The Berlin Philharmonic returns to United States, after a pandemic delay

For the world’s top-tier orchestras, touring is a critical way to maintain their international visibility, to be heard by a range of audiences and critics and to uphold and reinforce their hard-earned artistic reputations.

It’s not surprising, then, that the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the most celebrated orchestras in the world, has traveled to the United States 23 times since 1955, with its most recent tour coming in 2016 under the leadership of then-chief conductor Simon Rattle.

“So, for us, it’s really time to come back,” Andrea Zietzschmann said during a virtual press conference from Berlin. A veteran arts administrator, she took over as the orchestra’s general manager in 2017-18.

The ensemble returns to the United States for a nine-concert tour that begins Nov. 10 in New York’s Carnegie Hall and continues through Nov. 22 in Naples, Fla., with a Nov. 16 performance at Symphony Center as part of Symphony Center Presents Orchestras series.

“This tour was supposed to happen in 2020,” Zietzschmann said. “Due to coronavirus, we had to postpone it. Finally, we can return to the States after six years of absence. I’m very grateful, I have to say, to all the promoters and presenters that we could do this tour as it was planned in 2020.”

American violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley, the Philharmonic’s first concertmaster, who will also serve as a soloist for some of the concerts, said it is always a “special highlight” when the orchestra comes to the United States. “I’m very excited that this is our first tour in the U.S. with our chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko,” Bendix-Balgley said. “So, we’re really looking forward to presenting what we’ve been working on over here in Berlin for the American audiences.”

Petrenko, a 50-year-old Russian-Austrian, was named the orchestra’s new chief conductor in June 2015, and formally began his duties in 2019-20. All of his conducting posts have been in Germany and Austria, including general music director of the Komische Opera Berlin in 2002-2007 and the same post with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 2013-21.

Over the years, the Berlin Philharmonic has performed 34 concerts in Chicago, with its most recent appearance occurring in 2009 with Rattle on the podium. For its Nov. 16 concert, the orchestra will perform Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 in E Minor (1904-05), which Petrenko called the “most enigmatic” of Mahler’s works.

Each of the Mahler symphonies is a world unto itself, Petrenko said, and “you live one whole life” across the expanse of a performance. “You never know what happens on the way,” he said. “But still you try to live this piece as Mahler would do it, because for Mahler, was music was something essential, something existential.”

Petrenko already gained a large following through his previous posts and guest-conducting spots, and his popularity has continued to soar with his Philharmonic post. “Whether in Berlin or in Munich, where he has been the Bavarian State Opera’s music director since 2013,” wrote music critic Joshua Barone in January 2020 in the New York Times, “players are unusually devoted to Mr. Petrenko. Audiences, too, cheer him with a kind of enthusiasm more familiar from arena sports.”