A very old question runs through our season: How does humanity find its place in the world – as a physical being, as part of a community, and through the experience of art and music?

We will be exploring this question in particular depth during two festivals. The first, in November, focuses on the personal experience of the individual. It is titled NOW HERE and consistently explores the experience of music through the body, with immediate emotional and physical movement, and how music makes us dance or find peace. For this, we are collaborating with the Detect Sounds platform, which has made a name for itself in the field of unconventional musical experiences.

The ‘Under the Stars’ festival in April takes a big step back and looks at humanity as it is repeatedly seen by astronauts gazing down at Earth from their spacecraft: from there, all one sees is what we have in common; everything else seems irrelevant.& At the heart of this festival is the oratorio “Le Chant des Enfants des Étoiles” by our composer-in-residence, Unsuk Chin. For her, we are all these “children of the stars”, sharing the Earth as siblings and singing out into space together.

I am very much looking forward to Joana Mallwitz’s fourth season with the Konzerthaus Orchestra, which begins in early September with Henze’s Symphony No. 9 and an invitation to the Lucerne Festival. Our season opener at home in the Konzerthaus will once again be livestreamed to the Friedrichshain Open-Air Cinema, so that even more people can listen than can fit into our Great Hall.&

In the Beethoven Year 2027, Joana Mallwitz will undertake a cycle of expedition concerts and will devote the coming season to Symphonies Nos. 1 to 5.  Like no other, this composer embodies a perspective on humanity in the world – with all its possibilities and limitations.

Joana Mallwitz’s programmes feature highlights such as Alban Berg’s “Lulu Suite” with our Artist in Residence Vera-Lotte Boecker, Hector Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique”, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, and the final scene from Richard Strauss’s opera “Salome” with Elza van den Heever. 

In addition, our principal conductor has selected a work by a Berlin composer for each of her concerts. These include historical artists such as Emilie Mayer, but also contemporary figures such as Sarah Nemtsov or Friedrich Goldmann, who died in 2009, as an important voice in GDR music history.

We will celebrate the 75th anniversary of our  orchestra – known as the Berlin Symphony Orchestra from 1952 and as the Konzerthausorchester Berlin since 2006 – in January 2027 with his work “Klangszenen III”, which was premiered by our orchestra. At the helm of the Konzerthausorchester, we welcome many renowned guests such as François-Xavier Roth, Ingo Metzmacher and the young rising star Aurel Dawidiuk.& nbsp;Stephanie Childress combines Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” with Unsuk Chin’s “Chant des Enfants des Étoiles” and Giedrė Šlekytė conducts Chin’s Cello Concerto with soloist Alban Gerhard.

The ‘Aşina’ series brings something new to the Konzerthaus. Aşina (Persian/Turkish: familiar) brings together music with its roots in Anatolia and numerous offshoots stretching from Mesopotamia, via Greece, to Berlin. The series embodies a way of listening that recognises something familiar in the supposedly foreign and brings it closer. The series kicks off with the legendary composer and singer Zülfü Livaneli (more on the background and participants from page 8).

“Herz über Kopf”, the music & talk programme featuring actor and classical music enthusiast Charly Hübner, as well as the “Berlin Tracks” series, which follows a wide variety of musical trails through the fringes of the classical spectrum. 

The plaster busts in our venue’s Great Hall depict 38 historical composers, but not a single female composer. As part of a project planned for the coming years to expand and redesign the culture of remembrance at the Konzerthaus, digital memorials celebrating significant women in music history will be created from next season onwards. Among them in the first season is the Berlin-born Emilie Mayer, who has close ties to the Konzerthaus. Many of her works were premiered here. We have also named our refurbished Konzerthaus Café after her.

As part of our ‘Konzerthaus nextdoor’ initiative, we aim to connect and collaborate with people, organisations, situations, talents and ideas from Berlin that inspire us and from which we can learn. This also involves bringing music into the city ourselves. This autumn, the Konzerthaus Orchestra will embark on a tour of selected Berlin neighbourhoods. A collaboration with the İÇ İÇE – Festival for New Anatolian Music has already begun. 

As part of the funding programme “The Day After Tomorrow – New Models for Cultural Institutions”, we aim to explore the various forms this project might take – from engaging with post-migrant music culture to community work and children’s and youth culture in places that, in many respects, have hitherto been far removed from the Konzerthaus. Konzerthaus nextdoor is intended to help us bring a lasting flow of inspiration from the city into the building and to develop ourselves in harmony with the dynamism of Berlin