Concerto Köln More than 30 years of world class performances characterised by a highly individual sound and a passion for the re-discovery of forgotten repertoire mark out Concerto Köln as one of today’s leading orchestras for Historically Informed Performance. With one foot firmly rooted in Köln’s musical life, the orchestra is a regular guest at important musical venues worldwide and stands for excellence in the interpretation of early music.

One highlight in 2023’s concert calendar is the USA-Tour in March with soprano Jeanine De Bique and a concert in the legendary Carnegie Hall in New York. The first conjoined album “Mirrors” has been honored with a multitude of awards (i.a. Opus Klassik 2022) and proves that two congenial musical partners have found each other. Also in 2023, the ensemble from Köln will be guest at the Händel-Festspiele in Göttingen and Halle as well as the Toujours Mozart Festival in Salzburg. At the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival, the orchestra can prove their expertise as exciting opera orchestra in a production of Georg Friedrich Händel’s “Flavio”. In Juli, together with their honorary conductor Kent Nagano, Concerto Köln presents a new classical-romantic program at the Herrenchiemsee Festspiele.
Musical partners in 2023 are soprano Julia Lezhneva, tenor Daniel Behle, the grandmaster on baroque violin Giuliano Carmignola, conductor Václav Luks, pianist Tobias Koch, clarinettist Martin Fröst and the flautist Max Volbers. Mayumi Hirasaki, Evgeny Sviridov and Shunske Sato as fixed concert masters and soloists together with Alexander Scherf as artistic director stand for the characteristic orientation of the self-administered orchestra.

The overwhelming echo in the international press bears witness, that Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” at the Kölner Philharmonie and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw in November 2021 with Kent Nagano as conductor can be deemed a milestone in the history of musical account. In 2023, the scientific and artistic mega-project on Wagner’s “Ring”-Tetralogy in historically informed interpretation is resumed in a cooperation with the Dresdner Musikfestspiele.

Concerto Köln even paraphrases a familiar repertoire in such a fresh and “astonishing“ manner (Die ZEIT) that listeners might imagine being present at the work’s first performance. Since 2008, the ensemble is closely linked to the label Berlin Classics but also stays active for other labels. By now, the discography includes over 75 award-winning recordings including the Grammy award-winning record of Mozart’s “Le nozze di Figaro” with René Jacobs.

There’s no art without enthusiastic sponsors: the Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, the Kunststiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen, the Goethe- Institut, the Staatsministerin für Kultur und Medien and the Strecker-Stiftung are supporting Concerto Köln in the execution of it’s projects and ideas.

Besides that, the ensemble has a close partnership with MBL – unique high end audio, which enables an intense examination of sound and playback of it’s recordings.

Cologne, February 2023