The 2026/2027 Season

Subscriptions now available!

As a subscriber to the DSO, you have your very own favourite seat – in every concert and in every season – and save up to 43 % in the process. Interested? Explore our 2026/2027 concert season and reserve the best seats now!

The Season at a Click

Subscriptions  Season Brochure Kazuki Yamada Season motto Guests and Programmes Soloists  More Concert Formats  Chamber Music

Clicking the play-button loads content from Youtube. To the privacy policy

Music Director Kazuki Yamada

With the 2026/2027 season – just in time for its eightieth anniversary – a new era begins for the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin: Kazuki Yamada is taking his post as Music Director. The 47-year-old Japanese conductor is thus the ninth in an illustrious series that began with Ferenc Fricsay in 1946. »It’s a match!« stands at the beginning of the brochure for the new season, and indeed Kazuki Yamada and the DSO is the meeting of two who knew from the first moment that they were destined for each other.

With six programmes initially, Kazuki Yamada is presenting himself with the DSO. Great classics, the new, the old, the unfamiliar and the unusual stand side by side as equals and as a matter of course:

The inaugural concert on 4 October 2026 covers a broad panorama across humanity, spirituality and nature – with Ives’ ›The Unanswered Question‹, Grieg’s Piano Concerto (Alice Sara Ott), Anna Clyne’s ›Woman of the Mountain‹ and Debussy’s ›La mer‹. The concert on 20 December 2026 focuses on spirituality and musical profundity: from Saariaho’s ›La passion de Simone‹ via Bach’s famous Chaconne (in a version for orchestra by Hideo Saitō) to Bruckner’s unfinished Ninth Symphony. The concert on 26 March 2027 sheds light on connections between Bohemia and America: Florence Price’s First Symphony and Dvořák’s Cello Concerto (Pablo Ferrández).

On 25 April 2027, a programme with strong impact follows: Rufus Wainwright’s ›Dream Requiem‹ featuring three choirs, soprano Regula Mühlemann and Iris Berben as narrator. The concerts on 7 and 8 May 2027 create a romantic climax with Bacewicz’s Overture, Dutilleux’s Cello Concerto ›Tout un monde lointain …‹ (Jean-Guihen Queyras) and Berlioz’s ›Symphonie fantastique‹. The musical exploration of the soul in Schönberg’s ›Verklärte Nacht‹ and Strauss’ ›Tod und Verklärung‹ marks the finale on 23 May 2027, along Fazıl Say’s cathartic, infectious Cello Concerto ›Never Give Up‹ (Abel Selaocoe).

Season motto ›Ach, Mensch‹

The DSO is presenting its 2026/2027 concert season under a motto that deliberately has many meanings: ›Ach, Mensch‹. The themes that have explicitly preoccupied the orchestra in recent years: music by women, works by Black composers, socio-political responsibility and democracy – have become an integral part of its programming and repertoire. The DSO is now expanding its horizon and taking the interjection ›Ach, Mensch‹ as the point of departure for a season dedicated to human existence in all its facets.

The concert programmes take up large social themes such as participation, sustainability, expulsion, religion and love. They invite you to listen, empathise and reflect on yourself and on the responsibilities of art and society. The DSO does not wish to offer any ready-made answers. Rather, it seeks to offer stimuli, ask questions – and to do so at every concert. These questions accompany the symphonic programmes of the season, sometimes contemplatively, sometimes provocatively, sometimes even humorously – often they are from the famous ›Questionnaire‹ by the writer Max Frisch. They turn the concerts into places for reflection – both inside and outside of the Philharmonie – on art itself and on what it means to be human.

Against this backdrop, Carolin Emcke, Michel Friedman, Maja Göpel, Nikolaus Habjan, Navid Kermani and Düzen Tekkal will share their thoughts and perspectives on being human and its many dimensions with the DSO audience in six programmes. And in the intermissions of DSO concerts, ›ASK! The Room for Every Answer‹ in the foyer of the Philharmonie offers an opportunity to have a conversation about the music heard and the questions asked with oneself, with others and with the DSO. 

Guests and Programmes

The DSO continues to be closely connected to its former Music Directors. Conductor Laureate Kent Nagano is bringing Schubert’s »Great”« Symphony in C Major to the stage, Ingo Metzmacher dedicates himself to 20th-century psalm compositions by Bernstein, Stravinsky and Lili Boulanger

Long-standing cohorts and new friends are conceiving the other symphonic concerts of the season. Simone Young is returning to the DSO with a colourful programme between yearning for death, earthly love, sea and land at Musikfest Berlin. There, the DSO can be heard again, this time together with the RIAS Kammerchor Berlin, its Chief Conductor Justin Doyle, and intimate Requiem compositions by Duruflé and Schnittke. Eva Ollikainen has Thomas Larcher’s Second Symphony on the podium, which the composer dedicated to the thousands who have drowned in the Mediterranean.

Manfred Honeck conducts Mahler’s First Symphony on two evenings; Susanna Mälkki turns to that composer’s ›Resurrection‹ Symphony. Anja Bihlmaier’s concert leads by way of Bacewicz and Adams to Beethoven’s Seventh, while Pablo Heras-Casado places the latter’s Fifth alongside Schumann’s Piano Concerto and the subtle art of puppeteer Nikolaus Habjan. There is also a twin pack of Shostakovich: David Afkham conducts the composer’s Eighth Symphony and Daniele Rustioni his Tenth.

Audience favourite Dalia Stasevska is a guest twice: once with musical landscapes by Adams, Ligeti, Sibelius and Thorvaldsdottir then a second time with Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony. Fabien Gabel creates an arc from von Bacewicz’s Polish Rhapsody to adventurous music for ballets by Ravel and Roussel.

Two Early Music specialists explore the history of music with their expert ears: Thomas Hengelbrock races a line from Haydn’s vocal art to Schumann’s early symphonic music. In her programme ›Mozart’s Requiem – A Tapestry‹, Jeannette Sorrell places the unfinished work by the Viennese composer with four American contemporary composers who address questions of memory, tradition, racism and striving for freedom.

Barbara Hannigan presents, as a soprano and conductor in personal union, Francis Poulenc’s monodrama ›La voix humaine‹ as rousing, multimedia opera performance. Wayne Marshall is another such dual talent: he conducts music by Gershwin, Wallen and Weill and takes over the solo part in the ›Rhapsody in Blue‹. The third multi-talent is the violinist Renaud Capuçon, who interprets from the podium works by Sohy and Brahms. With a Polish-Bohemian programme Dinis Sousa makes his debut on the podium of the DSO, as does Hankyeol Yoon, who arrives with Tchaikovsky’s ›Pathétique‹ and Unsuk Chin’s ›Frontispiece‹. 

Season Brochure 

You can find detailed information about the season in our online concert calendar, but also in our season brochure, which we will gladly send you free of charge, hot off the press, and which you can browse through digitally here: