What a career! Brett Dean spent 14 years as a violist with the Berliner Philharmoniker before leaving to concentrate full-time on his highly successful career as a composer. He now returns to his former orchestra as Composer in Residence. To launch his residency, Brett Dean himself takes the podium for a programme of richly imaginative sound worlds: In Conversations with Schumann, he explores the composer’s intricate inner life, while And once I played Ophelia is a moving portrait of Hamlet’s beloved, while Beggars and Angels draws its musical tension from the contrast between earthly and celestial beings. An arrangement of Debussy completes the programme.