Daniel Barenboim conducts the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra at the Philharmonie Berlin on Tuesday 17 November 2026 at 8pm, with Lang Lang as soloist. It is a guest concert, not part of the Berliner Philharmoniker's own season. Tickets are sold by the Pierre Boulez Saal.
Barenboim founded the orchestra in 1999 with the Palestinian-American writer Edward Said. It brings together young musicians from Israel, the Palestinian territories and Arab countries, and since 2017 its home base has been the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, run by the Barenboim-Said Akademie. The name comes from Goethe's poetry collection West-östlicher Divan.
What to expect
A programme of German Romantics. Wagner's Siegfried Idyll comes first, the piece he wrote as a birthday surprise for Cosima and had played on the stairs of their house. Then Lang Lang plays Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, short, fast and brilliant. The evening closes with Schumann's Symphony No. 3, the Rhenish, written after his move to Düsseldorf.
Good to know
- When: Tuesday 17 November 2026, 8pm
- Where: Großer Saal, Philharmonie Berlin, Herbert-von-Karajan-Straße 1, 10785 Berlin
- Tickets: through the Pierre Boulez Saal, Französische Straße 33d, phone +49 30 479 974 11, or its website. Prices were not listed on the Philharmonie page.
- Programme: Wagner, Siegfried Idyll; Mendelssohn, Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25; Schumann, Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, Op. 97, Rhenish
- Getting there: S+U Potsdamer Platz (ten minutes on foot), bus 200 or 300 to Philharmonie
Nearby
The evening before, architect Annabelle Selldorf lectures at the Neue Nationalgalerie across the square. Free entry.