Find articles | Sam Johnstone

Wunderkind Russian piano virtuosi are no novelty in European concert halls. Artistic seriousness and subtle interpretive skill are a harder sell. Daniil Trifonov, a pianist with intelligent and original interpretations that belie a maturity beyond his tender years, closed his season-long residency at the Berlin Philharmonic with a performance of Scriabin's rarely performed piano concerto.

The most recent work by the elder statesman of contemporary music in Germany is given a performance in Berlin's Philharmonie.

Zubin Mehta and the Berlin Philharmonic have an extraordinary relationship lasting over five decades. In three performances in the Philharmonie, Mehta paired a piece from the core of his romantic repertoire with a new percussion concerto.

With a semi-staged production, directed by Benjamin Davis, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra has also been bringing George Benjamin's opera to concert hall audiences.

Now entering his second season as Chief Conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Robin Ticciati is keen to show the breadth of his repertoire and the extent of the orchestra’s abilities. 

Over 10 years after his death, Karlheinz Stockhausen still occupies a complex and difficult place in the canon of contemporary composers. This year's Musikfest Berlin featured a Stockhausen focus, of which the "creation ceremony" Inori was the climax.

Jürgen Flimm bowed out of his role as Intendant of the Berlin State Opera with the German premiere of Salvatore Sciarrino's Ti vedo, ti sento, mi perdo.

Berliner Philharmoniker’s interpretation of Das Paradies und die Peri reaches for the heavens. 

Aperghis’ migrants and a new arrangement of Janáček’s The Diary of One who Disappeared by Schöllhorn were well-handled treatments of their subject matter, yet burdened by an overwrought conceptual framework.

Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s music was the starting point for this year’s Ultraschall Festival, marking what would have been his 100th birthday.

Launching a new “Reflektor” series of short festivals, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie invited Bryce Dessner to curate two days of concerts.

After Jonathan Meese's Parsifal staging was rejected by Bayreuth, he channelled his frustrations into an "arch-Parsifal" which shoots the titular hero into space, with a musical re-imagining of Wagner’s score by Austrian composer Bernhard Lang.

In L’Invisible, which had its première last weekend at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Aribert Reimann has condensed three plays by Maeterlinck into bite-size chunks that vanish before they can be savoured.

Vladimir Jurowski is fond of grand statements, and sometimes off-the-wall programming – genius when it works, baffling when it doesn’t. 

The first edition of the New Life Festival, dedicated to Jewish musicians who fled from or suffered under the National Socialist regime during the Second World War, uncovered some hidden gems.

Three concerts over one day at the opening weekend of Bachfest Leipzig combined Bach’s music with that of composers from Rachmaninov to Sibelius, but nothing matches the unrivalled bliss of Bach’s own music performed with total conviction.

The Staatskapelle Berlin brought a showcase programme to the Berlin Philharmonie under chief conductor Daniel Barenboim and made a case for themselves as one of the best bands performing today.

Overshadowed by its Hanseatic cousin Hamburg, Antwerp recently celebrated the opening of its own new concert hall. In his Symphony no. 2, Wim Henderickx tested the hall's capabilities with a multi-media extravaganza.

Teodor Currentzis, bad boy of early music, appeared at the Konzerthaus Berlin with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and MusicAeterna for a performance that turned it up to 11.

Vikingur Ólafsson, a daring and unique artist, never repeated himself in a performance of Philip Glass' Etudes for piano as part of the Berlin Konzerthaus' "Festival USA".

John Adams and Peter Sellars' biblical oratorio given a fine concert performance by the Berliner Philharmoniker under departing chief conductor, Sir Simon Rattle.

A firecracker performance by Vladimir Jurowski and the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin giving urgency to music composed at a time that echoes our own.

Daniel Barenboim inaugurated last month the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin. The most interesting feature of the hall lies not in its flowing architecture, but rather in its name: the Pierre Boulez Saal. One year after the French composer death, what is his legacy?

Gidon Kremer, long-time champion of Sofia Gubaidulina, joined the Berliner Philharmoniker and Christian Thielemann for a performance of In tempus praesens.

For Rebecca Saunders, space is just another tool in her compositional armoury. Ensemblekollektiv performed a new tailor-made version of Stasis for the Akademie der Künste.

In a former ballroom in the up-and-coming Neukölln district, the orchestra’s chamber ensemble presented an eccentric programme of music by oddballs and outcasts.

The Musikfest Berlin presented their own ‘Hommage’ to Boulez with his complete works for piano performed by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich.

Berlin’s Konzerthaus Orchestra began its new season with works by two composers set against the artistic orthodoxies of their day.

On the eve of the Musikfest Berlin, Isabelle Faust’s performance of Luigi Nono’s La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura was an extraordinary time capsule back to the work’s premiere in 1988.

Although a British composer by birth, Rebecca Saunders is most respected in Germany, where she has spent much of her working life. Her latest project was an immersive choreographed programme with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie based around her violin concerto still. 

For his guest appearance with the Berlin Konzerthausorchester last weekend, Russell Davies was joined by violinist Chad Hoopes for performances of Glass and Adams alongside Bruckner’s First.

Swiss composer Michael Jarrell was the subject of a composer portrait given by the Ensemble United Berlin under their Artistic Advisor and long-time conductor Vladimir Jurowski.

The Berliner Philharmoniker’s Academy is the future of this city’s most famous orchestra. Established 40 years ago by Herbert von Karajan, a third of current Berliner Philharmoniker members are Academy graduates.