“A musical work is never alone – it always has a large family to get along with (…) and it must be able to live in the present in many different ways.”

− Luciano Berio

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary On November 4, 2025, the Zafraan Ensemble and Latvian soprano Katrīna Paula Felsberga will present the eleven world premieres of the “Cabinet of Folksongs” project in the Kammermusiksaal of the Berlin Philharmonie to mark the 100th birthday of Luciano Berio (1925-2003), while at the same time focusing on the Baltic States and Latvia in particular. In “Folk Songs”, Berio has arranged eleven folk songs or popular songs from various countries for soprano and seven musicians. The eleven new compositions of “Cabinet of Folksongs”, commissioned from eleven different composers – analogous to the eleven songs of Berio’s “Folk Songs” – are based on the “Dainas”, traditional, pre-Christian texts, songs, games, poems, spells and spells from Latvia. These were collected by the Latvian folklorist and philologist Krisjanis Barons (1835-1923) from the 1870s onwards, so that by 1880 he already had a collection of around 150,000 individual slips of paper, each with a small four-line poem on it. It was the beginning of a gigantic collection, which today contains almost a million individual, traditional Latvian dainas.

World premieres by: Lisa Streich, François Sarhan, Oscar Bianchi, Maija Hynninen, Zeynep Gedizlioğlu, Yoav Pasovsky, Samir Odeh-Tamimi, Claire-Mélanie Sinnhuber, Ian Anderson, Ádám Bajnok and Manuela Guerra.

Musical direction: Miguel Perez Iñesta

Soprano: Katrīna Paula Felsberga

Zafraan Ensemble:

Liam Mallett/flute, Martin Posegga/saxophone, Emmanuelle Bernard/violin, Josa Gerhard/viola, Martin Smith/violoncello, Beltane Ruiz/contrabass, Clemens Hund-Göschel/piano, Anna Viechtl/harp, Daniel Eichholz/percussion

Dramaturgical support: Sebastian Hanusa

Production manager: Piotr van Gielle Ruppe

PR and Project Management: Sofia Surgutschowa

With the support of the Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin.