The festival aims to preserve, reshape and increase the visibility of this unique genre, which has so far been significantly underrepresented in Berlin’s cultural landscape and beyond.
Berlied places art song in an interdisciplinary context. This approach expands its narrative horizons, adding another layer of interpretation to the already existing dialogue between music and poetry, singer and pianist. The invited artists present exceptional, high-quality programs that reflect their personal artistic voice. A special focus is placed on rarely performed works, works by female composer and new compositions.
In 2026
berlied understands art song as an art form that speaks directly to human experience: love and loneliness, memory and hope, transience and renewal – while continually opening up new perspectives on the world we live in today.
From October 16–18, 2026, the festival brings five programmes to Maison de France, each telling a very different story. Pillow Talk turns the obsession of falling in love into a musical monologue about intimacy, projection, and loneliness. Hope is a thing with feathers finds a poetic response to transience and renewal in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Oskar Posa & Friends brings a Jewish Viennese composer out of the shadows of music history. The interactive family concert Aventure Mélodique turns the audience into co-creators of a musical journey. And Still Life translates the four seasons into inner states – in dialogue with the musical and poetic world of a K-pop song about transience and new beginnings.
Five concerts, five perspectives – and a festival that invites audiences to discover art song anew.
Directors’ Note
We envision berlied as a creative springboard for exceptional artists, both emerging and established, to present their unique passion-projects. We decidedly promote female and female-identifying artists, composers and writers in order to increase their presence in concerts venues and to help integrate them into the canon of classical chamber music.
berlied seeks out unconventional venues to foster an intimate, living-room style atmosphere where the boundaries between performers and audience dissolve. Affordability and accessibility are of central value to the festival in order to offer a wider audience an entry point into the world of art song.