100 years special concerts

Radio concerts

Radio as a source of inspiration

While the RSB’s entire 2023/2024 season will be dedicated to its 100th anniversary, including works by radio pioneers Weill and Hindemith, two radio concerts at the Haus des Rundfunks will highlight special aspects of the orchestra’s history.

As early as the 1920s, there was a lively international exchange of programmes, because at that time many countries around the globe had discovered radio waves as a super-fast way of transmitting information. This led to concert broadcasts from Berlin to the USA, for example – live! For recording possibilities beyond the shellac record did not exist at first.

For the Berlin Radio Orchestra, this meant starting work at 3 a.m. in order to be able to broadcast an evening concert from Berlin at prime time in New York.

But newly created formats and compositions were also exchanged internationally. Vladimir Jurowski devotes himself to three experimental Russian radio scores from the 1920s. Two of them pay homage to the memory of the director Vsevolod Meyerhold, who was murdered by Stalin.
Johannes Kalitzke presents repertoire rarities from the second half of the 20th century and continues the tradition of composers regularly conducting their own works at the RSB have conducted.

Haus des Rundfunks
Masurenallee 8-14
14057 Berlin