Petrenko opens his eighth season as chief conductor on 21 August with Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. The concert will be streamed live on the Digital Concert Hall.
The Berliner Philharmoniker will launch its 2026/27 season on Friday, 21 August, with chief conductor Kirill Petrenko leading a programme of Elgar and Tchaikovsky at the Philharmonie Berlin.
The concert, beginning at 19:00 local time (17:00 GMT), pairs Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Op. 36, with Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36. The performance will also be available as a live stream through the orchestra’s Digital Concert Hall.
For Petrenko, the evening marks the beginning of his eighth season as chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, a position he has held since 2019.
Elgar and Tchaikovsky open the season
The two works chosen for the opening share an underlying sense of autobiography and concealed meaning. Elgar’s Enigma Variations, premiered in 1899, consists of a theme and 14 variations containing musical portraits of people in the composer’s circle of friends and family.
Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, composed in 1877, is similarly connected to the composer’s personal circumstances. Its recurring “fate motif” provides a thread through a work written during one of the most turbulent periods of his life.
A season stretching from Berlin to South America
The opening concert begins a 2026/27 season in which Brett Dean returns to the orchestra as composer in residence. Dean spent 14 years as a violist with the Berliner Philharmoniker before leaving the ensemble in 1999 to concentrate on composition.
The season will also take Petrenko and the orchestra across the Atlantic for a major tour of the Americas. Following four concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York, the Berliner Philharmoniker will travel to South America for the first time in more than 25 years.
The tour will include the orchestra’s first-ever performance in Bogotá, as well as concerts in São Paulo and Buenos Aires, continuing a season in which international touring forms a significant part of the ensemble’s programme.
Petrenko is scheduled to conduct 47 symphony concerts during the season, which will also include the continuation of Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen with Die Walküre and programming marking the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s death.
How to watch
The season-opening concert will be streamed live on the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall on Friday, 21 August at 19:00 Berlin time (17:00 GMT).Watch the Berliner Philharmoniker season-opening concert on the Digital Concert Hall
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