Culture
THE ANNIVERSARY •
The Philharmonia returns to Berlin under Sinopoli’s baton
Twenty-five years after the death of Giuseppe Sinopoli, Robin Ticciati conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra London in a programme that combines Wagner, a rare score by Sinopoli himself and Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony
Giuseppe Sinopoli (Getty image)
Berlin. Sixteen years after its last appearance in the German capital, the Philharmonia Orchestra returns to the city. On Thursday 15 October at 8.00 pm, Robin Ticciati will conduct the orchestra in the main hall of the Philharmonie, in a concert dedicated to Giuseppe Sinopoli. The programme includes the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, Pour un Livre à Venise, Vol. 1, composed by Sinopoli in 1975, and Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony. The soprano Maria Motolygina will sing in the Liebestod.
Sinopoli had led the Philharmonia between 1984 and 1994. The relationship between the Venetian conductor and the orchestra is therefore part of the ensemble’s very history, bringing a tangible part of his artistic legacy to the stage. The return to Berlin also re-establishes another connection. It was here that Sinopoli died on 20 April 2001, having suffered a heart attack whilst conducting Aida at the Deutsche Oper.
The initiative, organised by the Italian Cultural Institute in Berlin as part of SINOPOLIANA 2026, stems from an idea by Director Alessandro Turci and Giorgio Mulè, Vice-President of the Chamber of Deputies, to attempt to restore Sinopoli to the world of live music, bringing together the various facets of his experience as a conductor, composer and intellectual.
The concert opens with Wagner, through whose work Sinopoli achieved international renown, from the Deutsche Oper to the Bayreuth Festival. His interpretations focused on the structure of the score, the clarity of the orchestration and the psychological tensions of the musical drama. In 2000, he became the first Italian conductor to conduct the entire Ring des Nibelungen cycle at Bayreuth.
In Tristan, the tension between desire and fulfilment, anticipation and dissolution takes the form of music that has changed the history of opera. Sinopoli saw in it a field of exploration concerning time, memory and the symbolic meanings of human experience.
The focus of the evening is Pour un Livre à Venise. The composition reworks material by Costanzo Porta, a Venetian Renaissance composer, interweaving historical polyphony with the language of the contemporary. Here, Venice is a city of layers, a place where the past continues to generate meaning. Sinopoli’s compositional style brings together the influence of Bruno Maderna and Luigi Nono, the musical heritage of Venice and a taste for a modernity capable of transcending history.
With Dvořák, the programme takes on a new light. The Eighth Symphony combines cantabile passages, references to nature, a rich timbre and rhythmic vitality. Folk tradition and the grand symphonic form coexist without becoming rigid. The music unfolds through openings, digressions and transformations, with a freedom that lightens the density of Wagner and Sinopoli’s compositional style.
A conductor, composer, archaeologist and scholar of ancient civilisations, Sinopoli has always brought together music, history, philosophy and literature. At the Philharmonie on 15 October, his legacy will be commemorated first and foremost through music.