On New Year’s Eve, 1991, the Berlin Philharmonic gave its annual New Year’s concert in the city’s Schauspielhaus. The Wall was still fresh in the minds of Berliners from both the former West and East; the two cities had only resorbed as one a little over a year earlier. Under the baton of Claudio Abbado, the program included Beethoven’s incidental music for Goethe’s “Egmont,” with soprano Cheryl Studer and actor Bruno Ganz.
Once More Unto the Breach
Liev Schreiber, Karen Slack, and Philip Boehm on Egmont’s moment
