Season 2019/20
In celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birthday, the Belcea Quartet sets out to explore the mighty cosmos of the composer’s 16 string quartets, juxtaposing works from his early, middle, and late periods in six concerts spread out over the course of the season.
Emmanuel Pahud, principal flutist of the Berliner Philharmoniker, returns to the Pierre Boulez Saal with an extraordinary program centered around Johann Sebastian Bach and Luciano Berio.
Celebrating Beethoven’s 250th anniversary at the Pierre Boulez Saal, Daniel Barenboim for the first time presents the composer's 32 Piano Sonatas in chronological order of their creation—providing an exciting look at the composer’s artistic development.
Following its successful world premiere last season, Emmanuel Pahud, Daniel Barenboim, and the Boulez Ensemble once again explore the complex sonic maze of Luca Francesconi’s Daedalus.
In his Pierre Boulez Saal debut, Igor Levit explores the concept of musical variation in its diverse manifestations.
For his solo recital, Denis Kozhukhin pairs Schubert’s Impromptus with Jörg Widmann’s Idyll und Abgrund (“Idyll and Abyss”). After the intermission, Ravel’s Sonatina is followed by Douze Notations by 20-year-old Pierre Boulez and Prokofiev’s Sonata in B-flat major.
Alexander Melnikov, Jeroen Berwaerts, and the Ensemble Resonanz present works by Ustvolskaya, Shostakovich, and Ligeti, each of them posing riddles to their audiences.
Thomas Guggeis—kapellmeister at the Stuttgart Opera since 2018 and previously Daniel Barenboim’s assistant at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden—makes his debut leading the Boulez Ensemble with the world premiere of a new composition by Jordanian composer Saed Haddad.
Following their sensational debut in April 2018, French soprano Patricia Petibon and her American piano partner Susan Manoff return to the Pierre Boulez Saal with a colorful recital of songs by Spanish and French composers—including works by de Falla, Granados, Debussy, and Fauré, among others.
Zubin Mehta, Mojca Erdmann, and the Boulez Ensemble pair George Crumb’s seminal work Ancient Voices of Children, written in 1970, with Schoenberg’s 1906 Chamber Symphony, one of the founding documents of musical modernism.
She is a piano legend, he has collaborated as a soloist with all leading conductors and orchestras around the world. Now Martha Argerich and Guy Braunstein come to the Pierre Boulez Saal with their first ever duo program—an artistic encounter that promises an extraordinary musical experience.
In their unconventional piece of music theater The Soldier’s Tale Igor Stravinsky and the Swiss writer Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz employ simple means to address a question that many people—children and adults alike—have asked themselves again and again: what makes us really happy?
François-Xavier Roth has been closely associated with the Boulez Ensemble ever since the opening of the Pierre Boulez Saal in March 2017. The first of their two joint programs this season is dedicated entirely to the music of Boulez.
Through September 8, 2019, tickets for this concert are available only as part of the package offer for the complete Violin Sonata Cycle. Individual tickets go on sale September 9.
Laurence Dreyfus and his ensemble Phantasm, choreographer Sommer Ulrickson, and visual artist Alexander Polzin explore the revelatory potential that art––a genuinely human form of expression––holds for our own lives and for our interaction with others.
In its third annual Edward W. Said Days, the Barenboim-Said Akademie will examine the relationship between culture and power. Through music, lecture, art, and film, students and faculty will embark on an unflinching and critical exploration of, as Said quipped aphoristically, “the power of culture and the culture of power.”
Joined by pianist Julius Drake, soprano Anna Prohaska presents works from four centuries as a musical journey through the “Garden of Eve”—a place of both innocence and temptation.
The Boulez Ensemble performs works for duo and trio from different periods of Galina Ustvolskaya's life.
With their eclectic programs that combine the classical canon with contemporary music in all its forms, the four musicians of Brooklyn Rider have truly transformed the string quartet into a genre of the 21st century.
After concerts dedicated to compositions of Boulez, Ligeti, and Ustvolskaya, the Boulez Ensemble presents a fourth “monothematic” program with this homage to Igor Stravinsky. The three works reflect the composer’s transition from the “Russian” style of his earlier years to his neo-classical period.
Celebrating the composer’s 250th birthday, the Belcea Quartet reprises its complete Beethoven cycle heard over several months earlier in the season. Now these milestones of the genre are presented in a condensed format.
With the string quartets from his later years, Mozart helped lay the foundations for the revolutionary innovations introduced by Beethoven and others in the decades that followed. The Cuarteto Casals takes on these classic works on two consecutive days.
A radically contemporary approach shapes the three programs of the JACK Quartet, an ensemble that for years has been breathing new life into the centuries-old genre of the string quartet by performing countless world premieres and commissioning new compositions. The group will explore the full range of contemporary string quartet writing—both in the traditional analogue setup and with an added electronic dimension—in works by Helmut Lachenmann, Catherine Lamb, Sabrina Schroeder and many others.
Last season, Radek Baborák curated the highly successful “Night of the Horns.” Now the Czech hornist and conductor returns to the Pierre Boulez Saal with his own Baborák Ensemble.
Having appeared several times as a member of the Boulez Ensemble, hornist Ben Goldscheider now makes his recital debut at the Pierre Boulez Saal.
Young Spanish pianist Javier Perianes makes his Pierre Boulez Saal debut performing compositions from his homeland—and those inspired by its music.
On the heels of his duo recital in November, Christian Tetzlaff brings Bach and Bartók face to face in this solo appearance.
Hear the students of the Barenboim-Said Akademie perform live at the Pierre Boulez Saal. As part of their curriculum, the young musicians will present one-hour concerts, introducing themselves to their audiences.
Isabelle Faust, together with Kristian Bezuidenhout, Elizabeth Kenny, and Kristin von der Goltz, presents a genealogy of Baroque violin music from Biber to Bach.
Continuing what has become a new tradition, the Boulez Ensemble closes the season with a program centered around the world premiere of a new work by German composer Isabel Mundry, led by Lahav Shani.
