CAMERATA Salzburg is one of the leading chamber orchestras worldwide. Invitations to the most prestigious venues from New York to Beijing complement the orchestras concert activities in their hometown, Salzburg.
The CAMERATA is one of the core ensembles of the Salzburg Festival and Mozart Week since 1956. The subscription series in the great hall of the International Foundation Mozarteum is a pillar of Salzburg´s musical life and CAMERATA’s Festival “Schubert in Gastein” offers an annual “Schubertiade” in the alpine landscape.
At the center of the repertoire, in addition to the works of Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert, is of course the work of our genius loci Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is above all the typical “Salzburg Mozart sound” that over the years has made CAMERATA an international ambassador and musical figurehead of the city of Salzburg.
Highlights in recent years have included appearances at the Festival de Pâques in Aix-en-Provence, BBC Proms in London, Enescu Festival in Bucharest, Beijing Music Festival and Carnegie Hall in New York. The CAMERATA has a close cooperation with the Wiener Konzerthaus and appears regularly in the Tonhalle Zurich, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, the Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Luzern, the Prinzregententheater Munich as well as the Cologne Philharmonie and the Philharmonie de Paris.
Personalities like Géza Anda, Sándor Végh and Sir Roger Norrington have shaped the CAMERATA sound. Musicians such as Heinz Holliger, Alfred Brendel, Philippe Herreweghe, Franz Welser-Möst, Pinchas Zukerman, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Teodor Currentzis, Matthias Goerne, Fazıl Say, Renaud Capuçon, Yuja Wang and Hélène Grimaud, among others, have been prominent partners of the CAMERATA in past years.
When Bernhard Paumgartner founded the orchestra in 1952, the artistic credo of each individual member was clear: making music on one’s own responsibility within the CAMERATA community. A maxim that the orchestra and its members live to this day. Long time mentors Bernhard Paumgartner and Sándor Végh shaped the world-famous sound of CAMERATA. After Végh’s death, Sir Roger Norrington, as chief conductor, had a lasting influence on the orchestra. Today Sir Roger is the Director Laureate of CAMERATA. His successors as artistic directors were Leonidas Kavakos and the French conductor Louis Langrée. Since 2016, the musicians at CAMERATA have taken artistic direction into their own hands.
Led by their concert master Gregory Ahss as “primus inter pares”, the musicians work together to interpret sound and its subtleties and the music behind the notes. In this way, even in the seventh decade of its existence, CAMERATA maintains a “joy of playing that is contagious” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung). CAMERATA concertizes regularly with its artistic partners Renaud Capuçon, François Leleux and Fazıl Say and guest conductors such as Andrew Manze, Lionel Bringuier and Ingo Metzmacher to collaborate with them this season.
Recordings of CDs and CDs by well-known labels such as Deutsche Grammophon, DECCA, Sony or Warner Classics – many of which have won important prizes – testify to the excellence and dedication to music of the CAMERATA musicians from more than 20 nations.
Photo: Pia Clodi
