personal note Concert series Featuring Students of the Barenboim-Said Akademie
Personal Note is a concert series conceived, curated, and performed by the students of the Concert Curation course. Under the direction of Prof. Yael Kareth, the course empowers young musicians to connect performance with storytelling, audience engagement, and cultural relevance. Participants are invited to rethink the concert as a social and cultural space — to explore what it can communicate and how it can resonate today — while refining their own artistic voices. Questions such as “What story do I want to tell with my music?”, “For whom is it meant?”, or “What kind of aesthetic and emotional experience do I wish to create?” stand at the heart of the process. The result is a series of concerts in an intimate, open atmosphere that fosters a genuine connection between performers and audience.
This year, the concert series Personal Note is dedicated to the theme “Musical Metropolises.” Four concerts focus on the cities of Vienna, Paris, New York, and Berlin — places with a rich musical history and a vibrant present. The programs explore composers, musicians, and movements from different eras that have shaped the cultural heritage of these cities, emerging from a process of collaborative musical storytelling in which the students contribute their individual perspectives and creative voices.
THE CONCERTS

Fri, Dec 19, 2025
VIENNA
Tradition and revolution coexist in a city where aesthetic norms were created to be broken.

Sun, Jan 18, 2026
PARIS
Where Debussy and Ravel painted with sound and Stravinsky set the stage on fire, effortless chic and audacity are par for the course.

Sat, Apr 18, 2026
NEW YORK
Rhythm is a reflection of life in this city, where the energy of the streets becomes the heartbeat of music.

Sun, Jun 28, 2026
BERLIN
Raw and restless: Berlin’s history and diversity become a space for us to find our own voice.
Vienna
Horse-drawn carriage taking a break to read the newspaper in front of the Palais Kinsky, Freyung, Vienna (c. 1910).
Photograph by Emil Mayer, from Damals in Wien. Menschen um die Jahrhundertwende – Photographien by Emil Mayer.
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. (© Creative Commons)
Paris
Woman in a Chemise (1906) by André Derain.
Art Institute of Chicago – Open Access. (© Creative Commons)
New York
Broad Street looking toward Wall Street, Manhattan (1936) by Berenice Abbott.
The New York Public Library Digital Collections. (© NYPL - Public Domain)
Berlin
Berlin Street Scene (c. 1914) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. (© Creative Commons)
Scan from Deborah Wye, Kirchner and the Berlin Street, MoMA, 2008.
past concerts
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