Musikfest Berlin 2025: Tickets for the Initial Concert Highlights Available Now
The 2025 Musikfest Berlin will take place from 30 August to 23 September, hosted by Berliner Festspiele in co-operation with the Foundation Berliner Philharmoniker. Eight concerts featuring international guest orchestras from the Netherlands, France and Italy have been announced, and tickets can be purchased now as part of a promotion campaign.
The 2025 Musikfest Berlin will be opened at Philharmonie Berlin on 30 August of next year with a concert by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and its designated Chief Conductor Klaus Mäkelä. This and seven other concerts by international orchestras have now been announced on the festival’s website and ticket sales begin immediately. Another Dutch orchestra to be Musikfest Berlin’s guests for the first time are the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and its Chief Conductor Karina Canellakis.
The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, conducted by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, is also celebrating its debut at the festival. Three more French orchestras will be travelling to Berlin: the Orchestre de Paris with Esa-Pekka Salonen and two of the most important ensembles of historical performance practice: Les Siècles will present two concerts, conducted by Ustina Dubitsky and Franck Ollu, and the Orchestre des Champs-Élysees, who will perform together with Collegium Vocale Gent, conducted by Philippe Herreweghe. The Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia will come from Italy together with London Voices and its new Music Director, Daniel Harding. The concert programmes will feature compositions by Beethoven, Cherubini, Sibelius, Debussy and Rachmaninoff as well as works from two greats of twentieth century music: Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio would both have celebrated their 100th birthday in 2025.
There is a discount of 20% on ticket prices when tickets for at least five concerts are purchased. The promotion will continue until 31 January 2025.
Musikfest Berlin 2025 will take place from 30 August to 23 September; the complete programme will be announced in April. Details can be found if you CLICK HERE.
More information: On the occasion of his 100th birthday, the programme of this year’s Musikfest Berlin will dedicate a special focus to the work of Italian composer Luciano Berio, and place his music in a context with works by Sibelius, Ravel and Debussy: On the opening night of the 2025 Musikfest Berlin, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and its conductor Klaus Mäkelä will perform Berio’s ‘Rendering’, a ‘ricomposizione’ of Schubert’s unfinished Tenth Symphony, followed by Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. On 1 September, Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Orchestre de Paris will present ‘Requies’, a piece that Berio composed in memory of the exceptional US-American singer and composer Cathy Berberian. On 2 September, the concert of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France with conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla will include ‘Voci’, an expression of Luciano Berio’s veneration of the musical traditions of Sicily. Finally, the Orchestra dell‘Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, together with the London Voices and conducted by their new Music Director Daniel Harding, will present Berio’s ‘Sinfonia’, a profession of the composer’s love for the music of Gustav Mahler and a kind of ‘Voyage à Cythère’ on the seas of western art music with quotations from Beethoven’s Symphony No.6, Berg’s ‘Wozzeck’, Claude Debussy’s ‘La mer’ and many more. In his lied-cycle ‘Folk Songs’, the composer sets out on a musical voyage from America via Sicily, Sardinia and France to Armenia and Azerbaijan. Mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená will be the soloist.
The concert by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and the Netherlands Radio Choir with their Chief Conductor Karina Canellakis will begin the festival’s special focus on the music of Pierre Boulez on the occasion of his 100th birthday. This concert will contrast the cantata ‘Le soleil des eaux’, composed by Boulez at the age of 22, with his teacher Olivier Messiaen’s first orchestra composition with the title ‘Les offrandes oubliées’ as well as with the German premiere of the cantata ‘L’Azur’ to the eponymous poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, written by Dutch composer Robin de Raaff as homage to Pierre Boulez. Pierre Boulez’s famous and epochal Mallarmé-cycle ‘Pli selon pli’ for soprano and orchestra will be performed by the ensemble Les Siècles, celebrated for its historical interpretations and the unique range of its repertoire, with singer Sarah Aristidou and conductor Franck Ollu on 6 September. The orchestra will begin this concert evening conducted by Ustina Dubitsky and with Isabelle Faust as soloist, going back 150 years in music history, with a rendering of music from the Viennese Classical School and the grand symphonics of the Romantic era, performed on original instruments of the respective periods. Philippe Herreweghe is considered to be one of the protagonists of historical performance practice. At this year’s Musikfest Berlin, the conductor will bring two special works to Berlin with the Orchestre des Champs-Élysees and Collegium Vocale Gent: Luigi Cherubini’s Requiem in C minor and Beethoven’s Symphony No.3 ‘Eroica’.