Karajan-Akademie der Berliner Philharmoniker

To conclude the festival, Musikfest Berlin and the Karajan Academy under Simon Rattle fly through the red gorges of the canyons in Utah and up to the stars: Olivier Messiaen’s »Des Canyons aux étoiles…« is a birthday gift to the USA and also a spiritual hymn to the closely woven links between the divine and nature, between birdsong and the shades of colour in the rainbow.

From the canyons of America up to the stars: when the New York art patron Alice Tully commissioned a new work from Olivier Messiaen to commemorate the bicentenary of the United States, she probably suspected she was unlikely to receive a hymn to the USA. Instead, the committed Catholic composed »Des Canyons aux étoiles…« in order to »glorify God for all he has created,« with all »the beauties of the earth (its rocks and birdsong) and the beauties of the physical and spiritual heavens.«