Building Bridges

Season 2023/24
Julius Asal, Martina Consonni, Tomoki Park
Building Bridges – András Schiff presents young pianists

“It is with great pleasure that I can introduce three excellent pianists to you: Julius Asal, Martina Consonni and Tomoki Park. Germany has given us some of the greatest composers and pianists so it is good to welcome in Julius Asal a bright young talent from this country. Julius is also an excellent chamber music player. Martina Consonni is full of life and “Italianita”, her musicality is most engaging. Tomoki Park is a brilliant mind, intellectual in the best sense but full of emotions. He is very interested in new music and plays it with understanding and enthusiasm. Please welcome them with open hearts.”
(Sir Andràs Schiff über die Programmteilnehmer der Saison 2023/24.)



Even after graduating from a prestigious conservatory, it is not easy for young musicians to position themselves successfully in the international music market – because regardless of talent and technical excellence, they often lack performance practice and access to important networks. This is where Sir András Schiff’s programme Building Bridges comes in, with which he has been providing targeted and sustainable support for young pianists since 2014.

Each season, András Schiff, who himself built his international acclaimed career without the springboard of a major competition win, selects three gifted pianists with unique musical personalities and, in cooperation with conc.arts berlin, arranges recitals for them at concert venues and festivals throughout Europe. As honorary artistic director, András Schiff selects the participants and develops the repertoire together with them. Implementation and organisation are carried out by conc.arts berlin gUG.

With Building Bridges, Sir András Schiff has established a unique model for the sustainable promotion of young musicians, enabling young pianists to build their own bridges to the professional music world.

With the kind support of the Melinda Esterházy de Galantha Foundation and C.Bechstein.

Find more information about the pianists of the current and following seasons, the concert dates and the idea at Building-Bridges-website.

WASSERMUSIK AUF DER SPREE
Babylon ORCHESTRA & Sarahbanda make the river Spree resound!

As part of this year’s Berlin Summer Festival of Culture, the two ensembles set sail on two rafts and immersed the audience on the shores between Holzmarkt 25 and Funkhaus Berlin in rousing Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Caribbean worlds of sound. They droped anchor at the landing stages Mercedes Benz Arena/East Side Gallery and Funkhaus Berlin on Nalepastrasse. At both stops, the ensembles played half-hour concerts, two at the East Side Gallery and one at the Funkhaus.

Also on board was a team from the Abendschau from rbb, who were able to participate directly in the action on the Sarahbanda’s raft:

Abendschau from Monday, 14 August 2023, 7.30 p.m.  
Abendschau from Monday, 14 August 2023, 9.45 p.m.

Sarah Willis was still a live guest on rbbkultur on Monday morning!

The programmes
The Berlin-based Babylon ORCHESTRA presents Echoes of the Mediterranean. The programme combines love songs, ballads, personal stories and vocal pieces newly written for the occasion, based on texts by authors who lived in the countries around the Mediterranean or were connected to it in different ways in their lives. The combination of composed and improvised elements, acoustic and electric as well as electronic instruments creates an almost scenic concert that shows the richness of this cultural heritage. Sephardic, Arabic, Turkish and Greek folk songs with new arrangements form the core of this concert programme.

Sarah Willis and the Havana Lyceum Orchestra have formed an intimate bond: their joint project Mozart y Mambo, in which they combine European art music with Cuban rhythms and South American compositions, is enjoying huge success worldwide. For this project, the famous Berliner Philharmoniker’s horn player joins the chamber music ensemble Sarahbanda to enchant the banks of the Spree with Caribbean flair.

Dates & venues
Pier at Reederei Riedel an der East Side Gallery
• 18 – 18:30: Babylon ORCHESTRA
• 18:30 – 19: Sarahbanda
• 20.30 – 21: Babylon ORCHESTRA
• 21 – 21.30: Sarahbanda

Pier at Funkhaus Berlin
19:30 – 20: Babylon ORCHESTRA
• 20 – 20:30: Sarahbanda

… and Spreeufer between Holzmarkt and Treptower Park
An event by conc.arts berlin, programme partner of the Kultursommerfestival Berlin 2023. The concerts take place as part of Kultursommerfestival Berlin 2023. The Berlin 2023 Cultural Summer Festival is conceived and implemented by Kulturprojekte Berlin in cooperation with over 100 programme partners on the initiative of the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion.

Nordic Lights Festival –
Barokkanerne, Concerto Copenhagen, Drottningholms Barockensemble, Finnish Baroque Orchestra, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra
30. Juni & 1. Juli 2023
Philharmonie Berlin & Säälchen auf dem Holzmarkt

Vivaldi’s ‘Spring’ on the Hardanger fiddle – Swedish folk music arranged for baroque orchestra and nyckelharpa – “Andalusian Panzerwagen Jazz” from Finland – baroque music from the Danish-German border region and from Sweden – a chamber music excursion into Swedish Romanticism: the Nordic Lights Festival brings together the four most important baroque orchestras in Northern Europe, Barokkanerne (Norway), Concerto Copenhagen (Denmark), Drottningholms Barockensemble (Sweden), Finnish Baroque Orchestra (Finland) and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra for an inspiring night of concerts at Säälchen at Holzmarkt. The multifaceted programme not only shows the musical richness of Northern and Central Europe, but also the almost unlimited possibilities of interpretation for period instrumentation. Soloists are the bass-baritone Jakob Bloch Jespersen, the virtuoso on violin and Hardanger fiddle, Ragnhild Hemsing, and the “innovator of the guitar”, Petri Kumela. Immerse yourself and celebrate with us!

The concert performance of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra on the previous evening in the Berlin Philharmonie will kick things off. Afterwards, the musicians of the five orchestras will meet on stage together for the first time to play Edvard Grieg’s “From Holberg’s Time”.

The festival was conceived by conc.arts berlin and the Nordic Baroque Scene (NBS). The NBS is a cooperation platform established by Barokkanerne, Concerto Copenhagen, the Drottningholms Barockensemble and the Finnish Baroque Orchestra (FiBO) with the aim of strengthening the Nordic Baroque Scene through joint innovative projects, highlighting its diversity and quality while expanding its international visibility. This includes joint opera productions, reciprocal concert invitations and collective education programmes. In cooperation with Stormen Konserthus, the NBS hosted the Aria Borealis Bodø Festival in the summer of 2022, which also included an international early music vocal competition.

The Nordic Lights Festival marks another milestone: not only do the four ensembles present themselves together in Berlin for the very first time, but they also invite a Central European orchestra, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, to expand the network and share the joy of exchange and cooperation.

Find out more on the festivals’s website.

Kick-Off
30 June 2023, 08.00 p.m., Philharmonie Berlin
Herbert-von-Karajan-Straße 1 / 10785 Berlin
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: A Midsummer Night’s Dream op. 61 – Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, RIAS Kammerchor, Pablo Heras-Casado (conductor), Max Urlacher (actor)
Edvard Grieg: „Aus Holbergs Zeit“ op. 40 – NBS & FBO
Tickets for this concert are available here.

Nordic Lights Festival
01 July 2023, 06.00 p.m, Säälchen auf dem Holzmarkt
Holzmarktstraße 25 / 10243 Berlin
With works by Antonio Vivaldi, François Couperin, Johan Helmich Roman, Dietrich Buxtehude, Luigi Boccherini, Antti Auvinen, Johan Agrell, Franz Berwald, Joseph Haydn, Carlos Baguer, Marin Marais, Agnes Ida Pettersen and traditionals from Norway and Sweden.
Tickets for this concert are available here.

With the kind support of “Klangwert” – Ensemble-Förderung der Aventis Foundation.