Bamberg Symphony Orchestra
Biography
The Bamberg Symphony – Bavarian State Philharmonic has always enjoyed a special position in the musical world. Firmly rooted in its Upper Franconian home, the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bamberg, it can nevertheless boast the uniquely high number and devoted support of more than 6,000 subscribers – in a city of just 70,000 inhabitants. Today as in the past, the Bamberg Symphony flies the city’s flag on the international concert stage and acts as "Bavaria’s Cultural Ambassador to the World" in the musical capitals of several continents. Standing invitations to important festivals and tours at home and abroad, awards for the Orchestra’s recordings, including recently the MIDEM Classical Award and the International "Toblach Composing Hut" Record Prize – all these only confirm the high reputation which the Bamberger Symphony enjoys the world over.
This reputation has been earned not least by the Principal and Guest Conductors who over the decades have presided over the Bamberg Symphony and have helped to shape its character. Since January 2000, the Orchestra’s artistic direction has been in the hands of Principal Conductor Jonathan Nott. In March 2006, Herbert Blomstedt took up another important post in Bamberg, that of Honorary Conductor; and with the start of the 2010/2011 season, they were joined by Robin Ticciati as Principal Guest Conductor.
Jonathan Nott’s time at the helm of this Orchestra, so steeped in tradition, has built with enormous success on the legacy of his predecessors, which he is carrying into the 21st Century. During his tenure he has conducted at the Salzburg Festival (2004), the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg (2007), the Beijing Music Festival (2008), at London’s Proms (2009) and the Gustav Mahler Music Week (2009). The Bamberg Symphony has played under him as Chief Conductor at the Edinburgh International Festival (2003), returning soon after for five further concerts as orchestra in residence (2005 and 2011). In addition to a residence at Cologne’s Philharmonie (2008/2009), the Bavarian State Philharmonic appeared as orchestra in residence at the Lucerne Festival (2007), where Jonathan Nott was also "artiste étoile". Another highlight was their joint concert in honour of Pope Benedict XVI at the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary of the Bishopric of Bamberg (2007).
Besides all this, the Bamberg Symphony and its British Principal Conductor are regular guests at Germany’s great Festivals such as musikfest berlin, Bonn’s Beethovenfest, the Schleswig-Holstein and Rheingau Music Festivals and the Summer Festival in Bad Kissingen. Not to mention the tours throughout Germany and Europe, three tours of Japan and as many of South America, and two to the USA which included appearances in such venues as New York’s Lincoln Center. In recent years outstanding musicians such as Vadim Repin, Truls Mørk and Pierre-Laurent Aimard have collaborated as artists in residence with the Orchestra and have accompanied the Bamberg Symphony on national and international visits. In the 2011/2012 season, another exceptional musician will be artist in residence of the Bamberg Symphony: Frank Peter Zimmermann.
This impressive list of concerts will expand in the 2011/2012 season: Following two festival appearances in Edinburgh and Prague at the beginning of the season, the concert series will be continued under the baton of Jonathan Nott with performances at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and further prestigious German music halls, such as Dortmund, Cologne, Essen. In May 2012, the Bamberg Symphony will return to the US to perform in New York and Long Island under Jonathan Nott, featuring soloist Christian Zacharias. Furthermore, this season schedules concerts in Graz, Basel, Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Hannover, Braunschweig, and appearances at the Festival de Música de Canarias.
Since its foundation in 1946, the Bamberg Symphony has given more than 6,500 concerts in over 500 cities and 60 countries. During the twelve concert tours that took the orchestra to Japan, it performed in 106 concerts in that country alone.
Under Jonathan Nott, the Bamberg Symphony has recently branched out into very varied repertoire, although it is above all the music of Mahler which has received the Orchestra’s closest attention. The Bavarian State Philharmonic has long been celebrated as an outstanding Mahler orchestra, but the interpretations of Jonathan Nott and the Bamberg Symphony have caused a genuine sensation throughout the music world. Evidence of this has come in the form of the prestigious prizes which have crowned the Orchestra’s and Principal Conductor’s recordings of Mahler. So it is only fitting that, in this Mahler Year 2010, the Bamberg Symphony should devote an entire festival to the Austrian master: the Bamberg Biennale, the first of its kind, was held in July 2010. With its theme of "Late Mahler" the festival offered symphony, chamber and house concerts, framed by a series of supporting recitals and readings as well as a symposium on the period around 1910. Among the performed works were the Symphony No.8 ("Symphony of a Thousand"), Das Lied von der Erde, the Ninth Symphony and the Adagio from the incomplete Tenth.
