Since 1882, when musicians breaking away from a conductor who treated them badly formed what eventually became the Berlin Philharmonic, the musicians have maintained an iron grip on administration and selection of key personnel.
So, 133 years later, as the Philharmonic stands among the handful of the world's greatest orchestras (its prominent role in Nazi Germany largely forgotten/forgiven), the musicians took several votes in vain to find a successor to principal conductor Simon Rattle — but on Sunday they succeeded.
When Rattle concludes his 16-year run at the helm in 2017, the new principal conductor (they don't even call him music director) will be Kirill Petrenko (no relation to Vasily Petrenko, conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic). The official date is 2018, but Rattle has already announced returning to Britain the year before as music director of the London Symphony Orchestra.
The report from the Philharmonic today:
During an orchestra assembly, Kirill Petrenko was elected by a large majority of the members of the Berliner Philharmoniker as the Chief Conductor Designate of the orchestra and Artistic Director of the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation.
Petrenko, currently music director of the Bavarian State Opera, said: “Words cannot express my feelings – everything from euphoria and great joy to awe and disbelief. I am aware of the responsibility and high expectations of me, and I will do everything in my power to be a worthy conductor of this outstanding orchestra. Above all, however, I hope for many moments of artistic happiness in our music-making together which will reward our hard work and fill our lives as artists with meaning.”
Radio Berlin-Brandenburg reports that "the news is suggestive of Petrenko not renewing his contract in Munich, where he is worshiped by the orchestra and adored by the audience, which he managed to galvanize like few conductors in the past."
Petrenko, born in the Siberian city of Omsk in 1972, is the son of a Ukrainian violinist of Jewish extraction. He made his debut as a pianist at 11. When he was 18, he and his family managed to emigrate to Austria, joining his father, then playing in the Vorarlberg Symphony.
Petrenko graduated with a degree in piano studies, and when he continued his studies at Vienna's University of Music and Performing Arts, he began to study conducting with an illustrious group of teachers, including Myung-Whun Chung, Edward Downes, Péter Eötvös and Semyon Bychkov.
His conducting debut took place in Vorarlberg at age 23, in Britten's Let's Make an Opera. Soon he went to the Vienna Volksoper where he was chorus director, and then in 1999, he became General Director of the Südthüringisches Staatstheater in Meiningen — conducting Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen in 2001, which was his debut in a Wagner opera!
He then headed the Komische Oper Berlin from 2002 to 2007, and succeeded Kent Nagano as general music director of the Bavarian State Opera in 2013.
Those familiar with the Berlin music scene suggest that one reason for Petrenko being selected by the Philharmonic's musicians is that he was the candidate on whom the two largest camps of the orchestra — those for Christian Thielemann (for his musical excellence) and those against him (for his political views) — could compromise.