Berlin is overflowing with classical music: there are three opera houses, seven symphony orchestras, and concert events ad infinitum. But the city seems to be in need of yet another music institution. A new festival, the Musikfest Berlin, was inaugurated last year and although ticket sales seem to go somewhat slowly this year, the Musikfest has already become part of the rich musical scene in Germany’s capital. The timing of the new festival is key to its success: it takes place in the first two weeks of September, those weeks inbetween the end of the last summer festival and the start of the new opera season. Everybody is eagerly awaiting the fall, not for the weather, but for the concerts that make life in this cold and rainy place worth living. Why not sweeten those days of idle coffee drinking by getting together some of the world’s most renowned orchestras and chamber music groups for two weeks of happy musicking?

The list of participants is impressive: The Berliner Philharmoniker (Rattle), The Philadelphia Orchestra (Eschenbach), the Staatskapelle Berlin (Barenboim), the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (Janowski), the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (Oramo), the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (Harding), the Ensemble Resonanz (Stockhammer), the Huelgas Ensemble (van Nevel), The Cleveland Ochestra (Welser-Möst), the Keller Quartett, the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest (Jansons), the Kuss Quartett, the Bamberger Symphoniker (Nott), the Ungarische Nationalphilharmonie (Kocsis), the Minguet Quartett, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (Blomstedt).

This year’s program is focusing on the music of England and Hungary, sucessfully balancing out older and contemporary music. Six of the twenty concerts are dedicated to György Kurták who turned 80 this year. In a captivating performance, the Keller Quartet combined Kurták’s Aus der Ferne III and V, the Six moments musicaux, as well as his profound Hommage à Jacob Obrecht with Bartók’s Second String Quartet, op. 17 and Beethoven’s quartet op. 132. Other composers who will be performed during the festival which lasts until Sunday include Henri Dutilleux, Hans Werner Henze, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Peter van Onna, Kaija Saariaho, Jonathan Harvey, and, to my great joy, Matthias Pintscher, a young German composer and conductor, whom some of you may know already as a guest conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. More concert reviews to follow this week…

Musikfest Website