At this year’s Musikfest Berlin, across 36 programs at the Philharmonie Berlin, the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, the Konzerthaus Berlin, and the Deutsche Oper Berlin, more than 60 works will be presented by some 40 composers, performed by orchestras and choirs from Berlin, by over 65 international soloists and more than 30 international instrumental and vocal ensembles.
The Berliner Festspiele opens the 2026 Musikfest Berlin with György Ligeti’s opera “Le Grand Macabre,” marking their 75th anniversary. Ligeti was one of the most influential composers at the Berliner Festwochen, first held in 1951. His music is familiar to many through Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Alongside “Le Grand Macabre”, the festival presents major works from music theatre, scenic arts and performance: George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” in a new production by Cape Town Opera and the Chineke! Orchestra; Wolfgang Rihm’s orchestral ritual “Tutuguri”, based on Antonin Artaud, with the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra; Karlheinz Stockhausen’s opera “Mittwoch aus Licht”, directed by Susanne Kennedy; Stravinsky’s “Histoire du soldat” in the acclaimed production of the Salzburger Marionettentheater, with puppets and designs by Georg Baselitz; and a guest performance of Noh theatre from Tokyo featuring Kiyokazu Kanze.
The festival also honours Hans Werner Henze on the occasion of his 100th birthday with performances of “Musen Siziliens”, his piano concerto “Tristan” with pianist Tamara Stefanovich and his monumental Ninth Symphony, commissioned by the Berliner Festspiele in 1997, dedicated to the heroes and martyrs of German anti-fascism.
Another centenary is celebrated with Anatol Vieru, Romania’s great non-conformist avant-garde composer. His Second Symphony, written in Berlin in 1973 during a DAAD scholarship, will be performed by Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. Works by his Moscow contemporaries Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina will also feature, performed by the RSB, London Symphony Orchestra, RIAS Kammerchor Berlin and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.
When Yvonne Loriod – outstanding pianist, brilliant interpreter of music by her husband Olivier Messiaen and legendary piano teacher – died in 2010, hardly anyone knew that she had left behind many compositions which she had written in her student years. The 15-movement orchestral poem “La Sainte Face” now discovered in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris will receive its world premiere at Musikfest Berlin, 80 years after it was written.
Contemporary music remains central to the programme. Australian composers Brett Dean, Cathy Milliken and Liza Lim are represented alongside works by Alex Nante, Olga Neuwirth, Milica Djordjević, Clara Iannotta, Márton Illés and Enno Poppe.
