Founded in 1972 by Erwin Ortner, the Arnold Schoenberg Choir sings a repertoire ranging from the Renaissance to the present, with a particular focus on contemporary music. Symphonic choral music and a cappella works are part of its mandate, as well as full-scale opera productions. As examples of the latter, the ensemble has sung in Schubert’s Fierabras in Vienna and in Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise and Berio’s Cronaca del luogo at the Salzburg Festival. The Choir also regularly performs at the Aix-en-Provence Festival and the Theater an der Wien. For over 25 years, the Choir has enjoyed a particularly close relationship with Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who has conducted the singers on numerous recordings, including Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, which won a Grammy Award in 2002, and Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri, winner of the 2009 Echo Klassik Award. The Choir regularly appears at the Salzburg Festival, the Vienna Festwochen, the Vienna Modern, the Carinthian Summer Festival, and the Styriarte Festival in Graz. Erwin Ortner, who has been the Arnold Schoenberg Chorus’s artistic director since its founding, began his career as a singer with the Vienna Boys’ Choir and studied conducting and church music at the Vienna Music School under Hans Swarowsky and Hans Gillesberger, among others. In 1980 he himself was named professor of choral conducting at the same institution, and between 1996 and 2002 he served as dean of the Music School, which subsequently became the University of Music. In 1996 Erwin Ortner and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir recorded all of Franz Schubert’s secular choral music on disc, winning the German Record Critics’ Prize, the Diapason d’Or, the Prix Caecilia, and Japan’s Grand Prize of the Academy Awards.
LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on March 23, 1997, singing Mozart’s Sparrow Mass and Haydn’s Stabat mater, under the direction of Nikolaus Harnoncourt.
May 2010