Berio and Boulez at the Berlin Music Festiva;
Both Composers 100th Birthdays
By: Susan Hall - Sep 05, 2025
The Berlin Music Festival: Celebrating Berio and Boulez
The Berlin Music Festival is honoring Luciano Berio on the occasion of his 100th birthday with eight concerts devoted to his work. His explorations of acoustic sound fused with electronics, his relentless push to test the technical and expressive limits of instruments, his inventive musical collage and dialogues between traditions are all being showcased. Pierre Boulez, whose centenary also falls this year, is likewise being celebrated.
Klaus Mäkelä, future music director of both the Chicago Symphony and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, opened the festival with the Netherlands orchestra in a performance of Berio’s Rendering.
Rendering threads together Schubert’s fragmentary sketches for a Tenth Symphony with Berio’s modern tale on the melodies . Yet this performance did not capture the fresh, exploratory spirit of the piece, where Schubert’s lyricism meets Berio’s mysterious and colorful textures. Still, the orchestra’s individual players shone. Celesta passages delicately marked the shift from Schubert to Berio. Woodwinds and brass shone in vivid solos.
Berio himself often reflected on music’s relationship with time, titling his Norton Lectures at Harvard Remembering the Future.
Mäkelä is a conductor of great promise, though perhaps his new posts are somewhat ahead of his artistry. His readings of Berio and Bartók were generally subdued, sparking only in the final movement of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra—a whirlwind passage whose wild energy lends itself to the kind of sweeping, physical gestures that he delivered with conviction.
That work, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony to aid Bartók in a time of illness and financial need, remains one of the orchestra’s proudest legacies. In Berlin, it drew the same warm enthusiasm it has inspired for generations.
Elsewhere in the festival, Esa-Pekka Salonen—now dividing his time between Paris and Los Angeles—conducted Berio’s Requies, written as a tender resting place for Berio's former wife and lifelong collaborator, mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian.
As the festival continues through September 23, further highlights include:
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Pierre Boulez: A tribute concert honoring his centenary, featuring Rituel – in memoriam Bruno Maderna.
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Igor Stravinsky: Performances of his groundbreaking ballet score Le sacre du printemps.
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Luigi Cherubini & Ludwig van Beethoven: Philippe Herreweghe leading Cherubini’s Requiem alongside Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony.
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Ensemble Modern & IEMA: Programs devoted to the uncompromising music of German composer Helmut Lachenmann.