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, 25 years later,” he sais. “It’s still those experiences that I’m kind of tapping into even as I’ve tried to extend my own possibilities with orchestration and composition more generally. And especially when I write for the Berliner Philharmoniker, it feels like being on home turf.”

Born in Brisbane in 1961, Dean first came to international attention as a violist before establishing himself as one of the most significant composers of his generation. Since leaving the Berlin Philharmonic, he has built an extensive catalogue spanning orchestral, chamber, vocal and operatic works, with commissions from major ensembles and opera houses around the world.

Among his best-known works are the opera Hamlet, premiered at Glyndebourne in 2017, and the violin concerto The Lost Art of Letter Writing, which won the 2009 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. His music is regularly performed by leading orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.