Principal percussionist Jan Westermann is a fan of the new Night Session format, in which Joana Mallwitz and the Konzerthausorchester have a dialogue guest from a different walk of life:

"In the second episode on March 8, chef Sophia Rudolph will be a guest. I'm excited to see how the musical contributions can be combined with food or cooking and can already reveal that we will be playing "table music" with three percussionists, which may be different than expected.

At the first night session in November, I already had the feeling that our audience was made up a little differently than usual. This is perhaps partly due to the fact that we don't have the usual concert setting in the hall and play very different short pieces. We also had Monolake as a guest, who also attracted fans of electronic music who might not otherwise go to a classical concert.

If I could wish for a future guest to talk about similarities and differences, I could well imagine a sportswoman or an actor."

Mathilde Rahnenführer, our team assistant in Communications and Marketing, is looking forward to Elisabeth Leonskaja playing the two piano concertos by Johannes Brahms on March 2 & 3:

"On the first weekend in March, our tribute to Elisabeth Leonskaja comes to a crowning conclusion for me with these two concerts. For me, they are all about friendship: on the one hand, I can hardly wait to experience what the pianist calls the 'musical friendship' between her and conductor Michael Sanderling as they dedicate themselves to the 'sacred cause' together with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin (also Elisabeth Leonskaja's beautiful words). Secondly, I want to follow closely how the two piano concertos by Johannes Brahms meet Robert Schumann's Fourth Symphony. Brahms is known to have been an admirer and younger friend of Schumann, so I'm looking forward to finding out whether this will be musically perceptible during the weekend."

"Concerts that don't fit into pigeonholes, offer creative scope for outstanding artists and where you can also get closer to the people behind the music" are favourites of Lucilla Schmidinger of the programme department. Her recommendation alongside the second night session with Joana Mallwitz: “Klazzik on March 10 with composer, violinist and singer Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion.“

Christiane Ulbrich from the first violins is particularly looking forward to the concerts on March 15 & 17. Iván Fischer will then conduct the Konzerthausorchester with our Artist in Residence, violinist Augustin Hadelich:

"Iván Fischer's unbelievable joy of making music spills over into the orchestra every time in such a way that it sounds tremendously good. The way he works with us is simply marvellous. I'm looking forward to Augustin Hadelich, because I've never played with him before. I'm delighted that he's playing Dvořák's violin concerto - it's really beautiful and deserves to be performed more often."

Nike Kunkat is a trainee in the Konzerthaus event management department.  She is looking forward to the 30th episode of "Spielzeit" on the twitch platform on March 16 with artist in residence Augustin Hadelich:

"The streams from the Konzerthaus are varied, entertaining and a successful balancing act between classical music and the gaming platform. They don't lose their seriousness, even though they are so relaxed. In this episode, I'm part of the chat team and can take a look behind the scenes. I'm looking forward to experiencing Augustin Hadelich up close rather than on stage."

Violist Felix Korinth, who has been involved in several "Spielzeit" episodes so far, also recommends the stream on twitch on 16 March:

"I've been playing 'World of Warcraft' for years, so I know the twitch platform as a gamer. I like the fact that 'Spielzeit' is such an experimental format and I'm delighted that the Konzerthaus was the first to recognise the potential of twitch for classical music. One point of contact is orchestral music, which is also played in WoW. One 'Spielzeit' programme was about the parallels between an orchestra and a raid. We hit a nerve with that. There were a lot of questions and, incidentally, a lot of praise for our sound and visuals."