Prof. Kerstin Behnke

Kerstin Behnke has been director of the Berliner Cappella and is still conducting the chamber choir TONIKUM in Berlin. She is artistical director of the LandesJugendChor Saar and starting in May 2017 also of the via-nova-choir Munich. She has been working with numerous choirs and orchestras, such as Kammersymphonie Berlin, Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg, the Brandenburger Symphoniker, and the Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester, Markells Voices and Rias-Kammerchor.

Kerstin Behnke’s work as a conductor is on linking musical and extra-musical material thematically, thereby establishing new connections and making them accessible to experience. The venues are integral parts of the events: outside the concert hall, music enters into dialogue with its new surroundings; in the concert hall, extra-musical elements lead beyond the traditional boundaries of a musical performance.

A particular concern of Kerstin Behnke is to revive forgotten works by female composers and to make them known to a wider audience. Thus she conducted, for example, the world premiere of the orchestral version of Lili Boulanger’s “Hymne au Soleil,” reconstructed by the Berlin composer Oliver Korte. Numerous premieres, the Berliner Cappella's anual composition award, and the continual inclusion of compositions from the second half of the 20th century testify to Kerstin Behnke's interest in contemporary music.