Beethoven’s symphony features birdsong melodies he transcribed, while the great 20th-century Finnish composer Rautavaara’s work is a “Concerto for Birds and Orchestra”, with the recorded sounds of curlews, shore larks, whooper swans and others the soloists running throughout. Mayrhofer’s Recycling Concerto was written for the virtuosic percussionist Vivi Vassileva. Together they have collected and tuned an enormous battery of percussion from repurposed rubbish, which Vassileva makes full use of over the course of this powerful and thought-provoking work.

EPSG:4326

Recycling Concerto

Barbican Centre

Saffron Hall

Beethoven’s symphony features birdsong melodies he transcribed, while the great 20th-century Finnish composer Rautavaara’s work is a 'Concerto for Birds and Orchestra', with the recorded sounds of curlews, shore larks, whooper swans and others the soloists running throughout.

Britten Sinfonia: Recycling Concerto

Live Vasileva

Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

Can discarded objects actually be made to sound? The renowned composer Gregor A. Mayrhofer explores this question in his Recycling Concerto. He wrote it for the virtuoso and energetic percussionist Vivi Vassileva, who received the Leonard Bernstein Award at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in 2023.

Ensemble reflector / Vivi Vassileva / Vimbayi Kaziboni

Composer and conductor Gregor A. Mayrhofer has taken a musical approach to the increasing environmental destruction caused by the littering of the planet. He composed a concerto for recycled percussion and orchestra: the "Recycling Concerto".

JUNGES! Recycling Concert

Staatstheater Braunschweig

Gentle drizzling, vigorous splashing, thunderous drumming – rain comes in many guises. Hanns Eisler’s 1941 film score Fourteen Ways to Describe Rain was one of his best chamber music works. Today, in the face of accelerating climate change, weather patterns take on a whole new urgency. Inspired by Eisler, Gregor Mayrhofer explores these phenomena in his composition Tipping Points. Fourteen ways to describe climate change, a commissioned work which will be premiered as part of our Biennale, explores pivotal moments for our climate. The physicist and science journalist Harald Lesch will host this dialogue concert.

“Tipping Points. Fourteen ways to describe climate change”

Berliner Philharmonie

Little Rock? Hollywood! The first part of the evening takes us into the dazzling musical world of the dream factory. Master arranger Robert Russel Bennett titled his symphonically brilliant medley of immortal melodies by "the great George" Gershwin in Hollywood . This is followed by music by the living Hollywood legend Danny Elfman, composer of the soundtracks to The Simpsons, Batman, Spider-Man and countless others. After 2019, Vivi Vassileva, a German star percussionist with Bulgarian roots who electrifies audiences around the world, will be joining us as the soloist in his brand new percussion concert. Little Rock? Not only was Hilary Clinton born in the capital of the US state of Arkansas, but also a great woman in American music history sixty years earlier: Florence Price, the first African-American composer to make her voice heard. Her masterful fourth and final symphony from 1945 was not played for the first time until 2018. It is conducted by Gregor Mayrhofer, who has previously assisted Simon Rattle with the Berlin Philharmonic and worked with soloists such as Khatia Buniatishvili and Daniil Trifonov.

Gregor A. Mayrhofer

Events

Past events

12 - 13 Mar, 2026

Recycling Concerto · Britten Sinfonia

Mar 12, 2026

Britten Sinfonia: Recycling Concerto · Barbican Centre

Future and recently performed repertoire

Conductor in Quatuor pour la fin du temps by Messiaen

Berliner Philharmoniker

Conductor in Symphony No. 4 in D minor by Price

Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra

Conductor in Drum Concerto by Elfman

Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra

Conductor in Gershwin in Hollywood by Gershwin

Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra

Conductor in Nuages gris by Liszt

Berliner Philharmoniker

Conductor in Vierzehn Arten den Regen zu beschreiben by Eisler

Berliner Philharmoniker

About

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