Australian composer Brett Dean will return to the Berlin Philharmonic in the 2026/27 season as composer-in-residence, marking a homecoming for the internationally acclaimed musician who spent 14 years in the orchestra’s viola section before forging a major career as a composer.

Dean, one of Australia’s most prominent contemporary composers, joined the Berliner Philharmoniker as a violist in 1985 and remained with the ensemble until 1999. His appointment reunites him with the orchestra that helped shape his musical voice and will spotlight a body of work recognised for its vivid orchestral imagination, structural sophistication and dramatic intensity.

“The sound of this orchestra is still inside me when I compose,” Dean said in a statement announcing the residency.

Brett Dean. Photo © Stefan Hoederath/Berlin Philharmonika

Launching his residency on 10 September, Dean takes the podium for a program titled Brett Dean Conducts Brett Dean, which includes his works In Conversations with Schumann, And once I played Ophelia and Beggars and Angels.

In an interview published on Berlin Philharmonika’s website, Dean said that his years as a player with the orchestra were formative.

“The sound of this orchestra is always still there when I compose, even now,...