Around the Music Festival

The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra has announced its lineup for the new 2026/2027 season. The new season will see Australian composer Brett Dean, who served as a viola player with the orchestra for 14 years before leaving in 1999, become resident composer. In addition to Dean, Elim Chan, Maxime Pascal, and Markus Poschner will make their orchestral debuts.

The guest conductors are, as always, diverse, including Daniel Harding, Marek Janowskii, Gustavo Dudamel, Iván Fischer, Maxim Emelyanichev, Klaus Mäkelä, Lahav Shani, Tugan Sokhiev, Jakub Hrůša, Emmanuel Haïm, and Paavo Järvi. Harding will conduct Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection,” Janowski will conduct Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8, and Dudamel will conduct Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 and Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 “Romantic,” among other weighty programs.

Meanwhile, Simon Rattle, a former principal conductor, is making a comeback to the Berlin Music Festival as it celebrates its 75th anniversary, generating considerable buzz. He will conduct the world premiere of Cathy Milliken’s Concerto for English Horn and Orchestra, a piece written specifically for horn player Dominik Wollenweber The festival will also feature a Noh performance by Kiyokazu Kanze, the 26th head of the Kanze school of Noh.

The soloists will include pianist YunChang Lim and Alexander Malofeev, who will be making their orchestral debuts. YoYo Ma and Pinchas Zukerman will be making guest appearances after a long absence, and the lineup also boasts a stellar cast including Leif Ove Andsnes, Martha Argerich, Yefim Bronfman, SeongJin Cho, Daniil Trifonov, Mitsuko Uchida, and Yuja Wang.

Principal conductor Kirill Petrenko will conduct 47 concerts in the new season. The orchestra returned this spring as the resident orchestra of the Salzburg Easter Festival. He will conduct Wagner’s “Die Walküre,” the second installment of “The Ring of the Nibelung,” at next year’s festival, and Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” in 2027, the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s death.

In the fall of 2026, they will tour South America, a place they haven’t visited in over a quarter of a century. After their performance at Carnegie Hall in New York, they will perform for the first time in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, before heading to São Paulo, Brazil and Buenos Aires, Argentina. They will also perform in Edinburgh for the first time in 20 years, and tour Scandinavia, including Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Copenhagen, for the first time in 15 years.

PHOTO：Berliner Philharmoniker


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