Musikfest Berlin

In the page's words:

From 24 August to 18 September 2024, Berlin concert life will kick off the new season with the 20th edition of Musikfest Berlin, organized by Berliner Festspiele in cooperation with the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation. Over 160 works by more than 80 composers will be presented in around 40 events in the Philharmonie, its chamber music hall, the Konzerthaus Berlin and St. Matthew's Church, performed by 30 orchestras and around 60 soloists from the international and Berlin music scene.

Popular music from jazz to hip-hop characterizes the faces of the many "Americas". However, the art music of the USA, the American double continent or its three parts (North, Central and South America) is still terra incognita in the wider public, even in so-called "classical music". The 20th edition of Musikfest Berlin is entitled "Amériques", the extravagant plural title of Edgard Varèse's powerful orchestral piece from 1921, which sought to make the utopia of the New World's infinite creative possibilities musically tangible and tangible with sounds that were current and still unheard at the time. However, the baggage with which the composer, who came from Burgundy and was supported by Romain Rolland, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Strauss and Ferruccio Busoni during his time in Berlin before emigrating during the First World War, was to arrive in the New World was filled with the concentrated tradition of old Europe.

2024 is not only the year of the American presidential election, but also the double anniversary year of Charles Ives, who was born in the same year as Arnold Schönberg - 1874 - and died only a few years after his death. Schönberg, who had to emigrate to the USA after the Nazis seized power, is still regarded by many today as the composer who fundamentally changed the "language" of European art music in order to continue its tradition. And Charles Ives, who only traveled to Europe when he was no longer composing, is regarded as the no less innovative founding father and first main figure of an original art music of American, or more precisely, North American modernism that was independent of the old Europe.

The program of the upcoming Musikfest Berlin goes beyond this - often narrated - narrative of modernism and also includes works by American women composers, for example in three portrait evenings with the Ensemble Modern, which are dedicated to the complete works of Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953). Her music is combined in the programs with works by Johanna Beyer (who was born in Leipzig in 1888 and emigrated to the USA in 1923), the Cuban-born grand dame of American contemporary music Tania León (b. 1943) and California-born Katherine Balch (b. 1991). Works by the American composers Allison Loggins-Hull (guest performance by the Cleveland Orchestra) and Missy Mazzoli (Berliner Philharmoniker on September 7 and 8) can also be heard.

Above all, however, on August 24, the opening day of Musikfest Berlin, the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra will bring South American and North American modernism together, while the orchestra's big band will dedicate itself to "Música Popular Brasileira" in the subsequent late-night concert. The Big Band of the Deutsche Oper Berlin - which, like the Brazilian formation, was founded from the symphony orchestra - will respond to this at the end of the festival on September 16 with an evening dedicated to Duke Ellington.

The so-called "discovery" of America is at the same time a crime against humanity, the scene of which is not only the continents but also the Atlantic: the slave trade in the triangle between Europe, Africa and the "Americas" shaped the world and changed the history of music forever. In the project "Un mar de músicas", the grand seigneur of historical performance practice and connoisseur of global music history spanning the continents Jordi Savall develops a dialog of mutual influences between European Baroque and the songs of slaves between 1440 and 1880 with his two formations Tembembe Ensemble Continuo and La Capella Reial de Catalunya and guest musicians from Cuba, Haiti, Brazil, Mali, Venezuela and Mexico. A musical network across the Black Atlantic, from the African to the American coast, to the Caribbean and back to Europe.

The international guest ensembles at this year's Musikfest Berlin include the Cleveland Orchestra with Franz Welser-Möst, the Kansas City Symphony with Matthias Pintscher, the Oslo Philharmonic with Klaus Mäkelä, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra with Sir Simon Rattle and the Vienna Philharmonic with Christian Thielemann. The concert by the Filarmonica della Scala with its chief conductor Riccardo Chailly at Musikfest Berlin 2024 will take place as part of the "Rooted in the Future" series of events dedicated to the guest country Italy at Frankfurter Buchmesse 2024.

Together with the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Berlin-based orchestras, the guest ensembles will present a festival program that allows the American focus to correspond with a rich panorama of European music: from the music of the Renaissance to the classics of the great repertoire, to Gustav Mahler, Antonín Dvořák and Dmitri Shostakovich; from this year's jubilarians - Anton Bruckner, Arnold Schönberg and Luigi Nono - to the composers of our time, to Isabel Mundry, to whom a portrait of three concerts is dedicated, to Einojuhani Rautavaara and Wolfgang Rihm. And we commemorate the composers who have passed away: Kaija Saariaho, Aribert Reimann and Peter Eötvös. Finally, chamber music treasures can be experienced with Anna Prohaska, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Isabelle Faust and instrumentalists from the Berliner Philharmoniker.