As the BBC once said in the introduction to a concert, Edward Elgar’s oratorio The Dream of Gerontius is seen in Great Britain as a “national monument”. While the work enjoys nearly the same esteem as Handel’s Messiah and Mendelssohn’s Elijah in its native, almost every performance abroad is seen as a rediscovery. And it is to such that the Berliner Philharmoniker and conductor Daniel Barenboim invite you with this concert.

To make The Dream of Gerontius comprehensible to audiences, comparisons are often drawn – but these only partially go to the core of the work. Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration is comparable, according to some: As with Elgar, it is about someone dying who ultimately achieves heavenly bliss, but in contrast to Strauss, it is not about fighting and heroism, but a spiritual vision of the transition to the afterlife.

Parallels are also often drawn to Wagner’s music, which Elgar revered. The through-composed structure is doubtlessly inspired by Wagner in that there is no division into arias and choruses. And there are also some elements reminiscent of Parsifal. Overall, however, The Dream of Gerontius is a completely independent composition with an individual musical language and a penetrating power of faith. One of the first continental Europeans who recognized the value of the oratorio was, incidentally, Richard Strauss, who after a performance, praised Elgar as “the first English progressive musician”.

Daniel Barenboim and the Berliner Philharmoniker can look back on an artistic partnership lasting forty-five years. It was as a pianist that Barenboim made his debut with the orchestra under the direction of Pierre Boulez in June 1964. He first conducted the orchestra five years later. At his most recent appearance in April 2010 he conducted works by Brahms, Wagner, and Elgar. As soloist, he performed the two Chopin Piano Concertos with the orchestra in October 2010 (concductor: Asher Fisher).

Daniel Barenboim was born in Buenos Aires in 1942 but moved to Israel with his parents ten years later. His first piano teacher was his mother, followed by his father. He was ten when he made his professional debut in Vienna and Rome, and it was not long before he was undertaking international tours. He made his conducting debut in London in 1967 and since then has appeared with leading orchestras throughout Europe and the United States. The most important stages in his career to date have been as principal conductor of the Orchestre de Paris from 1975 to 1989, as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1991 to 2006 and as general music director of Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden since 1992. In the autumn of 2002 the Berlin Staatskapelle appointed him principal conductor for life. Barenboim has additionally appeared as a guest conductor at many international festivals, including the Bayreuth Festival, where he conducted a number of important productions every year from 1981 to 1999. Since the start of the 2007/08 season he has also worked closely with La Scala, Milan, in the role of Maestro Scaligero and since December 2011 as their Music Director.

In 1999 Barenboim and the Palestinian writer Edward Said set up the West-Eastern Divan Workshop, which every summer brings together young musicians from Israel and the Arab countries in order that the shared experience of communal music-making may encourage dialogue between the different cultures of the Middle East. In 2002 Barenboim and Said received the Príncipe de Asturias Prize for their peace efforts in fostering international understanding. Among other awards that Daniel Barenboim has received are the Großes Verdienstkreuz of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize; he was named »Grand officier dans l’ordre national de la Légion d’honneur« in France and »Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire«.

The Swedish singer Anna Larsson has established herself on the opera stage and in the concert hall as one of the most renowned altos internationally. Her repertoire ranges from Monteverdi’s Orfeo, the great masses of Bach and Beethoven, Verdi’s Requiem and the vocal-symphonic works of Brahms and Mahler, to Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1 (Jeremiah). As an opera singer, Anna Larsson focuses on roles in the music dramas of Richard Wagner in which she has appeared at theatres such as the Royal Opera houses in Copenhagen and Stockholm, the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, the state opera houses in Vienna, Munich and Berlin and at festivals including Salzburg, Florence and Aix-en-Provence. This season, she sings Erda in Das Rheingold at the Staatsoper im Schiller Theater in Berlin under the baton of Daniel Barenboim. The artist regularly performs with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors. She made her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in the soprano part in Mahler’s Second Symphony (conducted by Claudio Abbado) during a European tour by the orchestra in October 1997; she most recently performed with the orchestra in Berlin as Erda in Wagner’s Rheingold conducted by Sir Simon Rattle in mid-June 2006. Anna Larsson, who is also a passionate performer of lieder, was named Royal Court Singer by King Carl XVI Gustaf in 2010. In summer 2011 she opened her own concert hall Vattnäs Konsertlada near Mora (Sweden).

