeck's Sprechgesang stands out, renouncing all melodic artifice to emphasise the protagonist's sorrowful humanity.

Wozzeck

Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Theatre

Whether collaborating with others or holding the stage as soloist, Katya Apekisheva’s pianism radiates from the kaleidoscopic range of timbres and expressive nuances she’s able to draw from her instrument. The Russian-born, UK-based pianist, praised by Gramophone as having ‘already achieved artistic greatness’, returns to Wigmore Hall with two works from Vienna, separated in time by 80 years yet both deeply infused with the spirit of Romanticism.

Katya Apekisheva piano

Neuland

Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud

Before starting the tenure as Music Director in the 2026/27 season, Finnish sensation Tarmo Peltokoski performs at the piano with soprano Chen Reiss in a lieder recital. Reiss, praised as “a voice of silver brightness and clarity”, is one of today's most admired interpreters of song.

HK PHIL × HKU MUSE: Tarmo Peltokoski & Chen Reiss

The University of Hong Kong (HKU)

In the second symphony concert, we welcome another outstanding concert soloist: the Swedish soprano Maria Bengtsson, who has performed at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, the Opéra Bastille in Paris, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and the Berlin State Opera, among others, under the baton of Kirill Petrenko, Daniel Barenboim, Simone Young, Philippe Jordan, Vladimir Jurovsky, Riccardo Muti, Sebastian Weigle, and many others. Bengtsson will perform Alban Berg's "Seven Early Songs" with the Symphony Orchestra: the song cycle, which combines texts by forgotten poets such as Paul Hohenberg and Carl Hauptmann with Rilke, Lenau, and Storm, tells the story of a great love.

Symphony Concert 2

University of Music in Detmold

Once again, Teodor Currentzis and his Utopia Orchestra stop at Santa Cecilia for an unmissable concert. It begins with a masterpiece of heartbreaking beauty, Berg  's Violin Concerto , written for the young Manon Gropius, daughter of Alma Mahler, who died at just 18, and therefore dedicated "to the memory of an angel." The second part features Mahler  's Symphony No. 1, "The Titan ," a tale of a hero's coming of age, amidst nature's awakenings, grotesque funeral marches, and a finale that is a cry of triumph.

Utopia Orchestra / Teodor Currentzis

Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

In 1821, the unemployed wigmaker Johann Christian Woyzeck stabs his sweetheart to death in Leipzig. The trial against him drags on for years until, after his sanity has been examined twice, all appeals for clemency are rejected and Woyzeck is sentenced to death. Alban Berg saw Georg Büchner's dramatization of this case at the Vienna Kammerspiele in 1914. In the face of the outbreak of the World War I, the signs of human denaturation, which Berg addresses in his opera without turning them into blatant social criticism, became more evident.

German Oper am Rhein

Alban Berg dedicated his Violin Concerto "to the memory of an angel," namely Alma Mahler's daughter Manon. Together with Teodor Currentzis and the Utopia Orchestra, the exceptional violinist Vilde Frang will bring this angelic song to life. Mahler's Symphony No. 1 is entirely earthly: from natural sounds to parodistic funeral marches to the "titanic" triumph of the nameless hero.

Utopia Orchestra | Currentzis, Frang

Casino Bern

Bergischer Brahms

Wallraf-Richartz Museum

Utopia Orchestra

Victoria Hall in Geneva

Alban Berg dedicated his violin concerto to "the memory of an angel", namely Alma Mahler's daughter Manon. Together with Teodor Currentzis and the Utopia Orchestra, the exceptional violinist Vilde Frang will bring this angelic song to life. Mahler's Symphony No. 1 is entirely earthly: from sounds of nature to parodic funeral marches to the "titanic" triumph of the nameless hero.

