The Chamber Orchestra of Europe (COE) celebrates its 30th anniversary with the Brahms cycle which it has created for the 2010-11 season at LUCERNE FESTIVAL under the direction of Bernard Haitink. The COE was founded in 1981 by a group of young musicians who had become acquainted as members of the European Union Youth Orchestra: 18 musicians from this original group remain in the current ensemble, which consists of 57 members. Collaboration with leading conductors and soloists was a defining feature from the start. In their first years Claudio Abbado was an especially important mentor and presented staged works with the COE, such as Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims at the Festival of Pesaro. Nikolaus Harnoncourt was also a formative influence through performances as well as a recording of all the Beethoven symphonies and in opera productions at the Salzburg Festival and the Vienna Festival; in the summer of 2009 he led them in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess at the styriarte Festival. During the current anniversary season, the COE has been performing not only its seven-part Brahms project in Lucerne but also concerts with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, with Maria João Pires and Trevor Pinnock, and with Janine Jansen and Yannick Nézet-Seguin, as well as with Joshua Bell and Vladimir Jurowski. Under the baton of Iván Fischer they performed Haydn’s oratorio The Creation at a festival concert in Budapest for the opening of the Hungarian EU Presidency. The COE’s recordings have won such prizes as a Grammy Award, Gramophone’s Record of the Year Award, and the Cannes Classical Award. Most recently they have released a DVD with Hélène Grimaud and Vladimir Jurowski in works by Strauss and Ravel. Since 2007 the Chamber Orchestra of Europe has served as Cultural Ambassador of the EU and receives funding from the European Union Culture Programme; additional support is provided by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.
LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on 21 August 1986 in works by Prokofiev, Mendelssohn, and Brahms, under the baton of Claudio Abbado.
August 2011