Name: New York & South America tour
Start: 2026-10-14T20:00:00
Location: Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo

Kirill Petrenko

Berliner Philharmoniker

As part of its 2026 European tour, the ensemble of the Kanze Noh Theater from Tokyo will visit Musikfest Berlin. Featuring Kiyokazu Kanze – the 26th Grand Master of the Kanze School – as its lead actor, the company will present three works of classical Noh theatre. The traditional Japanese theatre form was created around 700 years ago and is regarded as one of the oldest in the world. With its visual language, its sense of sound and its (musical) dramaturgy, Noh theatre has had a strong influence on European contemporary music. Its distinctive features include deliberately minimal means of expression, the use of masks and highly formalised physical movements. On the following day, Kiyokazu Kanze will offer unique insights into the world of Noh theatre as part of an education event reserved especially for children and young people.

Kanze Noh Theater

Following the guest performance on 21.9., Grand Master Kiyokazu Kanze will offer unique insights into the world of Noh theatre as part of an education event for Berlin pupils. As one of the oldest performing arts in the world, Noh was perfected in the 14th century by the artist Kan’ami and his son Zeami and has been survived almost unchanged to the present day, a period of some 700 years. As a musical theatre artform, Noh theatre combines singing, dancing and instrumental music. In poetic stories where dreams and reality meet along with the living and spirits, actors in Noh masks reveal the action in elegant, stylised movements. Its unique aesthetic and spirituality have had a lasting influence on European art and music. Noh was added to UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list in 2008.

Educational Event Noh Theatre

Berliner Philharmonie

You can simply go to a concert at the Philharmonie, spontaneously, during your lunch break – and with free admission: every Wednesday at 13:00 between September and June. The programme lasts 40 to 50 minutes: chamber music, piano works or a percussion duo – everything from Tchaikovsky to tango. Members of the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Karajan-Akademie regularly perform, as well as guests from the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, the Staatskapelle Berlin and the Berlin music conservatories. As can be expected at a lunch concert, catering is available from 12 noon until shortly before the concert begins.

Lunch concert

Maurice Duruflé’s ethereal Requiem blends allusions to Gregorian chant with an enchanting play of timbres whose delicate musical texture is reminiscent of the skilled instrumentation of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. This all comes together to form a paradisiacal vision of heaven presented by the RIAS Kammerchor Berlin, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and conductor Justin Doyle at the Musikfest Berlin. The second half of the programme features Alfred Schnittke’s Requiem, a polystylistic fresco of sound, oscillating between humanism and the force of spiritual faith. Unlike many of the famous masses for the dead, the work largely dispenses with dramatic contrasts: the choir does not rejoice in glowing terms over God’s greatness but meditates quietly on the words it sings in lines that sound improvised.

RIAS Kammerchor Berlin II / Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin II

From apocalypse to apotheosis – in his Symphony No. 2, Gustav Mahler delves into one of humanity’s most profound questions: “Why have you lived?” His music traverses light and darkness, full of turmoil, sorrow, intimacy and earthy joy. Mahler pushed the boundaries of the symphony, incorporating folk songs from the cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn and, following Beethoven’s model, a magnificent choral finale. In this work, Mahler said, the listener is “struck down by clubs, only to be lifted to the highest heights on angels’ wings.” Daniel Harding conducts.

Daniel Harding conducts Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony

This season, our Berliner Philharmoniker Ensembles series is dedicated to Ludwig van Beethoven; 2027 marks the 200th anniversary of his death. Beethoven’s “Große Fuge” is a work of astonishing modernity and expressive power – qualities that many of his contemporaries found bewildering. Yet the work left a profound impression on the young Felix Mendelssohn: shortly after Beethoven’s death, the 18-year-old composed his Opus 13, in which he repeatedly alludes to the music of his great predecessor, including the Große Fuge. The programme opens with Beethoven in a lighter mood – with the Serenade in D major and the Duet with Two Obligato Eyeglasses.

Berliner Philharmoniker Ensembles

Bebop, cool jazz, hard bop or jazz rock – none of these styles would be imaginable without Miles Davis. More than any other musician, the trumpeter and bandleader reshaped the course of jazz through constant reinvention. His cool, often rough trumpet tone became his unmistakable trademark. In 2026, Miles Davis would have turned 100 – an occasion that curator Siggi Loch marks by opening the 14th season of Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic with a tribute to the legendary musician. American trumpet star Theo Croker joins forces with his quartet and the Norwegian Wind Ensemble, conducted by Geir Lysne, for Miles 100.

Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic

50 minutes of chamber music

PalaisPopulaire

The Junge Deutsche Philharmonie brings together the finest music students in Germany – tomorrow’s orchestral professionals. In this concert at the Philharmonie Berlin, they perform Joseph Haydn’s radiant and festive Symphony No. 99, said to have been the composer’s favourite, alongside Sergei Prokofiev’s dramatic Sixth Symphony, haunted by the aftermath of the Second World War. Opening the programme, conductor John Storgårds also plays the solo part in Sebastian Fagerlund’s Helena’s Song, in which the Finnish composer reworks a key scene from his opera Höstsonaten for violin and orchestra.

Junge Deutsche Philharmonie and John Storgårds

At the Karajan-Akademie of the Berliner Philharmoniker, outstanding young musicians are trained to participate in a top orchestra. They also perform to the highest standards in solo and chamber music works, as they demonstrate in the concerts of the Carte blanche series. Admission is free.

»Carte blanche – Berlin, hör mal!«

Daniil Trifonov, the Berliner Philharmoniker and Kirill Petrenko have already performed together on several occasions – with the press describing them as a “sonic hurricane” and an “inspired exchange”. Their collaboration continues with Brahms’s First Piano Concerto, a work in which Trifonov can deploy both his technical accomplishment and his expressive depth, from chamber-like delicacy to symphonic power. The concert’s second half features Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. Opening with a hymn-like sunrise, the work traces the philosopher Zarathustra’s journey to humanity: dramatic, mystical and splendorous in sound.