The Bamberg Symphony’s home is Bamberg’s Konzerthalle, with its main hall the Joseph-Keilberth-Saal, which seats some 1,400 concert-goers. Inaugurated in 1993, it was extended in 2009 and thoroughly modernised, following a concept by the internationally renowned designer Peter Schmidt. The Joseph-Keilberth-Saal had already been acoustically optimised in 2008, on the basis of proposals by Yasuhisa Toyota, one of today’s leading acoustical designers.
Before 1993, the Orchestra’s home for over four decades had been Bamberg’s Dominican Church, used as a concert hall from 1950 onwards. The Bamberg Symphony itself had only recently been founded – its official debut, under the name Bamberger Tonkünstlerorchester, was in March 1946. The "kernel" of the Bamberg Symphony was a nucleus of ex-members of Prague’s German Philharmonic Orchestra, who found their way in the aftermath of war to the city on the River Regnitz. The link with Prague’s Orchestra makes Bamberg the inheritor of a musical tradition stretching back to the 19th and even 18th Centuries.
The Bamberg Symphony’s first Principal Conductor, in 1950, was Joseph Keilberth, former director of the German Philharmonic Orchestra in Prague. His importance in consolidating the Bamberg Symphony and raising its national and international profile cannot be overestimated. Under his tenure, which lasted until his death in 1968, the Bamberg Symphony remained faithful to the grand symphonic tradition, laid the foundations of its outstanding reputation and toured the concert halls of the world more than any other German ensemble. Not long after the end of World War II, it became the first German orchestra to tour Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa.
Joseph Keilberth’s successors in the Principal Conductor’s post were James Loughran (1979-1983) and Horst Stein (1985-1996), who was the second conductor in the Bamberg Symphony’s history to be accorded the title of Honorary Conductor. Many other great conductors have worked with the Orchestra and helped to create the characteristic sound which is now so much a part of the Bamberg Symphony: among them were Rudolf Kempe, Hans Knappertsbusch, Clemens Krauss, Sir Georg Solti, Christoph von Dohnányi, Witold Rowicki, Günter Wand, Witold Lutosławski, Ingo Metzmacher, Giuseppe Sinopoli und Christoph Eschenbach, as well as the Bamberg Symphony’s first Honorary Conductor, Eugen Jochum; and its current Honorary Conductor, Herbert Blomstedt, has formed a very close bond over three decades with the Bavarian State Philharmonic and its home city.
The Bamberg Symphony enjoys a worldwide reputation not only as a concert orchestra but also as a centre for the training of young musicians. The Bamberg Symphony’s Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition was launched in 2004 and immediately won a global reputation as a crucible for the forging of new talent. For the first winner in 2004, the young Venezuelan Gustavo Dudamel, the Competition was the springboard for a truly meteoric rise, while for Shi-Yeon Sung of South Korea, winner of the second Competition in 2007, it proved an important milestone in her international career. The third event in 2010 saw the Latvian Ainārs Rubiķis emerge with the top prize and promptly receive invitations from the Edinburgh International Festival and the Kremerata Baltica. He was back in Bamberg very soon, as a guest artist at the 2010 Bamberg Biennale, which was followed by his first Subscription Concert with the Bamberg Symphony in January. And starting in the 2010/2011 season, another project dedicated to training music’s next generation got underway: the Bamberg Symphony’s recently founded Orchestral Academy.
