Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in the Zeiss-Großplanetarium

Karina Canellakis is the newly appointed Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, beginning in the 2019/20 season. Internationally acclaimed for her emotionally charged performances, technical command and interpretive depth, Karina’s reputation has risen quickly since winning the Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award in 2016.

Karina made several notable debuts in the 2018/19 season, including with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Dresdner Philharmoniker, Oslo Philharmonic, and Stavanger Symphony. She also makes her Australian debut in a four-city tour conducting the symphony orchestras of Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, and Tasmania. In addition, Canellakis lead the prestigious 2018 Nobel Prize Concert with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, with whom she appears twice in this season. Over the summer, she made her Wiener Symphoniker debut at the Bregenz Festival and returned to the Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Re-invitations in the 2018/19 season feature the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl as well as the symphony orchestras of Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Milwaukee, and North Carolina. She also conducted Don Giovanni with the Curtis Opera Theater at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. In Europe, she returned to the London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, Swedish Radio Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lyon, and Scottish Chamber Orchestra, among others.

Recent seasons have featured debuts with the Orchestre de Paris, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Bamberger Symphoniker, National Orchestra of Spain, the Hallé Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and the Toronto, Vancouver, and Houston symphonies. On the operatic stage, she has conducted Die Zauberflöte with the Zurich Opera, Le nozze di Figaro with Curtis Opera Theatre, and gave the world premiere of David Lang’s opera The Loser at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She has also led Peter Maxwell Davies’ new opera The Hogboon with the Luxembourg Philharmonic, and a fully staged production of Verdi’s Requiem at the Zurich Opera.

Already known to many in the classical music world for her virtuoso violin playing, Karina was initially encouraged to pursue conducting by Sir Simon Rattle while she was playing regularly in the Berlin Philharmonic for two years as a member of their Orchester-Akademie. In addition to appearing frequently as a soloist with various North American orchestras, she subsequently played regularly in the Chicago Symphony for over three years and appeared on several occasions as guest concertmaster of the Bergen Philharmonic in Norway. She also spent many summers performing at the Marlboro Music Festival. She plays a 1782 Mantegazza violin on generous loan from a private patron.
Karina previously served as Assistant Conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. She is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School. Born and raised in New York City, she speaks French, German and Italian.

French mezzo-soprano Virginie Verrez is a graduate of New York’s Juilliard School.  She is the winner of the 2016 Dallas Opera Guild Vocal Competition and a winner of the 2015 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.  She was a member of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program 2015-2017.

In the 2019/20 season, Virginie makes her role debut as Carmen in a new production for the Welsh National Opera and she sings her first Prince Charmant in a new production of Cendrillon for the Stadttheater Klagenfurt. On the concert platform she will sing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin/Karina Canellakis; Mozart’s Requiem with the Orchestre symphonique de Mulhouse/Jacques Lacombe and Beethoven’s Mass in C at the Festival de Saint Denis with the Orchestre Philharmonique du Radio France/Karina Canellakis.

She has sung at the Opéra national de Paris; Wiener Staatsoper; Opéra de Lille, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence; Glyndebourne Festival and, in the United States, for the Metropolitan Opera; Dallas Opera and in Santa Fe.

German Heldentenor, Stefan Vinke, studied as a church musician at the Cologne College of Music before beginning his professional singing career in Karlsruhe and Mönchengladbach. In 1999 he was awarded the position of ‘Young Heroic Tenor’ at the Nationaltheather Mannheim where in 2000 he was voted ‘Male Newcomer of the Year’ by Opernwelt magazine.

Globally renowned as an interpreter of Wagner’s great tenor roles, he has sung the title roles of Parsifal, Lohengrin, Rienzi, Tristan and Siegfried, also Siegmund/Die Walküre, Siegfried/Götterdammerung, Erik/Der Fliegende Holländer, and Walther von Stolzing/Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

His numerous Ring cycle appearances include the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden with Sir Antonio Pappano, the Metropolitan Opera, New York with Philippe Jordan, Wiener Staatsoper and Bayerische Staatsoper under Kiril Petrenko and Deutsche Oper with Donald Runnicles.

He has also sung the title role of Idomeneo, Florestan/Fidelio, Bacchus/Ariadne, Paul/Die tote Stadt, Alviano/Die Gezeichneten, and Jim Mahony/Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny in the theatres of Hamburg, Cologne, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Munich, Paris, Montpellier, Lisbon, Barcelona, Venice, Madrid, Melbourne, Bejing, Geneva, Chicago, Seattle, Hong Kong, Sydney, and at the Salzburg Festival.

His performances of Tristan at the 2019 Bayreuth Festival with Christian Thielemann, and Siegfried /Siegfried and Götterdämmerung at the Müpa in Budapest with Adam Fischer were highly acclaimed. His opera performances in the 2019/2020 season continue with Tristan in Bologna, Athens and Karlsrühe and his first Kaiser/Die Frau ohne Schatten in Leipzig.

A distinguished concert artist, his orchestral engagements in the 2019/2020 season include Beethoven’s ‘Christus am Ölberg’ in Frankfurt and Glanert’s ‘Requiem für Hieronymous Bosch’ with Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic.

The Chinese bass Liang Li has become a most sought-after singer for both opera and concert with performances at all important international companies and festivals. He sings all main roles of his Fach, which includes German as well as Italian and French repertoire. He has got a regular collaboration with conductors like Mariss Jansons, Zubin Mehta, Sir Simon Rattle, Myung-Whun Chung, Donald Runnicles, Tomás Netopil, Sylvain Cambreling, Jonathan Nott, Manfred Honeck, just to name a few.

Highlights of previous seasons include e.g.concert performances of “Turandot”/ Timur with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (Zubin Mehta) in Tel Aviv, “Tristan and Isolde”/ Marke at the National Center of the Performing Arts in Beijing (Shao-Chia Lu; Mariusz Trelinski), Beethoven’s “Symphony no. 9” with the Orchestra of La Scala di Milano (Zubin Mehta), Dvorak’s “Stabat Mater” in the Palace of the Arts in Budapest (Riccardo Frizza). 
He had a huge success with concert performances of “Don Giovanni”/ Commendatore with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra (Jonathan Nott) in Kawasaki, as Hunding /”Die Walküre” at the Hamburgische Staatsoper as well as Filippo /”Don Carlo” (Keri-Lynn Wilson) at Bolshoi Theatre Moscow. He subsequently received the ‘BraVo Award’ at Bolshoi. 
He furthermore portrayed Fiesco in a new production of “Simone Boccanegra” (Paolo Carignani; David Hermann) at the Vlaamse Opera Antwerp, Filippo /”Don Carlo” (Axel Kober) at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Zaccharia /”Nabucco” at the Deutsche Oper Berlin as well as at the Staatsoper Stuttgart, Marke /”Tristan and Isolde” and Daland /”The Flying Dutchman” at the Wagner Festival in Budapest and Sarastro in a Japan Tournée of Barrie Kosky’s production of “The Magic Flute”. He sang a concert of Beethoven’s “Symphony no. 9″ under the baton of Manfred Honeck with the Danish Radio in Copenhagen. As Arkel /”Pélleas et Mélisande” he appeared at the Wiener Festwochen and the Edinburgh Festival.

Liang Li is a regular guest at the Festival Baden-Baden with e.g. “Die Walküre”/ Hunding (Jonathan Nott) and a production of “Manon Lescaut”/ Geronte de Ravoir (Richard Eyre/Sir Simon Rattle), at the Opéra de Paris with “Il Trovatore”/ Ferrando (Daniele Rustioni; Alex Ollé) and “Don Giovanni”/ Commendatore (Alain Altinoglu), at the Deutsche Oper Berlin with “Nabucco”/ Zaccharia, Gurnemanz /”Parsifal” (Donald Runnicles) and “Tristan and Isolde”/ Marke, at the Semperoper Dresden with “Macbeth”/ Banco and “La juive”/ Cardinal de Brogni, in Caen and Luxemburg with “Der Fliegende Holländer”/ Daland (Francois-Xavier Roth), at the Opera Festival Beijing (NCPA) with “Nabucco”/ Zaccharia aside Placido Domingo, at the Palau de les Arts Valencia with “Il Trovatore”/ Ferrando and “Tristan and Isolde”/ Marke (Zubin Mehta).

With his distinguished concert repertoire, Liang Li also appears internationally on all important concert stages, as with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra (Mozart “c-moll Mass”; Andrew Manze), with Dvorak’s “Stabat Mater” with the Bavarian Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Mariss Jansons in Munich and Lucerne, with Rossini’s “Stabat Mater” both at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia (Nicola Luisotti) and at the Palace of the Arts in Budapest (Carlo Montanaro) and with Mahler’s “Symphony no. 8” with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra at Kawasaki (Jonathan Nott), with Mozart’s “Requiem” and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (Manfred Honeck) at Carnegie Hall in New York, at Vienna Musikverein as well as in Pittsburgh, with Verdi’s “Requiem” at the Philharmonie Essen (Tomás Netopil) and at the Palau de les Arts (Carlo Rizzi), with Schumann’s “Faust Szenen”/ Pater Profundus, Böser Geist under the baton of Sebastian Weigle at the Frankfurt Museumskonzerte, with Mahler’s “Symphony no. 8” (Shao-chia Lü) in Taiwan, with Dvorak’s “Stabat Mater” at the Mozarteum Salzburg – just to name a few.

Liang Li was born in China and studied voice in Tianjin and in Peking. He won numerous prizes at International Voice Competitions, e.g. the ‘International ARD Music Competition’ in Munich, ‘Neue Stimmen’ of the Bertelsmann Stiftung and the ‘International Opera-Competition in Shizuoka’ in Japan.

