Paris, the city of music, radiates throughout the Musikfest 2025 in a series of French-themed programmes and guest performances by orchestras and ensembles based in the French capital: the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the orchestra Les Siècles, the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées and the vocal ensemble Les Cris de Paris.
In 2025, the international music world will be celebrating the centenary of the birth of Pierre Boulez, France’s greatest musical figure whose life spanned the 20th and 21st centuries and subsequently exerted a lasting influence on the international music scene far beyond the confines of France as a composer, conductor and eloquent essayist. The Musikfest Berlin will present three large-scale orchestral works from different creative periods in his career: The sweeping composition “Rituel” for eight orchestral groups together with the Berliner Philharmoniker; the lyrical song cycle “Pli selon pli” with singer Sarah Aristidou and Les Siècles; finally the cantata “Le soleil des eaux” with the soloist Liv Redpath, the Netherlands Radio Choir and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. New compositions by Robin de Raaff and Ondřej Adámek, which both pay homage to Pierre Boulez, will also be performed.
Pierre Boulez’s Italian fellow composer and friend Luciano Berio would likewise have celebrated his 100th birthday this year, which is why the Musikfest Berlin will be honouring his influential output with a total of eight concerts. We also look forward to marking the 90th birthday of the grandmaster of musique concrète instrumentale, Helmut Lachenmann. His compositions will be presented with compositions by Swedish composer Lisa Streich in the concerts of the EnsembleKollektiv Berlin with Enno Poppe and Ensemble Modern with Sylvain Cambreling. The Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt will be doing the honours as well as the soloists Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Mark Simpson and Jean-Guihen Queyras.
Yet what would these anniversaries and big birthdays be without those composers who are setting out to shape or are already shaping the music scene by pursuing their own interests, wishes and visions? At the Musikfest Berlin 2025 they include Mark Andre, Unsuk Chin, Pascal Dusapin, Toshio Hosokawa, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Lisa Streich and Francesca Verunelli. And we are happy to welcome the Ensemble Senza Sforzando from war-ridden Odessa with new works by Ukrainian composers.
Musikfest Berlin
30.8–23.9.2025 | Doors 18:00 | Starts 19:00 CET
Philharmonie Berlin | Herbert-von-Karajan-Straße 1 in 10785 Berlin
