The musicians of the Ensemble JungeMusik Berlin invite you for lunch! Melodious and tasty treats at lunchtime. From Monday to Friday, our five lunchtime concerts offer a break from the hustle and bustle of everyday life with a varied program, giving you the opportunity to listen to music with different ears and engage in conversation with the artists.

This year the voice takes centre stage. The tenor Berk Altan guides us through the week with miniatures composed especially for the Tafelmusik series. Each day features tenor solos by Artur Kroschel, Samuel Tramin, Raphaëlle Aoun, Burcu Durukan, Anton Wittkowski and Johannes K. Hildebrandt. You can also look forward to works by Alexandra Filonenko, Olga Rayeva, Stefan Streich, Georg Katzer, Emre Dündar, Helmut Zapf, Ilgın Ülkü, Sebastian Stier (WP), Uroš Rojko, Sean Schumann, Margarete Huber, Iris ter Schiphorst, Ralf Hoyer, Hermann Keller, Kathrin Denner, Kaspar Querfurth and Bernd Lauber (WP).

The ensemble's flutist, Erik Drescher, cooks favourite dishes of the composers.

Raphaëlle Aoun: filfil (2025)
filfil for tenor solo takes its title from the Arabic word for pepper, from which the word falafel is also derived. The text is a recipe for Lebanese falafel, whose words are permuted and repeated to generate rhythms from the language itself. The music alternates between abstraction and concreteness: sometimes it zooms in on short words and numbers to create fast, fragmented gestures, and sometimes it zooms out into longer, more concrete phrases. Behind the humour lies a reflection on the cultural significance of food and how it shapes identity, while simultaneously questioning what happens when these traditions are claimed elsewhere. Raphaëlle Aoun

Ilgın Ülkü: Violinsolo (2019)
Violinsolo, composed in 2019, is the composer's second solo work for violin. It explores the sonic possibilities of the instrument, foregrounding the various tonal facets of the violin. The music moves between powerful, almost wild passages and delicate, lyrical moments. A defining feature is the sudden emotional shifts, which lend the work an expressive dramaturgy.
Ilgın Ülkü

Uroš Rojko: Vox (2001)
Vox for clarinet and accordion "seeks" contact with the most intimate interior of the human being. The utmost reduction of material – to the origin alone, to the fundamental tone and its spectrum – is the necessary precondition for awakening the right vibrations. The dialogue between the human voice and its resonance in the acoustic tube of the instrument (the clarinet), the establishment of sensitive communication with the accordion, the use of only a few specific sound effects, playing techniques and fingerings – all of which applies equally to the moments of improvisation – attempt to guide the listener's consciousness into a state of the greatest possible inner concentration.
Uroš Rojko

Burcu Durukan: İstersen Al Götür Beni (2025)
Burcu Durukan's work sets to music the poem of the same name by the Azerbaijani-Turkish poet Afşar Timuçin (1939–2024).

İstersen Al Götür Beni

Ölümsüz gülüşünle başlıyorum
Her güzelliğe her sevince
Bir yağmur ince ince
Sürerken beni başka zamanlara.

Zamanla yorgun hanlara
Dönüyor işte gördün her şeyim
Kuru topraklar gibi dağılıyor belleğim
Sınırsız bir boşluğu süre süre
Yorgunum çok uzaklardan geldim
Kaygılar sıkıntılar yaşadım uzun uzun
Korkuyu yakından tanıdım
Ölümsüz düşmanı oldum korkunun.

Şimdi bakışınla bağlanıyorum
Kocaman bir dünyaya umutla
Bir akşam aşılmaz kaygılar
Çağırırken beni sonsuzluğuma

Sıcaklığın beni alıştırıyor
Soğuk ve yağmurlu akşamlara
Üşümüş bir kedi gibi sığınıyorum
Ellerine ayaklarına saçlarına
Afşar Timuçin

***

If You Will, Take Me With You

I begin with your immortal smile.
At every beauty, every joy.
A gentle rain.
Carries me into other times.

To weary inns in the course of time.
Here it is, you see, everything that I am.
My memory scatters like dry earth.
Filling endlessly an endless void.
I am tired, I have come from far away.
I have lived through long stretches of anxiety and hardship.
I have known fear at close quarters
I have become the eternal enemy of fear.

Now I am bound by your gaze
To a vast world full of hope
One evening, insurmountable fears call me
Towards my infinity.

Your warmth accustoms me to
Cold and rainy evenings
I seek shelter like a shivering cat
In your hands, your feet, your hair.
Afşar Timuçin