For his outstanding credits for the Staatsoper Stuttgart where Liang Li was a member for ten years and where he sings all important roles of his Fach, he has been honored with the title ‘Kammersänger of the Staatsoper Stuttgart’ in November 2016.

Future and current projects include several new productions at the Hamburgische Staatsoper, his return to both, Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Semperoper Dresden, various concerts and performances with Zubin Mehta, with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra.

Mit rund 60 Konzerten jährlich, CD-Einspielungen und internationalen Gastspielen

zählt der Rundfunkchor Berlin zu den herausragenden Chören der Welt. Allein drei

Grammy Awards stehen für die Qualität seiner Aufnahmen. Sein breit gefächertes

Repertoire, ein flexibles, reich nuanciertes Klangbild, makellose Präzision und packende Ansprache machen den Profichor zum Partner bedeutender Orchester und Dirigenten,

darunter Sir Simon Rattle, Christian Thielemann oder Yannick Nézet-Séguin. In Berlin

besteht eine intensive Zusammenarbeit mit den Berliner Philharmonikern sowie mit dem Deutschen Symphonie-Orchester Berlin und dem Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin

und ihren Chefdirigenten.

Internationales Aufsehen erregt der Rundfunkchor Berlin auch mit seinen interdisziplinären Projekten, die das klassische Konzertformat aufbrechen und Chormusik neu erlebbar machen. Zum Meilenstein wurde die szenische Umsetzung des Brahms-Requiems als »human requiem« durch Jochen Sandig und ein Team von Sasha Waltz & Guests. Nach Gastspielen u.a. in New York, Hongkong, Paris, Brüssel und Athen reiste die Produktion im Frühjahr 2018 erstmals nach Australien. Für sein jüngstes Projekt »LUTHER dancing with the gods« reflektierte der Chor im Herbst 2017 in einer einzigartigen Konzertperformance mit Robert Wilson und Musik von Bach, Nystedt und Reich Luthers Wirkung auf die Künste und in den Künsten. Mit Christian Josts 2014 uraufgeführtem Musik-Tanz-Theater »LOVER« ging der Chor im Frühjahr 2016 auf Asientournee.

Mit seinen Community-Projekten für unterschiedliche Zielgruppen – das große Mitsingkonzert in der Berliner Philharmonie, das Fest der Chorkulturen für Chöre aus aller Welt und die Liederbörse für Berliner Schülerinnen und Schüler– möchte der Rundfunkchor Berlin möglichst viele Menschen zum Singen bringen. Seine breit angelegte Bildungsinitiative SING! zielt auf die nachhaltige Vernetzung verschiedener Partner, um das Singen als selbstverständlichen Teil des Berliner Grundschulalltags zu fördern. Mit der Akademie und Schola sowie der Internationalen Meisterklasse Berlin setzt sich das Ensemble für den professionellen Sänger- und Dirigentennachwuchs ein.

1925 gegründet, feierte der Rundfunkchor Berlin 2015 sein 90-jähriges Bestehen. Der Chor wurde von Dirigenten wie Helmut Koch, Dietrich Knothe, Robin Gritton und Simon Halsey geprägt. Seit der Saison 2015/16 steht der Niederländer Gijs Leenaars als Chefdirigent und Künstlerischer Leiter an der Spitze des Ensembles. Simon Halsey bleibt dem Chor als Ehrendirigent und Gastdirigent verbunden. Der Rundfunkchor Berlin ist ein Ensemble der Rundfunk Orchester und Chöre GmbH Berlin in der Trägerschaft von Deutschlandradio, der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, dem Land Berlin und dem Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg.

In 2016/17 Benjamin Goodson took up his post as assistant of the principal conductor of the Rundfunkchor Berlin. Born in London in 1990 the British conductor studied music and musicology at the University of Oxford. Furthermore he studied conducting with renowned teachers and conductors like Sir Colin Davis, Paul Spicer and Ulrich Windfuhr.

In England he is the musical director of the award-winning Bath Camerata, which he took over in 2015. In the same year – by the age of 24 – he was named by the university to become Oxford’s youngest director of music, a position that he gave up for the Berlin engagement, while he still holds the position as chorus master at the Dorset Festival Opera. Moreover he is a regular guest conductor of various choirs and orchestras with a broad repertoire ranging from early music to contemporary works. In the season 2017/18 he worked with the, the MDR Rundfunkchor Leipzig, the NDR Chor Hamburg, the Netherlands Radio Choir and the London Symphony Chorus, which he prepared for a performance at the BBC Proms.

In the Rundfunkchor Berlin’s 2018/19 season Benjamin Goodson prepares the choir for several works such as Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “Sea Symphony” und Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2. In 2020/21 he will become principal conductor of the Netherlands Radio Choir.