Name: Christmas Oratorio
Start: 2025-12-22T20:00:00
Location: Berliner Philharmonie

The Berliner Symphoniker has curated an eclectic mix of symphonic events for 2025, each offering a unique journey through music and emotion. From Beethoven's intense overtures to festive holiday performances, the calendar is filled with concerts featuring timeless classics and contemporary narratives. Notable performances include Takuma Ishii's piano mastery, synergies between youth and seasoned musicians, and thematic concerts that traverse the world of orchestral storytelling. Whether it's the vibrant 'New Year's Eve Concerts' or the serene 'Luminous Night,' there's something for every music lover in Berlin this year.

Symphonic Journeys in Berlin: A Year of Musical Narratives

Daniel Kirchmann

Berliner Symphoniker

Camerata Vocale Berlin

It couldn't be more Christmassy! The anticipation of the upcoming holidays is audible in this concert full of Christmas tunes, sleigh rides, and Christmas wishes. The focus is on the music for Erich Wolfgang Korngold's fairytale ballet "The Snowman": Colombine and her admirer Pierrot attempt to escape from the clutches of Uncle Pantaloon – and succeed with the help of a snowman. The story is narrated. Finally, things get particularly festive with Otto Nicolai's Christmas Overture, featuring ever-changing variations of the chorale "Vom Himmel hoch."

Christmas & Fairy Tales

Berliner Philharmonie

Christmas Oratorio

Before the champagne corks pop on New Year's Eve, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra will be banging the drums one last time! And not only that. With highlights from films, musicals, and operettas, they ignite a musical fireworks display that is in no way inferior to the sparkling spectacle at midnight. Of course, there will also be some Strauss classics in three-quarter time! Together with singer Nadja Mchantaf, conductor and presenter Ulrich Kern will provide the necessary momentum to start the new year in a good mood.

New Year's Eve concerts 2025

The fourth symphony concert warms the cold season with two fiery, virtuosic concert fantasies for violin: soloist Maria Solozobova plays Camille Saint-Saëns' Introduction et Rondo capriccioso and Pablo de Sarasate's spirited Carmen Fantasy. Then it's a classical turn with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's cheerful Piano Concerto No. 23, which surprised audiences at the time of its composition in 1786 with its use of clarinets instead of oboes. Ludwig van Beethoven's fourth symphony, which is heard relatively rarely compared to his other symphonies, sounds equally cheerful, bright, and friendly.

Virtuoso & Classical

Childhood memories of the music of the Sinti and Roma in his homeland inspired Zoltán Kodály's "Dances from Galánta," while Melanie Bonis's Suite en forme de valses exudes French lightness and elegance. This dance-like quality contrasts with the suspenseful music of Paul Dukas, who set Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's ballad of the same name to music in his "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."

Magic & Dancing

In Francis Poulenc's "Peasant Concerto" from 1928, the harpsichord, which had disappeared since Mozart's time, experiences a magnificent resurrection. With its melodic charm and fragrant grace, the piece seems to dream itself back to the French Rococo era – albeit with gentle irony. Charles Gounod's "Funeral March for a Marionette" – a piano sonata that the composer later transcribed for orchestra – must have appealed to Alfred Hitchcock greatly: It became the theme song for the series "Hitchcock Presents." As thrilling as a crime thriller, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's tone poem about "Scheherazade," who used fairy tales to keep her husband, King Shahryar, from killing her, is as captivating as a Arabian Nights.

Christmas Oratorio

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