Dear members of the audience,
The start of each new concert season in Berlin is in itself a special moment. Every year, the Musikfest Berlin has the honour of shaping each reboot, but without making do with the fascination of new beginnings: It gives it a profile and fills it with inspiration and unexpected perspectives.
Bringing together the most diverse musicians from Berlin and across the world is already rewarding. The Musikfest Berlin is a big get-together that makes tangible the transnational, multifarious power and inspiration that is inherent to music. How wonderful it is when long-standing guests like the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris come together with ensembles that will for many be a new discovery – including this year the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra from Sweden and South Korea’s Busan Philharmonic Orchestra.
The Musikfest Berlin above all draws its creative energy from its thematic emphases. These not only enable unusual encounters with music but also with the world as a whole. One central theme of this year’s Musikfest Berlin could not be more topical: The focus is on France, a country we have not felt so connected with for a long time. Now that the United States appears to be abandoning what used to be our shared values as well as standing up for the free world, our eyes are once again turning to our immediate neighbours. The Franco–German friendship is thus moving beyond what was once merely a brilliant idea and is becoming an existential necessity for Europe. And so it is all the more important that we build cultural bridges to France, as is the case in the programme at this year’s Musikfest Berlin.
The composer and conductor Pierre Boulez was a unique artistic personality in the dialogue between Germany and France. I am delighted that the Musikfest Berlin and the Berliner Philharmoniker will be jointly marking the 100th anniversary of his birth this year. Pierre Boulez first conducted our orchestra in 1961, and from the 1990s he was one of our most frequent guest conductors. He was charming to all and resolute in his opinions. No one demonstrated more impressively and authentically than Pierre Boulez that “avant garde” is not an abstract concept but necessary for a vibrant cultural life.
The Berliner Philharmoniker will be honouring Boulez at this year’s Musikfest Berlin with a performance of his “Rituel – in memoriam Bruno Maderna”, a composition for orchestra in eight groups that impressively shows the ambiance of the Philharmonie Berlin to its best advantage. It will be conducted by François-Xavier Roth. The same concert will feature the world premiere of Ondřej Adámek’s “Between Five Columns”. Adámek’s works combine the most diverse cultural influences in order to enter into dialogue with the whole world.
The second programme of the Berliner Philharmoniker at the Musikfest Berlin 2025 opens up another Franco–German perspective. Alongside the late-Romantic fixture that is Johannes Brahm’s Symphony No. 1, Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Oboe Concerto embodies the search for musical sensuality in post-war modernism. Pascal Dusapin undertook the same task a generation later in his “Solos for Orchestra”.
It is a great honour for the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation to be partner of the Berliner Festspiele / Musikfest Berlin and make a contribution to the radiant energy of the global music metropolis Berlin. I would like to express my sincere thanks to the entire Musikfest Berlin team for the excellent cooperation. And I hope that you, dear members of the audience, will enjoy taking part in all the events we have planned for you.
Andrea Zietzschmann
General Manager of the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation