Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Appoints Brett Dean as Creative Partner

A number of Dean's works will appear in the orchestra's 2025/26 season, and Dean himself will perform some of them

The Australian composer and violist Brett Dean has been named as the new Creative Partner of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie (DRP). He succeeds the prominent German composer and clarinetist Jörg Widmann, who held the post for the last two years.

Dean has collaborated with contemporary-music experts HK Gruber and Martyn Brabbins to conceive programs for two weeks' worth of concerts. In addition, he will appear as a soloist and chamber musician with members of the orchestra.

The works to be performed include the 2010 quintet Epitaphs, a five-movement work in which each individual movement commemorates a different person. Then, Dean's Pastoral Symphony takes the sounds of nature and birdsong as its jumping-off point, but also meditates on humanity's treatment of nature and our disregard for the climate.

Finally, Dean's Viola Concerto is "of jagged virtuosity, full of rhythmic rough edges, the kind of hybrid that might have resulted if Paul Hindemith had played in a band with Tom Waits."

Hailing originally from Brisbane, Brett Dean was a violist in the Berliner Philharmoniker for fifteen years. Since that time he has cultivated a career as one of the foremost composers of his generation, with his works being championed by conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Markus Stenz, and Daniel Harding.

The winner of the Paul Lowin Song Cycle Prize and a UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers award, Dean has served as Artist in Residence with the Melbourne Symphony and Composer in Residence at the Cheltenham Festival. He has also been Artistic Director of the Australian National Academy of Music.

PC: Bettina Stoess