Teodor Currentzis – of angels and titans

Tonhalle Zürich

Utopia Orchestra: Teodor Currentzis

Beethoven Hall (Beethovensaal)

Thursday Concert No. 9

Volkshaus Jena

Bach — and beyond. For the grand finale of Lucerne Festival Pulse, Víkingur Ólafsson himself takes the stage to perform the composer’s famous F minor Piano Concerto. Following intermission, Hong Kong-born maestra Elim Chan leads the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in Brahms’s Fourth Symphony — a work that likewise bears Bach’s influence. The finale’s Passacaglia theme, which Brahms transforms with masterly skill, comes from Bach’s earliest surviving cantata, Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich (“For Thee, O Lord, I Long”), BWV 150. Even in Berg’s Violin Concerto — “one of the most Romantic ever,” as Víkingur calls it — a Bach reference appears in the form of a quote from the chorale Es ist genug (“It Is Enough”). For this performance, he has invited his favorite violinist, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, entrusting her with a special role: instead of an encore, she will play the original chorale. The orchestra will sing along, and the audience is invited to join in. “That’s something I’m not sure has ever been done at Lucerne Festival,” Víkingur says. “But the question is, can we really ever have enough of music?” The answer is clear: no — nor of Lucerne Festival Pulse, which will return for its second edition in 2027.

Mahler Chamber Orchestra | Elim Chan | Víkingur Ólafsson | Patricia Kopatchinskaja

KKL Luzern Concert Hall

Two great masters of counterpoint meet in this transcription by Anton Webern of the six-part ricercare from  Das Musikalische Opfer  ( The Musical Offering ) by Johann Sebastian Bach. This transcription, written between November 1934 and January 1935, made a notable contribution to the knowledge and dissemination of the Musical Offering  , which had unfortunately fallen into oblivion, as had other works by Bach. While Mendelssohn's celebrated performance of the  Matthäus Passion  ( St. Matthew Passion ) in Berlin on March 11, 1829,  had sparked the so-called  Bach Renaissance  and, thus, the rediscovery of the great German composer's work,  the Musical Offering  had remained largely forgotten. This may find some justification in the intellectualistic nature of this work, born almost by chance on a theme composed by the monarch Frederick II of Prussia, a flautist and composer of good calibre, at whose court Bach's second son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, had worked as a harpsichordist since 1741. The meeting with the sovereign musician is described in a chronicle published in a Potsdam newspaper on May 11, 1747: "We learn that last Sunday, May 7, the famous Kapellmeister of Leipzig, Herr Bach, arrived with the intention of enjoying and listening to the excellent music of the local royal court. In the evening, around the time when the usual chamber music usually begins in the royal apartments, His Majesty was informed that Herr Bach had arrived in Potsdam and was now in His Majesty's antechamber, where he was awaiting the most gracious permission to listen to the music. His Majesty immediately gave the order to have him enter, and once inside, he went to the so-called  Forte and Piano  and was pleased to play himself, without any preparation, a theme that  Kappellmeister  Bach was to develop into a fugue. This was done so skillfully by the aforementioned  Kappellmeister  that not only His Majesty wanted to demonstrate his most gracious satisfaction, but also everyone else." Those present were amazed. Mr. Bach found the theme given to him so extraordinarily beautiful that he intends to put it on paper and develop it into a regular fugue, and then engrave it on a plate. On Monday, this famous man performed on the organ of the Church of the Holy Spirit, winning general approval from the large audience. In the evening, His Majesty again commissioned him to perform a six-part fugue, which, to His Majesty's delight and everyone's amazement, he executed as skillfully as before.

Bach-Webern/Berg /Mahler

Teatro Politeama Garibaldi

Three works inspired in very different ways by folk music and the mix of different cultures. Perú Negro (Black Peru), by San Diego Symphony’s Composer-in-Residence Jimmy López, was composed in 2012, and in the words of the composer “showcases my native country’s Afro-Peruvian heritage” while celebrating the exuberant fusion of African and Latin elements in the popular music of his native land. Alban Berg’s last completed work, his mystical Violin Concerto, was written in 1935 “to the memory of an angel”. The angel was Manon, the daughter of Alma Mahler (by her second husband) who had died a few months earlier at the age of 18. Berg includes in his concerto a beautiful folk-tune from the Southern Austrian Catholic region of Carinthia, and a haunting old German Protestant hymn-tune, which Bach had used several times. Mendelssohn’s "Scottish" Symphony, like his Hebrides Overture, was inspired by his youthful trip to Scotland where the young Berliner was overwhelmed by the feeling of a haunting and ancient culture. In his symphony we hear echoes of Scottish traditional music for bagpipes, fiddles and harps, the skipping rhythms of Scottish folk dancing, and Romantic impressions of ruined medieval castles and monasteries.

Folk Auras: Thayer Plays Berg Violin Concerto

Jacobs Music Center

The programme comprises Alban Berg: Violin Concerto, To the Memory of an Angel; Gustav Mahler: Symphony No 1 in D major, The Titan

Gasteig HP8

In his drama fragment "Woyzeck," shortly before his untimely death in 1837, Georg Büchner became one of the first playwrights to turn his attention unsparingly to social reality. Inspired by a real court case, he depicts a simple man trying to lead a normal life against all odds—living in poverty, subjected to questionable medical experiments, and humiliated from all sides, he increasingly loses his mind. The play wasn't staged until 1913.

Theater Lübeck

SDSO concertmaster Doosook Kim celebrates 30 years!

"If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music." - Gustav Mahler

Doosook Kim & Mahler 5

Washington Pavilion

‘Wretches like us – we’ll always be cursed, in this world and the next.’ Poor Wozzeck is at the bottom of the heap – an underdog made for kicking, and an easy target for the powerful, the cynical and the cruel. Alban Berg’s devastating opera tells the story of a man pushed to breaking point, in some of the most searching – and searing – music of the 20th century. Wozzeck is one of those operas that simply has to be experienced live, and this one-off concert staging, with Edward Gardner conducting a cast of world-class dramatic singers, should leave you reeling.

Southbank Centre

Alban Berg's Wozzeck tells the story of a tormented creature who, beset by visions and fears, ridiculed and tormented by society, is driven out of existence - until the final catastrophe occurs and the victim also becomes a perpetrator.

Vienna State Opera

Experience stunning performances and sensational stories featuring remarkable women. Anna Sułkowska-Migoń—known in the orchestra world for her sensibility to nuance and detail—opens her SLSO debut with a dynamic overture by fellow Polish musician, Grażyna Bacewicz. Leila Josefowicz displays her formidable talent in Berg’s soul-searching Violin Concerto, written in remembrance of a lost friend. And the orchestra conjures the magic of Scheherazade’s 1,001 tales in Rimsky-Korsakov’s beloved interpretation of the centuries-old Middle Eastern legend.

Scheherazade

Powell Hall

Chaos String Quartet

Teatro La Fenice

Artist Portrait: Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Dreamlike. Poignant. Turbulent. Two of Debussy's restless, impressionistic Nocturnes, Berg's anguished Violin Concerto; plus Rachmaninoff's sweeping early symphony, full of youthful energy.

Debussy, Berg and Rachmaninoff

Barbican Centre

Debussy’s Nocturnes feature dazzling soundscapes, from the drifting clouds of Nuages to the dazzling light effects of Fêtes.

London Symphony Orchestra/Gianandrea Noseda

Violist Lawrence Power returns to perform Cassandra Miller’s acclaimed Viola Concerto, a piece heralded on its 2022 premiere as an instant classic. Miller weaves her personal attachments into music, creating a work that is delicate, emotionally charged, and deeply human.

BBC Philharmonic - Romeo & Juliet

The Bridgewater Hall

Romeo & Juliet

A pianist of profound emotional sensitivity, Mao Fujita is also a savvy programmer. He illustrates the youthful genius of Beethoven and Brahms in their first piano sonatas, the virtuosity of the variation form in contrasting sets by Mendelssohn and Berg, and the originality of Wagner in the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, perhaps the very essence of Romanticism.

Mao Fujita in Recital

Severance Music Center

Alban Berg revolutionised the opera tradition in 1925 with a gripping story that combines drama, murder and social study. The folk opera stars Daniel Schmutzhard (Wozzeck) and Annette Dasch (Marie), together with chief conductor Vassilis Christopoulos on the podium of the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra, explore the expressive sound world of Berg’s masterpiece. After his successful Austrian debut in Graz with Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser and stints in Vienna and Salzburg, director Evgeny Titov returns to Graz Opera with one of the most important operas of the 20th century.

Oper Graz

Following her hauntingly beautiful music theater performance in 2024’s A Song by Mahler, Jennifer Johnson Cano brings her “voluminous voice with remarkable agility” (Washington Post) back to PCMS. This performance with her husband, acclaimed collaborative pianist Christopher Cano, and St. Louis Symphony Principal Violist Beth Guterman Chu, features solo pieces, duos, and trios that highlight the eloquence and depth of the modern mid-range.

Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo Beth Guterman Chu, viola Christopher Cano, piano

 Benjamin Franklin Hall

Subscription Concert

Kurpark Bad Oeynhausen

Konzerthalle, Bad Salzuflen

Detmold University of Music

Stadthalle Gütersloh

Schützenhof city park

Stadtpark Schützenhof Hangül GmbH

Stadttheater Lippstadt

Minden City Theater

Paderhalle Paderborn

Tchaikovsky wrote his Fourth Symphony during a period of great personal turmoil, and this is evident in the music, which is permeated with the composer's inner struggle to find meaning and peace amidst chaos. The work opens with a grand and somber theme, symbolizing fate, which plays a central role throughout the symphony. Some call the work Tchaikovsky's Symphony of Fate.

Tchaikovsky & Berg

Aalborg Central Waterfront

A most heart-stirring concert awaits you, portraying vastly different approaches to grief and memory. In the “Eroica,” grief turns into fury, when the original dedicatee, Napoleon, crowns himself emperor and the enraged Beethoven now celebrates only “the memory of a great man.” From two bolts-out-of-the-blue chords to exhilarating finale, the Symphony’s majesty and drama, extraordinary scope, and bold harmonies all proclaim a new era in music. Turning his grief into sorrow, Berg inscribes his heartbreaking Concerto, sensitively performed by our concertmaster, “To the memory of an angel”—a vivacious 18-year-old girl struck down by polio. He paints her portrait in the first movement, and, in the emotional heart of the Concerto, incorporates Bach’s chorale, “It is enough; Lord, if it pleases you/Unshackle me.”

Beethoven’s Eroica

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

Willamette University

Through a lens on five generations of the composer’s own family, from his great grandmother to his daughter, it tells a story of survival. From war, occupation and famine, The Relatives offers a unique perspective on a multi-ethnic Crimea that has maintained her humanity and sense of humour against all the odds.

The Relatives (Try Out)

CBSO Centre

Robert Schumann is in love! Newly married to Clara Wieck, he finds that ideas for his First Symphony flow effortlessly. The “Spring Symphony” reflects the vibrant optimism of the time, capturing his sense of a new beginning. In contrast, Alban Berg’s moving Violin Concerto stands as a musical memorial to Manon Gropius, who died tragically young. Gil Shaham performs the solo part. The evening begins with Antonín Dvořák’s tone poem The Wood Dove, which tells a story of death and guilt. Conductor Petr Popelka, making his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Petr Popelka debuts with Schumann’s “Spring Symphony”

Berliner Philharmoniker

Beethoven's piano sonatas are one of the absolute monuments, not only in piano literature, but in classical music as a whole. At the concert in Mogens Dahl Concert Hall, Fujita performs Beethoven's first piano sonata, where he still stands on the shoulders of Haydn and Mozart, but heralds what is to come.

Mao Fujita

Mogens Dahl Koncertsal

Special Student Project: 20th and 21st Century Chamber Concertos: A Centennial Perspective

Manhattan School of Music

The tragic drama of an oppressed person from society’s lower classes: Wozzeck, a hardworking but penniless soldier, is increasingly losing control of his life and his mind. He is seized by increasingly violent psychotic episodes, until in a delusion, he stabs and kills his girlfriend Marie.

Bebelplatz

Soprano Louise Alder returns to Garsington Opera for a recital with renowned pianist Joseph Middleton. Joseph is widely regarded as one of the most exceptional pianists of his generation and is renowned for his song accompaniment and he collaborates with many of the world’s foremost singers, being described by the New York Times as “the perfect accompanist”. Louise was last on the Garsington stage as Pamina Die Zauberflöte in 2018 and has since gone on to delight audiences worldwide, most recently as Countess Almaviva Le nozze di Figaro at Glyndebourne this summer. Louise sings at the last night of the BBC Proms this summer and makes her Metropolitan Opera debut in November.

Louise Alder & Joseph Middleton

Wormsley

Joined by the phenomenal soprano Lucy Crowe, we journey across centuries and styles. From Handel and Haydn’s bright elegance to the vivid, kaleidoscopic textures of Messiaen, and from Berg’s exquisite The Nightingale to Gershwin’s jazz-tinged lyricism, come for an inspiring and beautiful range of music. Soar through centuries of music with one of the country’s most exciting orchestras and finest of singers.

Fantasia Orchestra with Lucy Crowe: Birdsong

Smith Square Hall

In March 1913, Arnold Schönberg conducted a musical program at the Vienna Musikverein, which was later called the “scandal concert.” The program included his Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9, a wall-breaker in the prevailing musical order. In addition, Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlied and Alban Berg’s songs to poems written on landscape postcards by the Bohemian poet Peter Altenberg were heard. A general uproar broke out during the Altenberg songs, and supporters and opponents of the modernists clashed.

Scandal concert

Espoo Cultural Centre

Experience an unforgettable lunchtime concert of chamber music as the Kyan Quartet returns to Smith Square Hall with a bold and thought-provoking programme. The concert opens with Alban Berg’s gripping String Quartet No. 3—an intense, single-movement work that captures the expressive extremes of early 20th-century modernism. Full of sudden contrasts, fleeting lyricism, and structural intricacy, Berg’s quartet is a cornerstone of the Second Viennese School, offering a richly emotional and intellectually compelling listening experience.

Kyan Quartet

Hailed by The Strad for playing with “tremendous heart and beauty,” the Ivalas Quartet has been changing the face of classical music since its inception in 2017 with a mission to enrich the classical music world by spotlighting past and present BIPOC composers alongside the standard repertory. Among the many composers whose works they have championed are Eleanor Alberga, Gabriela Lena Frank, Osvaldo Golijov, Jessie Montgomery, Angélica Negrón, Iván Enrique Rodríguez, Carlos Simon, Alvin Singleton, and George Walker. They premiered Derrick Skye’s Deliverance through a commission from Caramoor in 2024.

Ivalas Quartet

High School of Fashion Industries

Experience the sublime beauty of Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem, lovingly written in memory of the French composer’s father. Soprano Sarah Dufresne and baritone Xiaomeng Zhang join forces with the Vancouver Chamber Choir to present this monumental choral work of eternal serenity. Maestro Tausk leads the orchestra in Johannes Brahms’ Song of Destiny and Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, dedicated by the composer to “the memory of an angel” and masterfully interpreted by violinist Maria Milstein.

Fauré’s Requiem

Orpheum

Since 2010, chamber music ensembles of the Staatskapelle have been performing at the Bode Museum, a jewel of Berlin's museum landscape. Matinee concerts lasting just over an hour in the Gobelin Hall, with diverse programs that include music from the Baroque and Classical periods as well as works from the Romantic and Modern periods, can easily lead into further hours in the museum—for example, with a guided tour of the exhibition and the "Artwork of the Day," a private tour, or a culinary finale in the stylish museum café.

Museum Concert I

UNESCO Weltkulturerbe Museumsinsel

125 years Wiener Symphoniker

Vienna Music Society

In a society that is numb, exploitative, and characterized by clear hierarchies, the soldier Wozzeck is a powerless outsider: living in the most humble and precarious circumstances, he finds himself at the very bottom of the social fabric. Someone like him has "only one corner of the world": his love for Marie and their illegitimate child. Oppressed by his captain and abused by a doctor for inhumane experiments, he is increasingly plagued by delusions. When Marie begins an affair with the drum major, Wozzeck loses his last grip. The hopelessness of his existence ultimately drives him to commit a violent act himself.

Staatstheater Braunschweig

Discover the sublime in Messiaen’s transcendent L’Ascension. Stefan Jackiw takes on Berg’s moving Violin Concerto, an homage to innocence lost, while Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration provides a powerful exploration of life’s ultimate journey. Music Director Jun Märkl conducts this concert of reflective depth and stirring melodies.  

Transformations of Spirit: Jackiw plays Berg

Hilbert Circle Theatre

Hans Graf brings “a brave new world of music-making” (The Straits Times) to Schubert’s romantic Symphony No. 8, the great “Unfinished” masterwork that packs a lifetime of hope, suffering, and joy into just two perfect movements. “Spellbinding soloist” Renaud Capuçon performs Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto—a mysterious, autumnal farewell “to the memory of an angel.”

Schubert’s “Unfinished” Capuçon plays Berg

Kennedy Center

"Not Bach, he should be called the sea!" Ludwig van Beethoven once said with reference to Johann Sebastian Bach. And the influence this had on later generations is truly enormous. In 1911, Arnold Schoenberg peppered his "Harmonielehre" with examples from the Thomaskantor's work. Schoenberg's student Anton Webern, in turn, arranged the "Ricercar" from Bach's "Musical Offering" for orchestra in 1935. His plan: to make not only all six parts audible, but also the components of the fugue subject through sophisticated instrumentation. Alban Berg, Schoenberg's second student, went a step further. His Violin Concerto, also composed in 1935, is contemporary music par excellence. But the melody to which the entire work leads is the Bach chorale "Es ist genug". It forms the moving conclusion of a concerto dedicated to Manon Gropius, Alma Mahler's daughter, who died young.

2nd Symphony Concert

Theater Nordhausen

House of Art

One of the most revered artists of his generation, Stephen Kovacevich performs piano sonatas by Beethoven, Schubert, and Berg. 

Stephen Kovacevich, piano

The Royal Conservatory of Music

Mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts joins Scottish conductor Donald Runnicles and the San Francisco Symphony for Berg’s Seven Early Songs. Although Berg was in his early 20s at the time and a devoted disciple of Schoenberg, these surging and sumptuous songs reveal his late-Romantic leanings, too. Occasional touches of Strauss, Mahler, Brahms, Debussy, and Wagner combine with Berg’s rigorous originality in an appealing package. Mahler understood the value of his First Symphony right away, confessing that conducting it “sent shivers down my spine.” Mahler ensures all our senses will be fully engaged from the opening movement, a deliciously drawn-out meditation on D major that deploys harmonics in the strings to create its cosmic drone—an effect he described as “a shimmering and glimmering of the air.” You can best believe it’s still bejeweled.

Runnicles Conducts Mahler 1

Davies Symphony Hall

Based on Georg Büchner’s play Woyzeck, Berg’s opera is a harrowing and brilliant critique of the cycles of suffering imposed by systems of power, laced with moments of wry humor that expose the absurdity of human folly. It reveals how decisions driven by war, greed, and disregard for human lives cascade downward, devastating the less fortunate while reflecting on universal struggles that resonate across time. Berg’s expressionist opera is acknowledged as the most important of the early 20th century.

West Edge Opera

Pentecost Festival: Chamber Concert

Baden-Baden

A look into the "abyss of man": 100 years after the premiere, Alan Gilbert conducts the opera "Wozzeck" by Alban Berg at the Hamburg International Music Festival. On May 23 and 25 in the Elbphilharmonie.

IMF: Alan Gilbert conducts Alban Berg's "Wozzeck"

Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

Igor Stravinsky’s wild Russian folk-fable of a ballet The Firebird, retains the power to shock and enthrall into its second century. Kicking off the program is the 2002 orchestral piece Chorale—based on the familiar Bach chorale “Es ist genug”—from Esa-Pekka Salonen’s longtime friend Magnus Lindberg. Alban Berg’s last completed score and probably his most famous, the Violin Concerto functions both as an elegy for a surrogate daughter who died too soon, and as a requiem for himself.

Salonen Conducts The Firebird

"Man is an abyss, it makes you dizzy when you look down."
With incomparably stirring, moving music, Alban Berg focuses on the inner life of a person who is neither a hero, nor a privileged person, nor a chosen one: the penniless soldier Wozzeck could hardly be worse off. Derided, mistreated and abused by society, he barely has enough to feed Marie and their illegitimate child. The progressive deterioration of his physical and mental health leads to catastrophe.

