The Berliner Philharmoniker and their chief conductor Kirill Petrenko are dedicating the concerts on 12, 13 and 14 September which are part of Musikfest Berlin to the memory of Wolfgang Rihm.
The composer Wolfgang Rihm, who died in July this year, was to accompany the Berliner Philharmoniker through the 2024/25 season as Composer in Residence. The planned concerts will now honour his memory.
In the Berliner Philharmoniker’s second Musikfest programme, Kirill Petrenko will pair Wolfgang Rihm’s IN-SCHRIFT with Anton Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony. IN-SCHRIFT was composed in 1995 for a performance in St Mark’s Basilica in Venice for the Venice Biennale and is strongly inspired by the building. Rihm himself said of his work: “The basic idea is succinct: an Inschrift [“inscription” or “epigraph” – trans.]. This occurs in writing [in Schrift], both musical and writing notational characters, written into the line like adages.”
Anton Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony continues the Berliner Philharmoniker’s season-long focus on Bruckner and was already presented at the season opening concert and on the subsequent festival tour in Salzburg, Lucerne and London. Berlin audiences now have another chance to experience Kirill Petrenko’s interpretation of this monolithic Bruckner symphony.
Remaining tickets for all three concerts are still available online and at the Philharmonie Berlin box office. The concert on Saturday, 14 September 2024, will also be broadcast live in the Digital Concert Hall.
We would like to draw your attention to a conversation we had with Wolfgang Rihm on the occasion of the planned residency in March this year.