Name: Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Start: 2027-05-23T20:00:00
End: 2027-05-23T20:00:00

Trust and forgiveness are at the heart of Arnold Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht.” The composition of the same name was inspired by Richard Dehmel’s poem, in which a woman and a man meet during a nighttime stroll through a “bare, cold grove.”

The woman is expecting a child by another man and asks her companion for forgiveness. He, however, pledges his devotion to her and also accepts the unborn child: “a warmth of our own flickers / from you into me, from me into you / that will transfigure the stranger’s child.” Schoenberg transforms the poem’s originally sluggish, downward-moving melody into a soaring and luminous musical language.

“Every day,” says Fazıl Say, “one should be better than yesterday, despite everything that’s happening in the world.” This conviction is also reflected in the title of his cello concerto, “Never Give Up.” Say sees the work as a “cry for freedom and peace” and, musically, takes a stand against terror, violence, and war. At the same time, the composition explores the longing for freedom and independence. Hopeful cello cantilenas clash with percussion that, according to the score, rattles like “Kalashnikovs,” as well as with shrill woodwinds. In the end, hope prevails.

This passionate plea for courage, resistance, and optimism can be experienced with the musical boundary-pusher and former DSO “Artist in Focus,” Abel Selaocoe.

Richard Strauss’s tone poem “Death and Transfiguration” also explores existential experiences and the limits of life. At its center is an imaginary protagonist marked by illness and pain.

“The sick man lies in slumber, breathing heavily and irregularly, confined to his bed,” Strauss describes the opening. “Fever shakes his limbs,” while memories of his childhood come back to life. In the finale of this metaphysical composition, the soul detaches itself from the body and sets out in search of “that which, in eternal space, he may find fulfilled in the most glorious form—what he could not accomplish here on earth.”