Berliner Philharmoniker I

The first concert given by the Berliner Philharmoniker at the Musikfest Berlin 2025 is a tribute to the French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez who would have been celebrating his 100th birthday this year. The orchestra is divided into eight independent groups for Boulez’ extensive and spectacular composition “Rituel – in memoriam Bruno Maderna” featuring the contrasts of order and freedom, narrowness and openness and monumentality and intimacy. The dynamism of these opposing principles is also explored by Ondřej Adámek in his “Between Five Columns”, a homage to Boulez. Boulez additionally set new benchmarks in his interpretations of Igor Stravinsky’s music: in the moments in which the entire orchestra appears to become transformed into a single rhythm machine, the elementary forces and energy of Stravinsky’s legendary ballet score “Le sacre du printemps” dating from 1913 come especially to the fore.

“Ceremonial of death, ritual of the ephemeral and the eternal.” This is an extract from the preface to Boulez’s score of “Rituel – in memoriam Bruno Maderna” which was not only a solemn ceremonial in memory of the death of the Italian conducting colleague and compositional friend of Boulez, but also a musical meditation on the theme of remembrance itself. It additionally provided space to display the substantial influence of Stravinsky’s music throughout the life of Pierre Boulez who had compiled a groundbreaking analysis of “Le sacre du printemps” at the age of only 25. Subsequently, his precise conducting impressively revealed the multiple layering of complex and frequently overlapping rhythms in the ballet score composed for Sergei Diaghilev.

“Between Five Columns” by Ondřej Adámek is a musical and spatial play on the dimensions of soundscapes: “The acoustics of the imaginary five columns becomes altered – sounds are reflected, dissolving and resonating in a variety of forms. At times we hear expansiveness and freedom and at other times we feel the narrowness and tension of limited space.” In this homage to Boulez, two principal motifs based on the first five notes of “Notation X” for piano by the work’s dedicatee encounter one another.