Berlin Radio Choir, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin & Steffen Tast
Biography Berlin Radio Choir, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin & Steffen Tast
Steffen Tast
was born in 1965 in Berlin.
After studying violin at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” Berlin in 1987, he became a member of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB). In the same year, his interest in contemporary music led him to the chamber ensemble “Kammerensemble Neue Musik” Berlin (KNM).
In recent years, he has been appearing increasingly as a conductor. Initially, the focus was on working with KNM Berlin. This was followed by invitations as a conductor with the Ensemble Oriol, the Kammerakademie Potsdam, the Ensemble Modern, and the Ensemble Ascolta Stuttgart. Since 2005 he has been regularly conducting chamber orchestra concerts with members of the RSB and their orchestra academy, and also symphony concerts as part of the family- and school student concerts of the orchestra since 2014. In his home village of Klein Leppin in north-western Brandenburg, he was one of the initiators of the project “Dorf macht Oper” (“Village makes opera”) in 2005 and has since been its musical director.
Steffen Tast is involved as mentor in the orchestra academy of the RSB.
The Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin
holds an internationally recognised position among the German radio orchestras and Berlin’s top orchestras. Vladimir Jurowski has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director since 2017. Acting alongside him since 2019 is Karina Canellakis as Principal Guest Conductor.
The RSB dates back to the first musical radio hour of the German Broadcasting Corporation in October 1923. The previous chief conductors, including Sergiu Celibidache, Eugen Jochum, Hermann Abendroth, Rolf Kleinert, Heinz Rögner, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and Marek Janowski, formed an orchestra that has experienced the vicissitudes of German history in the 20th century in a special way.
Today, the RSB has become a top address for outstanding young conductors on the international music scene: Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Vasily Petrenko, Jakub Hrůša, Alain Altinoglu, Omer Meir Wellber, Lahav Shani or Nicholas Carter. Many of them made their Berlin debut with the RSB and now conduct it regularly.
Since 1923, important composers of the 20th and 21st centuries have conducted the RSB or performed their own works as soloists: Paul Hindemith, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Sergei Prokofiev, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schönberg, Igor Stravinsky, Wladimir Vogel, Kurt Weill and Alexander Zemlinsky, as well as, more recently, Krzysztof Penderecki, Peter Maxwell Davies, Friedrich Goldmann, Berthold Goldschmidt, Siegfried Matthus, Matthias Pintscher, Peter Ruzicka, Heinz Holliger, Jörg Widmann, Thomas Adès and Brett Dean. Brett Dean and Marko Nikodijević were most recently present at the RSB as composer-in-residence, and in 2021/2022 Jelena Firssova will enrich the season with her work.
Thanks to close ties with both Deutschlandradio and Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (rbb), all RSB symphony concerts are broadcast on the radio. For more than 50 years, the RSB has made regular guest appearances in Japan and Korea as well as at German and European festivals and in music centres worldwide.
