The orchestra has rolled out a three-week Biennale entitled Paradise Lost, allowing for a broader range of artists and repertoire.
On debut are Marin Alsop and Dalia Stasevska.
Here’s the press release:
… A wide-ranging, interdisciplinary programme takes a closer look at the environmental crises and opportunities, and invites us to consider the question of how art and science can contribute to raising awareness of climate protection.
From 13 February to 1 March 2025, the Berliner Philharmoniker with their chief conductor Kirill Petrenko and two conductors making their debuts, Marin Alsop and Dalia Stasevska, will be joined by Iris Berben, climate researcher Antje Boetius and science journalist Harald Lesch, among others, at the Philharmonie Berlin and at neighbouring institutions at the Kulturforum. Further programmes will take place at the Naturkundemuseum (Natural History Museum), Deutsche Bank’s PalaisPopulaire, and Radialsystem.
In the first concert programme of the festival from 13 to 15 February, Kirill Petrenko conducts Ludwig van Beethoven’s Pastoral, plus the German premiere of Miroslav Srnka’s Superorganisms and Edgard Varèse’s Arcana. While the latter deals with the relationship between the earth and the other planets, the new work by Miroslav Srnka focuses on the intriguing question of whether humans are evolving from individual beings to networked elements within a larger group. On 16 February, the music and subject matter of the Pastoral is the theme of a family concert, also conducted by Kirill Petrenko.
Marin Alsop has chosen a special, continent-spanning programme for her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker on 20-22 February. The world premiere of Day Night Day by Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen refers musically to the songs of the Sami, the indigenous people of northern Finland. Thematically, it revolves around the northern lights and the ice that covers and protects the local landscape. On the other side of the world, the devastating “Black Saturday” bushfires in Australia in 2009 were the impulse behind Brett Dean’s composition Fire Music. The Appalachian Mountains, which cross the eastern United States, inspired Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, while the birdsong of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil formed the basis of a popular piece for choir and orchestra, Choros No. 10, by Heitor Villa-Lobos.
The second conductor to make their debut is the Finn Dalia Stasevska, who combines musical works from Northern Europe with Claude Debussy’s La Mer from 27 February to 1 March. The programme also includes Jean Sibelius’ tone poem Pohjola’s Daughter, in which the hero of the Nordic saga Kalevala fails in his attempt to win over the Daughter of the North, who sits on a rainbow, and Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto with Jean-Frederic Neuburger as the soloist, who is also making his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker. Orion, on the other hand, a work by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, who died in 2023, is about the mortal son of the sea god Neptune, and forms the ideal transition to La Mer….
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