A year after concert halls across Germany were closed to stop the spread of the coronavirus, a pilot project for spectators to return has been greeted by a rush for seats. As the world-famous Berlin Philharmonic under its chief conductor Kirill Petrenko struck the final chords of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony on Saturday evening, the audience rose to its feet to give it a long and rapturous standing ovation. “Attending a real concert changes everything,” said one audience member, Peter, in his thirties. “I have been watching concerts on video but that’s nothing compared to this.” For violinist Aleksandar Ivic, too, the return to stage before a crowd has been nothing less than emotional. “For months, we have been playing without an audience, which is still better than nothing. But the spectators make the difference between 2D and 3D,” he said. It is “us plus the public that can bring us to a state that we cannot achieve by playing alone,” he said. As in other countries around the world, Germany’s cultural scene has been devastated by repeated shutdowns aimed at stemming the spread of the virus. Some opera houses and symphony orchestras improvised during the summer,...