Berlin's three opera houses, five major orchestras, two music conservatories and dozens of jazz clubs provide world class music every day. Best of all, some of this wonderful music is available to avid concert goers at little or no cost.
Lunch Concerts
The Berliner Philharmonie's free Lunch Concerts on Tuesdays at 1 p.m. are no longer a well-kept secret. In fact, the number of visitors to this weekly event has increased so dramatically that since 14 April 2009 the Philharmonie has had to introduce a new chip-regulated entrance to make sure it doesn't run afoul of safety standards.
On Tuesday, 21 April, the program featured Daniel Barenboim and his son Michael Barenboim performing Wilhelm Furtwängler's Sonate für Violine und Klavier Nr 1 d-Moll (1935).
Music lovers throng the foyer, stairways and first floor, the lunchtime version of coveted balcony seats. They're all here: students trailing in across the street from the Staatsbibliothek (state library) ; business men and women on lunch break toting laptop cases; tourists putting away their Berlin Made Easy guidebooks in which they've plotted out the rest of the day; even a group of wide-eyed pre-schoolers accompanied by two mothers. They belong to a parent's initiative in Charlottenburg, one of them explains, and their idea is to bring three to six-year-olds in contact with classical music, live and up close.
The audience is rapt. For fifty minutes a sonata for violin and piano suspends all activities in the middle of their day. The morning's tasks are done, the afternoon's still to come, but for now, music knits up the ravell'd sleeves of care.
When it comes time for the last applause, members of the audience add their own creative touch. At the concert's end, a couple of listeners "rapunzel" down bouquets of roses in a shopping bag on a rope from the top stair, and Pamela Rosenberg, artistic director of the Philharmonie, plays along by unpacking the bag with a flourish for the Barenboims.
Lunch Concerts are free and take place every Tuesday at 1 p.m. in the foyer of the Philharmonie at Herbert-von-Karajanstr. 1, 10785 Berlin. The next Lunch Concert takes place on Tuesday, 28 April at 1 p.m. A buffet lunch accompanies each concert and is served till 15 minutes before the beginning of the concert and again at the end. The program for the month is at www.berliner-philharmoniker.de
Casual Concerts
Leave the black dress and pearls at home when setting off for the Causal Concert series by the Deutsche Symphonie Orchester (DSO). The audience dresses down as do the conductor and musicians. The Casual Concert series is the initiative of the DSO's principal conductor Ingo Metzmacher, who both conducts and speaks about the music informally with the musicians and the audience.
Berlin audiences learned with sadness that the charismatic conductor will soon be giving up his post at the DSO. Earlier this month Metzmacher officially announced that he would not be extending his current contract, which runs to the end of the 2009/10 season. The reason, he said, was that he found unacceptable the financial constraints put upon the orchestra that would make layoffs inevitable.
All the more reason to make sure you catch one of the upcoming concerts in this series, before Metzmacher's departure. Concerts begin a half hour later than usual (at 8:30 p.m.) and there is a run for the seats as soon as the doors open since all seats, including the best, cost a flat 15 EUR. The concert lasts for about an hour, but if the evening seems too short, you can accompany the DSO to the After Concert Lounge at the 40seconds Club right after the performance.
The DSO has three Casual Concerts this season. They each cost 15 EUR and take place at the Philharmonie at Herbert-von-Karajanstr. 1, 10785 Berlin . Performances begin at 8:30 p.m. and are about an hour long. Entry to the After Concert Lounge is 3 EUR with the concert ticket. The next Casual Concert is on Tuesday, 19 May and features compositions from the year 1909. Program details are at www.dso-berlin.de
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