CANCELLED: Berlin Philharmonic / Kirill Petrenko

Many of the big international top orchestras are unable to travel at the moment, or only to a very limited extent. What a stroke of luck, then, that one of the world’s best orchestras is based around the corner, so to speak: the Berlin Philharmonic. Since Kirill Petrenko took up the position of the orchestra’s music director more than a year ago, enthusiastic comments can be heard from all sides. And justifiably so, as the new Berlin dream team already demonstrated at the Elbphilharmonie in February this year. Now the Berlin Philharmonic and its chief conductor are returning to Hamburg.

We can look forward to an exquisite programme of musical riches that still complies with the current Corona rules. The centrepiece is Richard Strauss’s expressive »Metamorphosen« for 23 solo strings, which he wrote towards the end of the war: the score’s prevailing mood is one of deep earnest. Dmitri Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony dates from the same period. The work was a slap in the face for the Soviet leadership: instead of the heroic and triumphant music that the culture bureaucrats expected, Shostakovich produced a caricature of a symphony. Tonight’s concert is introduced by a new work by American composer Andrew Norman, who has been nominated several times for the Grammy award and the Pulitzer Prize.