Opening Concert of the Pierre Boulez Concert Hall

A stellar lineup of artists, headed by Daniel Barenboim, comes together for the opening concert of the Pierre Boulez Saal, the new architectural highlight of the Barenboim-Said

Akademie in Berlin – “a masterpiece of its kind” (The New Yorker). Anna Prohaska and Jörg Widmann join Daniel Barenboim, “who plays with the sureness of a sleepwalker”

(Süddeutsche Zeitung), for Schubert’s lyrical scene Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, while the latter also partners with the Boulez Ensemble’s strings in Mozart’s Piano Quartet. Karim Said

and Michael Barenboim take on Berg’s Chamber Concerto, and Widmann performs his own Fantasy for Solo Clarinet. The programme is bookended by Boulez’ fanfare-like Initiale

and sur Incises, for three pianos, three harps, and three percussionists. “Absolutely beautiful!” (FAZ)

Quatuor pour la fin du temps

With Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Jörg Widmann, four outstanding soloists dedicated themselves to Olivier Messiaen’s “Quatuor pour la fin du temps”, a unique work of music history, and performed it together at the “Meetingpoint Music Messiaen” that was built on the site of the former prisoner of war camp just outside of German-Polish town Görlitz/Zgorzelec, exactly where the camp’s so-called “theater barrack” once stood. It was there that Messiaen composed the quartet and on January 15, 1941 performed it for the first time in front of fellow prisoners.