New Year's Concert

Have a festive turn of the year with the Konzerthausorchester, great classical hits and an impressive contemporary violin concerto, about which our chief conductor Joana Mallwitz reveals: “I got to know our soloist Pekka Kuusisto with this very violin concerto by Bryce Dessner, which we are now performing together in the Konzerthaus. This concerto was written especially for him. He has performed it all over the world, developed it further and really made it his own. Pekka is the personified protagonist of this piece. An important part of the work is the cadenza. He always improvises it anew, and in each of our performances so far he has blown me away with it. In the cadenza alone, you experience his unique ability, in which he seems to overcome the limits of violin playing. This applies both technically and by adding additional means of expression, for example when he plays his violin like a guitar or a percussion instrument or even uses his own voice with singing or whistling.”

Program and cast

Konzerthausorchester Berlin
Joana Mallwitz, conductor
Pekka Kuusisto, violin

Programme
Richard Wagner
Overture to the opera The Flying Dutchman

Bryce Dessner
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra

Interval

Edvard Grieg
Suite from the incidental music to Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt No. 1, op. 46

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
The Hebrides – Concert Overture in B minor, op. 26

Bedřich Smetana
The Moldau (from the symphonic poem cycle My Fatherland)