The Bamberg Symphony’s collaboration with Bavarian Radio goes back to the 1950s and continues to this day in the closest of partnerships. Countless concert relays, studio recordings and co-productions of commercial LPs and CDs have not only enriched Bavarian Radio’s schedules but have brought the added benefit of building and consolidating the Bamberg Symphony’s reputation. There are real treasures both in the sound archive and among the commercially published records, such as the 1964 recording of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde under Joseph Keilberth, with two of the 20th Century’s greatest singers, Fritz Wunderlich and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, or Rudolf Kempe’s 1962 performance of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, again with Fritz Wunderlich, still considered a benchmark interpretation.
Under Jonathan Nott’s direction, and always in cooperation with Bavarian Radio and the Swiss label Tudor, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra has taken part in many CD productions. Together they have recorded all of Schubert’s Symphonies, coupled with contemporary works on the theme of "Schubert" by composers such as Henze, Rihm, Widmann and Mantovani. Other recordings include the first version of Bruckner’s Third Symphony and works by Janáček and Stravinsky. So far the cycle of Mahler’s Symphonies has produced recordings of Nos.1, 2, 4, and 9. The CD of the Ninth Symphony won several prestigious prizes, such as the International "Toblach Composing Hut" Record Prize for 2009 and the MIDEM Classical Award in 2010.
The Bamberg Symphony’s extensive discography also includes a whole series of cycles devoted to other great composers, such as Schubert, Brahms and Reger (Horst Stein), Schumann (Christoph Eschenbach), Mendelssohn (Claus Peter Flor), Raff (Hans Stadlmair), Richard Strauss (Karl Anton Rickenbacher), Pfitzner (Werner Andreas Albert) and Hartmann (Ingo Metzmacher). Out in spring 2010 was the first CD with Robin Ticciati, conducting works by Brahms for chorus and orchestra.
In July 2003 the Bavarian State Government elevated the Bamberg Symphony to the rank of State orchestra, since when it has been entitled to add to its name the designation of Bavarian State Philharmonic. In addition, in early 2005 the Orchestra’s status was changed by law into that of a charitable foundation. As the Bamberg Symphony – Bavarian State Philharmonic Foundation, it enjoys continued financial support from the Free State of Bavaria, the City of Bamberg, the Province of Upper Franconia and the Bamberg Region.
High resolution picture of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra
2011/2012 Season Highlights
If not indicated otherwise, concerts are conducted by Principal Conductor Jonathan Nott.
August 2011
27
Concert at the Rheingau Musik Festival
September 2011
1
Concert at the Edinburgh International Festival
Ainārs Rubiķis, conductor
2, 3
Concerts at the Edinburgh International Festival
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano
10
Konzert im Concertgebouw Brügge
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano
11
Concert at the Philharmonie Köln
Márton Illés, piano
13
Concert at the Dvořák Festival Prag
Sergey Khachatryan, violin
26, 27
Concert in Graz
Robin Ticciati, conductor
Frank Peter Zimmermann, violin
October 2011
21
Concert at the Philharmonie Essen
Christina Landshamer, soprano
22
Concert at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden
Christina Landshamer, soprano
27
Concert at the Philharmonie am Gasteig München
Sir Neville Marriner, conductor
Lise de la Salle, piano
November 2011
4
Concert at the Braunschweig Classix Festival
Robin Ticciati, conductor
Emanuel Ax, piano
January 2012
15
Concert at the Konzerthaus Dortmund
1-13
Concert at the Festival de Música de Canarias in Las Palmas and Santa Cruz
Mojca Erdmann, soprano
Jinsang Lee, piano
February 2012
24
Concert at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden
Mischa Maisky, violoncello
April 2012
26
Concert at the Laeiszhalle Hamburg
Radu Lupu, piano
28
Concert at the Kuppelsaal Hannover
Radu Lupu, piano
May 2012
3
Concert at the Alte Oper Frankfurt
Herbert Blomstedt, conductor
Sergey Khachatryan, violin
4
Concert at the Liederhalle Stuttgart
Herbert Blomstedt, conductor
Sergey Khachatryan, violin
5
Concert at the Stadtcasino Basel
Herbert Blomstedt, conductor
Sergey Khachatryan, violin
19-21
Concerts in New York und Long Island
Christian Zacharias, piano
July 2012
7-22
Biennale Bamberg
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
among others Così fan tutte