Close Encounters

In 2025, the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie entered into a partnership with the Youth Orchestra of the National Symphony Orchestra Taiwan (NSO). As part of an exchange program, five of our musicians participate in a project in Taiwan each year—and five Taiwanese musicians join our tours in Europe. At the invitation of our partner orchestra, we will travel to Asia in the spring of 2027 to visit the home countries of some of our members. Jun Märkl, chief conductor of the NSO and a former member of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, will conduct.

The program brings together works that translate existential experiences into sound in very different ways. Olivier Messiaen’s Le Tombeau resplendissant, composed in 1931 as an early orchestral work, already embodies the intense, spiritually charged musical language that would come to characterize his later work. The title, which roughly translates to “The Resplendent Tomb,” refers to an exploration of death and transcendence, in which Messiaen uses extreme contrasts, sharp rhythms, and luminous timbres to create a state between turmoil and transfiguration.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold wrote his Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, using themes from his Hollywood film scores. The year 2027 marks several significant anniversaries: the 130th anniversary of Korngold’s birth, the 70th anniversary of his death, and the 80th anniversary of the concerto’s 1947 premiere—an ideal occasion to perform this masterpiece of late Romanticism, celebrated for its warmth, passion, and symphonic brilliance.

The program concludes with Johannes Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34—originally composed as a chamber music piece—which ranks among the most passionate works in his oeuvre. In Arnold Schoenberg’s orchestral arrangement, the dense, dramatic structure of the quintet is transformed into symphonic dimensions without losing its inner dialogic character. This creates a tension-filled arc between expressionist sonic vision and Romantic formal rigor, between individual lament and orchestral unfolding.

Akim Camara, Program Committee