Season Opening Concert

Season Opening Concert

with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Joana Mallwitz, and Alice Sara Ott (Artist in Residence)

The Konzerthausorchester Berlin and Joana Mallwitz welcome you to the new season with Maurice Ravel's hypnotically intensifying “Boléro”. When Alice Sara Ott then sits down at the grand piano for Bryce Dessner's piano concerto dedicated to her, two other key artists of the season are brought together: The celebrated Munich-born pianist with Japanese roots is the new Artist in Residence, while the French-based American is the 2025/26 Composer in Residence at the Konzerthaus.

Our chief conductor about his music: “It has an immediacy and physicality that I find very remarkable. It is highly complex and technically challenging, yet it does not remain abstract, but is always a rousing, vivid experience. By working through the music and the musical material in this way, he catalyzes an energy that I only know from Beethoven. This kind of energy is not only immediately transferred to the audience, but also to us musicians. It's simply great fun to play his music.”

We will send you off into the summer night with this same Beethovenian energy when, after the piece “Nautilus” by the British composer Anna Meredith, you will hear his Symphony No. 1. It is the first harbinger of the complete symphonic cycle with which Joana Mallwitz and the Konzerthausorchester are celebrating the Beethoven Year 2027 - including one of her famous “Expeditionskonzerte” for each of the nine symphonies.

Program and cast

Konzerthausorchester Berlin
Joana Mallwitz, conductor
Alice Sara Ott, piano

Program
Maurice Ravel – Boléro – Ballet music for orchestra
Bryce Dessner – Concerto for Piano and Orchestra

Intermission

Anna Meredith – Nautilus
Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21