Karajan-Akademie der Berliner Philharmoniker

Today, it is almost a matter of course: Great, renowned orchestras host academies for the emerging generation of artists. Young musicians receive an excellent education which, however, is often mainly geared towards the solo repertoire. Here, they have the opportunity of perfecting their art side by side with experienced and excellent professional musicians – in orchestral and ensemble music, chamber music and cooperative solo projects. However, when Herbert von Karajan took the initiative to found an academy with the Berliner Philharmoniker nearly half a century ago, this was a pioneering feat.

At the beginning of this season, the work of the Karajan Academy will focus on contemporary music. Enno Poppe, a composer, conductor and clear, convincing champion of New Music, will be at the helm. His own work demonstrates the art of creating polymorphous and extensive connections from a succinct central idea, a compositional molecule, as it were. A performance of Rebecca Saunders’ analysis of the concertante as an exposed and interactive expression and her equally wild and sensitive piece for double bass concludes and rounds out one of this year’s Musikfest Berlin’s main focus themes.

Milica Djordjević's music is described as “rough, often even raw in the gesture”, as a “vital tonal language that refuses less harmony and beautiful sound than that it gives the experience of the elemental quite pleasurably: tones of the earth’s emanations.” Milica Djordević has won this year’s Claudio Abbado Composition Prize, and she also received a commission from the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic for a new work that will be premiered that evening.