räsonanz – Lucerne 2018
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
The Chamber Orchestra of Europe (COE) was founded in 1981 by a group of young musicians who became acquainted as part of the European Union Youth Orchestra. There are now approximately 60 members of the COE, which combines principals and section leaders from international ensembles, eminent chamber musicians, and music teachers. From the start, the COE’s identity was shaped by its partnerships with leading conductors and soloists. It was Claudio Abbado above all who served as an important mentor in the early years. He led the COE in such stage works as Rossini’s Il viaggio à Reims and Il barbiere di Siviglia and Mozart’s Figaro and Don Giovanni and conducted numerous concerts featuring works by Schubert and Brahms in particular. Nikolaus Harnoncourt also had a major influence on the development of the COE through his performances and recordings of all the Beethoven symphonies, as well as through opera productions at the Salzburg, Vienna, and styriarte festivals.
In the 2016-17 season the COE worked with such figures as Piotr Anderszewski, Renaud Capuçon, Vladimir Jurowski, and Sir András Schiff. Yannick Nézet-Seguin conducted the COE in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito in Baden-Baden in July 2017. Bernard Haitink appears regularly at the podium. Under him the COE has performed the complete symphonies and concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, and Schumann at LUCERNE FESTIVAL; in January 2017 the orchestra appeared with Haitink at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. The COE has recorded more than 250 works; its CDs have garnered 60 international prizes, including the Grammy Award, the Record of the Year Award from Gramophone, and the MIDEM Classical Download Award. Their most recent release is of violin concertos by Mendelssohn and Schumann with Carolin Widmann as the soloist; they will release the complete Mendelssohn symphonies led by Nézet-Séguin later in 2017.
coeurope.org