Berliner Philharmoniker II

The programme effortlessly traces a line from Johannes Brahms and his groundbreaking Symphony No. 1 to the enigmatic music of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Oboe Concerto, with soloist Albrecht Mayer, and the monumental sounds Pascal Dusapin elicits from the orchestra.


In the fifth of his seven “Solos for Orchestra” Pascal Dusapin awakens the forces that lie dormant in the wonderwork that is the symphony orchestra. The piece is titled “Exeo”, the Latin for “I go beyond”, and that is where the unexpected awaits listeners, who listen at their own risk. The music plumbs the deepest of depths and scales the heights as far as the perpetual ice whilst dark embers continue to blaze at its core. “Vast and wonderful” is how Chief Conductor Kirill Petrenko put it.


Bernd Alois Zimmermann, born near Cologne, was part of a lost post-war generation. He absorbed at lightning speed that progress that was suppressed by aesthetic/political bigotry and trod his very own path. His early, defiant Oboe Concerto bows down before Igor Stravinsky and at the same time pays its respects to Arnold Schönberg. In doing so, Zimmermann’s independent spirit relishes in bringing together supposed opposites.


Seen in this light, Johannes Brahm’s “First” can also be experienced as treading entirely new symphonic paths, because it was at the very least an attempt to place a contemporary, worthy re-interpretation of symphonic form alongside Beethoven’s model, which itself proved pathbreaking for the future of this genre. Not to mention the matchless “Brahms sound” that, even around 150 years after its world premiere, still inevitably makes its way into the listening heart.


Pascal Dusapin (*1955)

Exeo – Solo für Orchester Nr. 5 (2002)


Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918 – 1970)

Concert for oboe and small orchestra (1952)


Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897)

Symphony No. 1 in C minor, op. 68 (1855–76)


#MusikfestBerlin