The Rundfunkchor Berlin, founded in 1925, produced great musical moments of the 1920s and 30s under the direction of conductors such as George Szell, Hermann Scherchen, Otto Klemperer and Erich Kleiber. After the Second World War, the choir and its principal conductor Helmut Koch made the oratorios of Handel internationally known in their original versions. Dietrich Knothe (1982 – 1993) formed the choir into a precision instrument for the most difficult of works; Robin Gritton (1994 – 2001) both enriched and refined the ensemble’s palette of colours. Since 2001, the Rundfunkchor Berlin has been led by Simon Halsey, who places particular emphasis on stylistic and linguistic perfection, resulting in lively and exciting performances of works from all periods and in all styles. Their work together is documented by a busy recording schedule; recently their CD of Kaija Saariaho’s opera L’amour de loin with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester conducted by Kent Nagano won the 2010 Grammy Award for best opera recording. Simon Halsey, who was awarded the “Bundesverdienstkreuz” (Cross of the Order of Merit) in January 2011, has also initiated many of the choir’s education and outreach projects, the interdisciplinary event series Broadening the Scope of Choral Music as well as the annual Sing-along Concert. The choir has been a partner of leading orchestras and conductors all over the world, including long-standing partnerships with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and the Berliner Philharmoniker. The Rundfunkchor Berlin last appeared with the Berliner Philharmoniker in December 2011 performing Poulenc’s Gloria, conducted by Nicola Luisotti.

Ian Storey is from Chilton in the English county of Durham. He first studied furniture design at the University of Loughborough before training as a singer in New Zealand and London (including at the National Opera Studio), Milan and Trieste. His stage career began in 1991 at Opera East as the Male Chorus in Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia. Since then, Ian Storey has developed a broad repertoire which, in addition to the standard works of the 19th and 20th century from Bizet to Shostakovich, also includes rarely-heard operas such as The Olympians by Arthur Bliss and A Tale of Two Cities by Arthur Benjamin. Engagements have taken the tenor not only to the major British opera companies, but also to La Scala in Milan, Zurich Opera, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Frankfurt Opera, the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm, the Washington National Opera and, in Berlin, to the Deutsche Oper and the Staatsoper im Schiller Theater. In addition, he has also performed at major festivals such as those at Glyndebourne, Edinburgh, St Gallen and Torre del Lago. In addition to his opera commitments, the artist is also invited to perform as a concert soloist with leading symphony orchestras; this will be his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker. In 2008, Ian Storey was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters (DLitt) by Loughborough University, and is the official representative of the English county of Herefordshire.

Kwangchul Youn received his musical training in his native South Korea as well as in Sofia and Berlin. A winner of several competitions, he gave his debut in 1988 in Seoul, and was an ensemble member at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin from the 1993/94 season until 2004. Since then, engagements have taken him to the major opera houses, such as those in Vienna, Munich, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Hamburg, London, Paris, Barcelona, ​​Buenos Aires and New York. Kwangchul Youn’s repertoire includes stage works by Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Gounod, Verdi, Strauss and, in particular, Richard Wagner. The bass performs at prestigious festivals (such as Bayreuth, Ludwigsburg and Salzburg) and also enjoys international success on the concert stage. In addition, he regularly gives recitals with his regular accompanist Helmut Oertel. Kwangchul Youn performed with the Berliner Philharmoniker for the first time in May 2002 in the bass role of Mozart’s Requiem under the baton of Daniel Barenboim; his most recent Berlin concerts with the orchestra were in mid-March 2007 with three performances of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, conducted by Bernard Haitink. Since 2009, Youn Kwangchoul has been a professor at the College of Music at Seoul National University.