Berliner Philharmoniker

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About Berliner Philharmoniker

Treat yourself to a guest performance by the Berliner Philharmoniker – live and on demand

Closer to the music: In the Digital Concert Hall, you always have the best seat in the house! Each season, over 40 concerts are broadcast live and then offered in the on-demand archive. There are already hundreds of concert videos featuring all the stars of classical music, plus interviews, films and playlists.

Register now and test the Digital Concert Hall for 7 days – free of charge and without obligation!

The Digital Concert Hall at a glance:

• Over 40 live broadcasts per season with all the stars of classical music

• Hundreds of archive concerts from six decades on demand

• Free interviews and concert introductions

• Fascinating documentaries, portraits and playlists

• Free educational concerts for the whole family

• Highest Quality: 4K UHD Video, Hi-Res Audio, Immersive Audio (Dolby Atmos)

Conductors: Kirill Petrenko, Sir Simon Rattle, Claudio Abbado, Herbert von Karajan, Daniel Barenboim, Herbert Blomstedt, Pierre Boulez, Semyon Bychkov, Sergiu Celibidache, Riccardo Chailly, Gustavo Dudamel, Iván Fischer, Daniele Gatti, Valery Gergiev, Alan Gilbert, Bernard Haitink, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Mariss Jansons, Vladimir Jurowski, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Seiji Ozawa, Donald Runnicles, Tugan Sokhiev, Christian Thielemann, John Williams and many others

Soloists: Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Piotr Anderszewski, Martha Argerich, Emanuel Ax, Joyce DiDonato, Isabelle Faust, Sol Gabetta, Christian Gerhaher, Hélène Grimaud, Barbara Hannigan, Janine Jansen, Jonas Kaufmann, Leonidas Kavakos, Evgeny Kissin, Magdalena Kožená, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Yo-Yo Ma, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Murray Perahia, Maria João Pires, Maurizio Pollini, Thomas Quasthoff, András Schiff, Baiba Skride, Christian Tetzlaff, Mitsuko Uchida, Yuja Wang, Frank Peter Zimmermann and many others.

For optimal use, the Digital Concert Hall app requires access to the following elements:

- Calendar: For adding concerts to your calendar

- Local network: For playing via Chromecast

Terms of use: https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/terms

Version

App Information

The best seat in the house (when it works)

Ever sit in the nosebleeds at Carnegie Hall, squinting at ant-sized musicians while the guy next to you unwraps candy for 20 minutes? The Berliner Philharmoniker app promises to fix that. Front row seats to one of the world's greatest orchestras, right from your couch. For €14.90 a month.

I stumbled onto this after my local symphony raised ticket prices to $85 for decent seats. That's one concert. This app gives you 40+ live concerts a year, plus 850 in the archive. The math seemed obvious. Four weeks and probably 30 concerts later, I'm torn between calling this the future of classical music or just another buggy streaming service with a fancy name.

My month with the Berlin Phil

Started with the free 7-day trial on a Friday night. Kirill Petrenko conducting Brahms. The 4K video quality? Stunning. You can see the sweat on the cellist's forehead, watch the conductor's every facial expression. The sound through my decent headphones made my living room feel like row G at the Philharmonie.

Then it froze. Black screen, audio still playing. Killed the app, restarted. Worked for ten minutes. Froze again. This became the pattern.

Week two, I discovered the issue: the app doesn't remember where you stopped. Every concert starts from the beginning. No resume button. Seriously, Netflix figured this out in 2010. Paused Mahler's 9th to make dinner, came back, had to manually scrub through 45 minutes to find my spot. The scrubbing is painful - no preview thumbnails, just hoping you land somewhere close.

By week three I'd developed workarounds. Download concerts for offline viewing (takes forever but more stable). Use the website on my laptop instead of the app when possible. Never pause anything. Just let it play.

The archive is incredible though. Found a 1989 Karajan concert I'd only heard bootlegs of. Claudio Abbado's complete Beethoven cycle from 2001. Simon Rattle's farewell concert. It's like having a time machine for classical music nerds.

The pros and cons

What classical music reddit thinks

r/classicalmusic has mixed feelings. Found a thread with 300+ comments from earlier this year. Half worship the archive ("digital preservation at its finest"), half complain about the price for a single orchestra. Someone pointed out you can get Apple Music Classical AND IDAGIO for the same monthly cost.

The Berlin Phil's own Discord (yes, they have one) is more positive but everyone mentions the resume button. It's become a meme. Someone made a counter: "Days without resume button: 2,847."

TechCrunch's classical reviewer called the video quality "unmatched" but noted the "surprisingly amateur" app development. The Gramophone praised the Dolby Atmos audio but questioned the value proposition for anyone not obsessed with German orchestral music.

Check the App Store reviews - 4.86 stars from die-hard fans, but sort by recent and it's all 1-stars about freezing and playback issues. The Android situation is worse. Current version has a 2.9 rating. Multiple reports of crashes when changing songs.

How it stacks up

*Requires Apple Music subscription

Three problems that shouldn't exist in 2025

Here's what kills me: this is the Berlin Philharmonic. They're not a startup. They've been running this service since 2008. These are basic features any streaming service should nail:

1. The resume button thing. It's 2025. My doorbell cam remembers where I paused. But a €149/year streaming service can't?
2. Cross-platform sync. Start watching on your phone, can't continue on TV. Your favorites don't sync. Downloaded content doesn't transfer.
3. The Android discrimination. Half the world uses Android. The app barely functions. They know this - check their help center. It's all workarounds.

Who this is actually for

After a month, I know exactly who needs this app:

If you're the person who owns every Berlin Phil recording, has Karajan's autobiography on your nightstand, and considers the Philharmonie your spiritual home - subscribe immediately. The archive alone justifies the price.

If you want variety in your classical streaming, look elsewhere. medici.tv costs the same but covers dozens of orchestras. Apple Music Classical is cheaper and has everything (just no video).

If you're classical-curious and want to explore, definitely not this. Start with the free trial, sure, but IDAGIO or Apple Music Classical make more sense for beginners.

The verdict after four weeks

Am I keeping my subscription? Yeah, but only because I'm a Mahler completist and they have every Mahler symphony the orchestra has performed since the 70s. That's worth €14.90 to me.

But I also subscribed to Apple Music Classical for when I want something that actually works reliably. Together they're €25/month, which is still less than one concert ticket here in London.

The Berliner Philharmoniker app feels like classical music's Tesla - incredible when it works, frustrating when it doesn't, priced for enthusiasts, and somehow both futuristic and unfinished. The content is world-class. The delivery system needs work.

If they ever add that resume button, I'll throw a party. You're all invited.