The night of 21 June is the shortest of the year – an event that was celebrated in pre-Christian times with midsummer bonfires and all manner of rituals, especially in the Celtic, Germanic and Slavic cultures. The purpose was currying favour with the gods on behalf of the annually recurring cycle of sowing, growth and harvest. Christianity turned the heathen festival into one honouring St. John the Baptist, but in mythology the solstice marked both a high-point and a turning point in the year.

Holm Birkholz invites you to a special summer solstice festival in the Chamber Music Hall of the Berlin Philharmonie. The violinist, who in addition to his long service as a member of the orchestra is also an active composer, will offer an hour-long performance starting half an hour before midnight. He will be collaborating with his cellist colleague David Riniker and the Japanese dancer Emi Hariyama, who was trained at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and has danced with the Berlin State Ballet.

The programme features a new work on the theme of “solstice” for violin, cello, singing bowls and dance, commissioned from Birkholz by the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation. The performance will make use of three original music boxes for which Karlheinz Stockhausen composed his Tierkreis (Zodiac) cycle. Birkholz will also transport his listeners into a Japanese natural landscape in his works Kirschblütenträume und Die Heimfahrt der Fischer auf dem Li-Fluss, and with Mandala, he will open up contemplative sound-worlds alternating music and silence.

Fri, 21 Jun 2013 11.30 p.m.
23:30 | Kammermusiksaal
10 €
Tickets are available via phone +49 30 25488 999 or at the box office

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