Born in Omsk in 1972, Kirill Petrenko was 18 years old when he emigrated in 1990 with his violinist father and musicologist mother to Austria, where he pursued his advanced musical studies. His teachers and mentors included Uroš Lajovic, Myung-Whun Chung, Edward Downes and Semyon Bychkov, as well as Péter Eötvös. His career has developed gradually, with stints in Vorarlberg, at the Wiener Volksoper, the Meininger Staatstheater, Berlin's Komische Oper and Munich's Bayerische Staatsoper. On...e of the factors that led to his invitation to conduct The Ring of the Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festival in 2013, 2014 and 2015 was undoubtedly the fact that he previously conducted the Ring cycle in Meiningen. His first chance to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic came in 2006, and the orchestra later invited him back for guest appearances in 2009 and 2012. Then, in 2015, it was announced that he would become Simon Rattle's successor as chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in 2019. This was the first time he signed a contract to conduct a symphony orchestra with no connection to an opera house.
The two works by Mahler on the programme demonstrate the composer's commitment to vocal genres. Both Elisabeth Kulman, the Austrian mezzo-soprano taking the stage for the Rückert-Lieder, and German soprano Christiane Karg, the soloist for the finalé of the Fourth Symphony, are familiar to the Müpa Budapest audience. The two have each performed as guests with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, then also as part of the same concert programme, which also happened to feature works by Mahler.