Musikfest 1: Two Rituals

For over a decade, Musikfest has been the highlight of September in Berlin. The annual festival, co-organised by the Berliner Festspiele and Berlin Philharmonic Foundation, offers reliably fascinating programmes – often with a focus on twentieth and twenty-first century repertoire – performed by some of the world’s best soloists, conductors and orchestras. At this year’s opening concert, Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin inaugurated the festival with a tribute to the late Pierre Boulez featuring a captivating performance of his immersive Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna followed by Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps, a work with which Boulez was closely associated as a conductor. 

Daniel Barenboim has, in recent years, established himself as one of the most dedicated champions of Boulez’s oeuvre, not only in his willingness to…