Name: Good Friday Concert
Start: 2026-04-03T20:00:00
Location: Berliner Philharmonie

Berlin's music scene is set to flourish with a captivating series of events by Staatskapelle Berlin. From evocative symphonies to intimate chamber ensembles, these concerts offer a musical journey that spans centuries and styles. Highlights include the exploration of radio-era classics, chamber music at the Bode Museum, fantastical themes inspired by Offenbach, and the emotional depth of Brahms' German Requiem. With renowned artists and evocative venues, this series promises to engage and inspire audiences both in Berlin and beyond.

A Harmonious Journey: Staatskapelle Berlin's Diverse Musical Offerings

The Staatskapelle Berlin invites you on a captivating musical journey through time, exploring the rich tapestry of chamber and orchestral music. From the enchanting notes of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 to the intricate chamber works of the Romantic period, this series of events offers a deep dive into the art of music. With performances set in iconic venues across Europe, including Berlin State Opera and Bebelplatz, this season promises a unique blend of history, culture, and artistic brilliance.

A Journey Through Time: Exploring the Musical Landscape with Staatskapelle Berlin

Christian Thielemann

Samuel Hasselhorn

Nikola Hillebrand

Staatskapelle Berlin

Prussia's Court Music, the chamber orchestra series of the Staatskapelle Berlin, has been in existence for over two decades. It focuses on music from the 17th and 18th centuries, not least composers and works that are particularly connected to the history of the Staatsoper and the Staatskapelle. This season's concerts will focus – in addition to the new production of The Abduction from the Seraglio – on the music of early and middle Mozart, who, both in his hometown of Salzburg and on his travels through Europe, keenly embraced the musical traditions of his time and used them productively in his own work. In addition, the renowned Italian gambist and ensemble leader Vittorio Ghielmi will be a guest at Prussia's Court Music for a weekend, with a program featuring music by the Italian Baroque composer Agostino Steffani.

Prussia's Court Music II

Berlin State Opera

Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 is a monumental work in the repertoire, featuring vocal solos and chorus in the tradition of Beethoven's Ninth. With its five-movement structure and the numerous programmatic indications Mahler incorporated into his music, this Second Symphony is an opus of exceptional sophistication, supported by an exceptionally large performing apparatus. The world and atmosphere of the "Wunderhorn" songs are just as present as the sonic surges characteristic of his symphonic style, culminating in a vision of the "Resurrection," initially mysterious and then brilliant, conveyed through both the words and the music.

Symphony Concert V

Bebelplatz

"The Fantastic" is the theme of this season's chamber concerts in the Apollosaal, based on the season's first opera premiere, Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann . Musicians of the Staatskapelle Berlin have developed programs that approach this idea and concept, which play a key role in music, in a variety of ways. Ranging from the Baroque to the present day, with a special focus on the Romantic period, "The Fantastic" will be explored with a variety of chamber music works in diverse ensembles.

Chamber Concert V

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 VI

UNESCO Weltkulturerbe Museumsinsel

"Since Bach's Mass in B minor and Beethoven's Missa solemnis , nothing has been written that can compare with Brahms' German Requiem in this field ," according to the influential music writer Eduard Hanslick. Transcending all denominational boundaries, Brahms created a work that most impressively expresses feelings of suffering and grief, consolation and hope, through a carefully considered selection of texts and with particular sensitivity in the way they are set. Music for Good Friday that reflects this day and simultaneously points beyond it.

Good Friday Concert

Berliner Philharmonie

Museum Concert VII

Richard Strauss composed more than 40 orchestral songs over a period of decades – all of them are to be performed over several seasons, with a whole range of outstanding singers. No two songs are alike, each one possesses its own tonal characteristics; the range of Strauss’s song art is truly enormous. With his 6th Symphony, Ludwig van Beethoven wrote himself into history as one of the founders of a special kind of “programmatic music”. The Sinfonia pastorale , as he called it, became a powerful work and yet is full of accessibility, grace and charm – in the form of five musical scenes of sharp profile and concise expression that tell of nature and rural life.

Symphony Concert VI

In the 18th century, Central European composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart invented sounds intended to evoke associations with "Turkish music"—for example, in his opera The Abduction from the Seraglio , which premieres at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in June 2026. In addition to Mozart's Prague Symphony , Tim Fluch will also conduct the orchestral work "Effaced Figures" by Istanbul-born Ege Gür, who was awarded the European Composition Prize in Berlin in 2024 and whose works combine influences of 20th-century music with the traditions of classical Turkish music. Carl Maria von Weber's Clarinet Concerto No. 2 is also on the program.

Concert in the Pierre Boulez Hall II

Pierre Boulez Saal

This season, the Staatskapelle Berlin and its General Music Director Christian Thielemann will perform at three venues and three renowned European concert halls: the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, the Munich Isarphilharmonie, and the Vienna Musikverein. In addition to Brahms's impressive German Requiem , they will perform orchestral songs by Strauss and Beethoven's Pastorale – music by composers with whom the orchestra is particularly familiar and with whom it has repeatedly and intensly explored for many years.

Staatskapelle Berlin: Guest performance

Gasteig HP8

Vienna Music Society

The Honorary Conductor of the Staatskapelle Berlin turns 90. Since the 1990s, he has regularly rehearsed and conducted opera performances and concerts at the Staatskapelle Berlin and with the orchestra, often offering truly magnificent moments of fulfilling, harmonious music-making. For his milestone birthday, which Zubin Mehta is celebrating together with the Staatskapelle, he has selected music by two composers who have accompanied him throughout his career and continue to inspire him. Mozart's Symphony in G minor, the middle piece of the triad of his famous last symphonies from 1788, can be experienced in combination with Mahler's symphonic debut, composed exactly a century later. Both works capture the composers' characteristic tone, and Zubin Mehta will bring both to life in his own unique way.

Concert for Zubin Mehta's 90th birthday

Museum Concert VIII

Hans Pfitzner composed large-scale, sophisticated operas, as well as opulent orchestral works. In addition to concertos for violin and cello, he also wrote a four-movement piano concerto in 1922, continuing the late Romantic tradition of Brahms and Max Reger. A noticeably innovative spirit, even a musical visionary, was Franz Liszt, who opened a new chapter in European music history with his symphonic poems around the middle of the 19th century. Three of these compositions for a large, richly timbred orchestra, very different in their content and their manifestations, demonstrate the diversity of creative approaches that Liszt applied to this newly developed, soon to be very prominent, musical genre.

Good Friday Concert

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