Berlin Philharmonic chief reaches a critical midpoint

Berlin Philharmonic chief reaches a critical midpoint

News

norman lebrecht

February 11, 2022

The conductor Kirill Petrenko turns 50 today.

He is intentionally an unknown commodity, virtually unrecorded, unmarried, unwilling to engage with public life, although his relations with musicians are intense and mutually supportive.

He is being wooed by two US orchestras.

Petrenko, up to this point, has chosen to be an enigma (it so happens that he is an Elgar fan). Russian born, raised in Austria, he made his name as music director of the Komische Oper Berlin and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. He is a vigorous podium presence, inclined to leaps and bounds between long meditative periods.

What the next half century will hold is chiefly up to him.

Happy birthday, Kirill Petrenko!

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