Staatstheater Darmstadt

In 2025, the Dresdner Musikfestspiele brings the NHK Symphony Orchestra, renowned throughout the world as one of Asia’s leading orchestras, to Dresden for the first time, where it gives two performances. Under the baton of its chief conductor Fabio Luisi, the former general music director of the State Opera of Saxony in Dresden, it will join forces with the outstanding Japanese violinist Akiko Suwanai to interpret Alban Berg’s astoundingly beautiful and moving Violin Concerto »Dem Andenken eines Engels« (To the Memory of an Angel) on the evening before the Festival’s official opening night.

Suwanai – NHK Symphony Orchestra - Luisi

Frauenkirche Dresden

Simone Young

This landmark of 20th-century music is brought to life in a new production from the extraordinary imagination of South African artist William Kentridge, offering audiences an immersive, interdisciplinary experience described as “a breathtaking masterpiece... a work of art across many genres."

Canadian Opera Company

Katherine Ivie, voice - Second Year Master's Recital

San Francisco Conservatory of Music

It is exactly 100 years since the birth of Pierre Boulez, the influential, groundbreaking composer and conductor who was closely associated with the Staatskapelle Berlin. He often conducted concerts by the orchestra, which appointed him honorary conductor in 2005 on the occasion of his 80th birthday. This year's FESTTAGE concert will feature music that is directly associated with Boulez, music by two composers with whom he had a special relationship, Alban Berg and Gustav Mahler. There will also be a composition by Boulez himself, the Notations for large orchestra, with which the Staatskapelle is very familiar thanks to repeated performances in the past.

Festive Concert Staatskapelle Berlin

Berliner Philharmonie

Joint Student Recital: Rafaela Doser & Nazmee Kamal

Carnegie Mellon University

In a proven and moving mixture of words, images and sound, musicians from the orchestra remember former employees of the opera who were expelled by the National Socialists from 1933 onwards. Between the movements, Margarita Broich reads from personal documents of Paul Feher (tenor), Theo Front (assistant director), Berthold Goldschmidt (musical advisor) and Hilde Reiss (chorus singer).

Chamber Music V: Against forgetfulness

Deutsche Oper Berlin

One of Britain’s preeminent 21st-century string quartets returns to Carnegie Hall’s most intimate stage. Renowned for its Haydn cycle, the Doric String Quartet opens the performance with one of the composer’s six Op. 20 quartets. The enormity of these early works’ influence on music is often noted, and in No. 4—the most popular of the set—their inexhaustible vibrancy remains equally striking. Berg’s passionate and visceral Lyric Suite follows, promising a journey of stunning contrast. The concert ends with the bittersweet potency of Beethoven’s final complete opus: his String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135.

Doric String Quartet

Carnegie Hall

The Leonkoro Quartet, an ensemble that has swiftly risen to prominence since its inception in Berlin in 2019, is set to perform as part of the University of Chicago's 2024/25 Classic Concert Series. Named after the Esperanto word for lionheart, the quartet features the talents of string players Jonathan and Lukas Schwarz, Amelie Wallner, and Mayu Konoe. Their remarkable ascent in the classical music world is underscored by their victory at the prestigious Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition and their selection for the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists program. 

Renowned for their perfectly unanimous, colorful, and original performances, the Leonkoro Quartet has captivated audiences across Europe's premier venues and festivals. Their blend of youthful exuberance and mature musical insight distinguishes them as a standout ensemble of their generation. The program for their performance includes Joseph Haydn's Quartet in F Major, Op. 50, No. 5 The Dream, Alban Berg's Lyric Suite, and Felix Mendelssohn's Quartet in e minor, Op. 44, No. 2. This carefully curated selection showcases the quartet's versatility and deep understanding of both classical and contemporary repertoires, promising an evening of profound musical exploration and exceptional artistry.

Leonkoro Quartet

Logan Center

“Let us fly without rest or pause into the land of my dreams…” For Claude Debussy, the poetry of Baudelaire conjured new and ravishing colours, just waiting to be transformed into sound. Over in 1890s Vienna, meanwhile, those same verses unlocked dark passions and wild (sometimes dangerous) imaginings – a glorious, iridescent turmoil into which Alban Berg dived headlong.

