Name: Piano recital with Daniil Trifonov
Start: 2027-04-12T20:00:00
Location: Berliner Philharmoniker

Daniil Trifonov

Berliner Philharmoniker

Festival tour BBC Proms, LondonFestival

Royal Albert Hall

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

The Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra and its new musical director Jörg Widmann bring an intensely impactful work to the Musikfest Berlin: Tutuguri by Wolfgang Rihm. The poème dansé activates a powerful battery of percussion and translates the “fevered pulse” of the eponymous poem by Antonin Artaud – which was inspired by the ritual Tutugúri dances of the indigenous people of northern Mexico, into captivating music.

Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra

Once again four critics of the German Record Critics’ Award (Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, PdSK), moderated by Olaf Wilhelmer, will speak about a central work of music history: Robert Schumann’s Violin Concerto in D minor.

Quartett der Kritiker

Berliner Philharmonie

“I have been hearing drums and trumpets in my head for days”, Robert Schumann wrote to his friend Felix Mendelssohn in 1845. Here Schumann was describing not only his emotional state, but also the musical ideas leading him towards the composition of his Symphony No. 2. The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle combines this impressive multi-layered work with Schumann’s Violin Concerto which was never performed during the composer’s lifetime. Performing on historical instruments, the ensemble and soloist Isabelle Faust approach Schumann’s emotionally complex tonal world, laying bare the roots of this brilliant composer of the Romantic period.

Freiburger Barockorchester

A musical sensation: the highly expressive orchestral music of Yvonne Loriod is given a new lease of life. The brilliant pianist and legendary piano professor, born in Paris in 1924, was primarily known during her lifetime as a performer of her husband Olivier Messiaen’s music. The WDR Sinfonieorchester and Kent Nagano are presenting one of her numerous compositions for orchestra for the very first time: La Sainte Face, a fifteen-movement musical depiction of the “Saint’s Face” for soprano and orchestra. The vocal part of this long-forgotten religiously influenced music will be undertaken by Sarah Aristidou. A rare opportunity to experience one of the most fascinating works of musical and religious expression of the 20th century.

WDR Sinfonieorchester I

According to Henze, his concerto Musen Siziliens, which premiered in 1966 as part of the Berliner Festwochen, was intended to “be fun” – both for the audience and the performers. Johannes Brahms must have been thinking on similar lines when experimenting with multiple permutations of “Viennese” three-four time in his Liebeslieder waltzes for voices and four-hand piano. The RIAS Kammerchor Berlin will perform both works at the Musikfest Berlin together with the piano duo GrauSchumacher who in the words of the Süddeutsche Zeitung have “perfected four-hand piano-playing”, accompanied by musicians of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie conducted by Gregor Meyer. As an atmospheric opener, Henze’s otherworldly, mysterious Notturno sets the tone.

RIAS Kammerchor Berlin I

The composer Sofia Gubaidulina who died in March 2025 once admitted: “while I am composing, I pray”. The heightened intensity of her Concerto for Viola and Orchestra oscillates between “down-to-earthness” and “heavenly aspiration”. Sir Antonio Pappano presents the work with ‘his’ London Symphony Orchestra along with the unfinished 9th Symphony by Anton Bruckner. Its dedication to “dear God” indicates what Bruckner was attempting to express in music that was literally composed on his deathbed: a confrontation with the “ultimate questions” in the style of a monumental “sinfonia da chiesa”.

London Symphony Orchestra

Das Konzert mit der Maus premieres in Berlin, inviting you to the Philharmonie Berlin to enjoy the thrilling music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and exciting amusing and factual stories inspired by the life of the composer. The legendary mouse will be accompanied by the presenters Jana Forkel and Johannes Büchs and the WDR Sinfonieorchester – together they will investigate the Austrian child prodigy. A concert full of discoveries, learning and experiences.

Das Konzert mit der Maus

Hans Werner Henze had already become a legend during his lifetime. To mark the centenary of his birth, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester conducted by Alan Gilbert marks its debut at Musikfest Berlin alongside pianist Tamara Stefanovich with a performance of Henze’s Preludes for piano, tapes and orchestra with the enigmatic title Tristan. This is poignant funeral music containing quotations from works such as Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 which also features in this concert.

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester

Literature, like music, reflects the world and our lives. With our new series, Satzwechsel, we place the two in dialogue. Three times each season, in collaboration with the internationales literaturfestival berlin, we invite renowned authors to the Kammermusiksaal. They read from their latest works and discuss their writing. Music runs alongside: members of the Berliner Philharmoniker perform chamber works that echo and extend the themes of the texts.