Concerto Köln

Concerto Köln is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2025. The ensemble was founded by students of the Cologne University of Music with the aim of exploring works of the 18th and 19th centuries through intensive source study and performing them on period instruments, typically under the leadership of its concertmasters. It quickly rose to prominence as one of the leading groups in the early music scene and has performed around the world. More than 75 recordings have been released, many of them award-winning — including a Grammy Award for the recording of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro with René Jacobs. In 2025, Concerto Köln has already presented the program Mirrors with soprano Jeanine De Bique and developed two projects with the Japanese violinist Shunske Sato for the Herrenchiemsee Festival. The ensemble broke new ground in 2021 with its historically informed performance of Wagner’s Das Rheingold under its Honorary Conductor Kent Nagano, marking a milestone in the history of interpretation. In partnership with the Dresden Festival Orchestra, all four music dramas of Wagner’s Ring cycle will have been presented by 2026. The ensemble will launch the 2025-26 season with “We Celebrate,” a new concert series dedicated to a prominent anniversary figure each year, beginning with Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti to mark the 300th anniversary of his death. Concerto Köln is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Arts Foundation of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Goethe-Institut, and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

Lucerne Festival debut on 18 August 2002 in a program of works by Mozart and his contemporaries ­juxtaposed with Turkish music.

Mai 2025