Berlin conductor Petrenko worried ‘no one needs us anymore’

Kirill Petrenko thought back to the spring of 2020, when his first season as chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic was abruptly stopped by the coronavirus pandemic.

"We all were very destroyed because at a certain point we thought no one needs us anymore," he said. "Their life goes on.

The concert halls are closed. The theaters are closed. Some people are making their jobs, but we are sitting at home."

Public performances were suspended on March 12, 2020. When concerts resumed with a chamber-sized orchestra in Berlin's empty Philharmonie that May 1 with a digital feed, Petrenko likened it to when Glenn Gould abandoned playing piano live and retreated to the recording studio.

Regular performances in front of a full audience didn't return until May 2022.

"Then we understand one more time a little bit what our profession is about, because of communication," Petrenko said during a Zoom interview with U.S. media on Oct. 24. "It's not just music-making, it's music-making in front of someone or for someone or to provide our knowledge but also to change someone who is in this room right now, This is what was missing so much."

Petrenko will lead the Berlin Philharmonic in their first U.S. tour in six years. He conducts Mahler's Seventh Symphony at Carnegie Hall on Nov. 10 and 12, and has a concert in the middle with Andrew Norman's "Unstuck," Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 1 with soloist Noah Bendix-Balgley and Korngold's Symphony in F-sharp. The tour includes the Mahler in Chicago (Nov. 16); Ann Arbor, Michigan (Nov. 19); and Naples, Florida (Nov. 22); and the other program in Boston (Nov. 13), Ann Arbor (Nov. 18) and Naples (Nov. 21).

The orchestra has played 74 Carnegie concerts, starting with its first U.S. tour in...