Wigglesworth conducts Debussy and Berg

Leonkoro Quartet is comprised of string-players Jonathan and Lukas Schwarz, Amelie Wallner, and Mayu Konoe. Their swift rise in classical music is highlighted by their victory at the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition and their selection for the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists program. Capturing hearts in Europe's premier venues and festivals, Leonkoro's blend of youthful exuberance and mature musical insight makes them a standout ensemble of their generation.

University of Utah

Founded in Berlin in 2019, Leonkoro Quartet solidified its place among celebrated chamber music ensembles, sweeping competitions across Europe in 2022. We are fortunate to witness their exceptional artistry firsthand as the CMH Emerging Young Ensemble of the 2024-2025 Season — in particular Alban Berg’s lovely Lyric Suite, and Ravel’s String Quartet on his 150th birthday!

Alice Pratt Brown Hall

The Leonkoro Quartet, founded in Berlin in 2019, is framed by brothers Jonathan and Lukas Schwarz on first violin and cello, while the middle voices are formed by Amelie Wallner on second violin and Mayu Konoe on viola. In Esperanto, Leonkoro means Lionheart, alluding to a children’s book about two brothers, a book that juxtaposes the grave reality of death with a large and heartfelt yearning for comfort and solace – a sentiment that string quartet repertoire addresses in several instances.

Leonkoro String Quartet (SF debut)

Taube Koret Campus for Jewish Life

War Memorial and Performing Arts Center

Lesher Center for the Arts

Chamber Music in the Brahms-Saal

### Event Description: BSO: Heyward Conducts Beethoven’s Fifth

**Event Title:** BSO: Heyward Conducts Beethoven’s Fifth

**Date and Time:** Saturday, March 8, 2025, at 8:00 PM

**Location:** The Music Center at Strathmore

**Event Overview:**
Join the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for an evening of profound musical exploration as Jonathon Heyward conducts Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. This iconic piece, known for its dramatic journey from darkness to light, will be performed alongside other significant works, creating a rich tapestry of sound and emotion.

**Program:**
- **BERG:** Violin Concerto
- **MARTINŮ:** Memorial to Lidice
- **BEETHOVEN:** Symphony No. 5

**Featured Artists:**
- **Conductor:** Jonathon Heyward
- **Violinist:** Augustin Hadelich

**Event Highlights:**
- **Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony:** A powerful narrative of fate and faith, this symphony is a cornerstone of classical music, renowned for its emotional depth and dramatic structure.
- **Berg’s Violin Concerto:** A hallmark of the violin repertoire, this concerto offers a mysterious, autumnal sound world, masterfully interpreted by virtuoso Augustin Hadelich.
- **Martinů’s Memorial to Lidice:** A poignant tribute to the victims of a Nazi massacre, this piece intertwines elements of Beethoven’s Fifth and the St. Wenceslas Chorale, serving as both a tender hymn and a fervent prayer.

**Additional Information:**
- **Tickets:** Available for purchase on the BSO website.
- **Note:** This event is not presented by Strathmore.
- **Accreditation:** Strathmore is Global Biorisk Advisory Council STAR accredited.

**Plan Your Visit:**
For more details on health, safety, and security measures, as well as directions, parking, and dining options, please visit the Strathmore website.

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Experience an unforgettable night of classical music that delves into the depths of human emotion and historical reflection. Secure your tickets now and be part of this extraordinary performance.

Composer

Alban Berg

Events

Upcoming events

Nov 3, 2026

Jonathan Leibovitz, clarinet · Kaufman Music Center

Nov 5, 2026

Phil Awake: Angels · Copenhagen Phil

Nov 6, 2026

Jean-Guihen Queyras, cello, with Alexandre Tharaud, piano · The Royal Conservatory of Music

8 - 22 Nov, 2026

Wozzeck · La Monnaie / De Munt

18 - 26 Nov, 2026

Asian tour with Sir Simon Rattle · Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

Past events

Oct 20, 2026

Louise Alder soprano; Joseph Middleton piano · Wigmore Hall

Oct 18, 2026

The Baroque + Neo-Baroque · New World Symphony

About

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