Seemingly transparent, delicate and almost floating, the music of Peinture propelled Edison Denisov to become one of the leading modernists of what was then the Soviet Union – he formed the USSR’s troika of the non-conformist avantgarde together with Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina, whose works can also be heard at this year’s festival. Vladimir Jurowski and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin present this far too rarely performed orchestral work at Musikfest Berlin, before unveiling a genuine rediscovery with the Second Symphony by Anatol Vieru, who would have turned 100 this year. The Romanian composer wrote the work in West Berlin in 1973. The evening will be rounded off by the choral symphony The Bells, which Sergei Rachmaninoff considered one of his best works. The Rundfunkchor Berlin will sing alongside an ensemble of internationally renowned soloists.

Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin

Berliner Philharmoniker

Cavalleria rusticana: opera in one act, with a libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci. Premiered in Rome at the Teatro Costanzi on May 17, 1890 / Pagliacci: opera in two acts, with a libretto by Ruggero Leoncavallo. Premiered in Milan at the Teatro dal Verme on May 21, 1892.

Cavalleria rusticana / Pagliacci

Opéra Berlioz

Hatred, jealousy and loss: Sergei Rachmaninoff creates a dark world with powerful colours in his one-act opera Francesca da Rimini. Against this backdrop, the heroine’s brief happiness in love shines all the more brightly. Kirill Petrenko presents the impassioned score with acclaimed soloists in a concert performance. Sofia Gubaidulina’s work The Wrath of God is almost apocalyptically dramatic. And here, too, it is about the hatred that – says the composer – “grows in this world with such force and intensity that it inevitably touches me.” The programme opens with one of the most popular works of American orchestral music: Samuel Barber’s touching and intimate Adagio for strings.

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Kirill Petrenko with Rachmaninoff’s “Francesca da Rimini”

Berliner Philharmonie

They have love. They have art. They have each other. But you can’t eat poetry, and philosophy won’t warm a bitter winter.

La Bohème

Regent Theatre Melbourne

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky never had any illusions about the subject he wished to set to music for his fifth opera, Evgeny Onegin by Alexander Pushkin. On several occasions, he shows himself aware of the presence of “very few stage effects, very little action” in a libretto made up of many “lyric scenes” (as he would later subtitle the opera) depicting life in 19th-century Russia, from jam-making in the countryside to a searing farewell dialogue in a palace in Saint Petersburg. What interests him is the powerful “inner drama” so well expressed in Pushkin’s verses—verses that he largely preserves. He is interested in the characters and their human condition: Onegin’s restlessness, Lensky’s “poet’s soul,” and above all the feelings that stir a woman: “I am in love,” he confesses, “with the character of Tatiana.” Anyone familiar with Tchaikovsky’s life can imagine why he felt so close to this melancholic girl, noble in spirit and destined to see all the love overflowing from her remain unfulfilled. It is no coincidence that the “Letter Scene,” in which she is the protagonist, is considered one of the composer’s peaks, capable here of expressing through music a whirlwind of otherwise inexpressible emotions. Yet every detail of this opera is of such beauty that, contrary to expectations, it has become Tchaikovsky’s most frequently performed work since its premiere in 1879.

Galina Cheplakova

Events

Upcoming events

7 - 18 Nov, 2026

La Bohème · Opera Australia

15 - 29 Jun, 2027

Eugene Onegin · Teatro Regio Torino

Past events

Sep 13, 2026

Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin · Berliner Philharmoniker

Oct 3, 2025

Cavalleria rusticana / Pagliacci · Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier

Future and recently performed repertoire

Singer in The Bells by Rachmaninoff

Berliner Philharmoniker

Nedda in Pagliacci by Leoncavallo

Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier

Mimì in La bohème by Puccini

Opera Australia

Tat'jana in Onegin by Tchaikovsky

Teatro Regio Torino

Francesca in Francesca da Rimini by Rachmaninoff

Berliner Philharmoniker

About

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