Kronberg Festival 2024
23rd-30th September

The Chamber Orchestra of Europe returns to its Kronberg residency for a number of concerts at this year’s Kronberg Festival. On 25th September, the COE winds will join conductor Heinz Holliger – an old friend of the COE for whom he even composed a piece – pianist Kirill Gerstein, violinist Ilya Gringolts and a string quintet from the Kronberg Academy. Together, they will perform Berg’s Chamber Concerto for piano, violin and 13 wind instruments, and the piano and string instruments will then play Schubert’s “Trout” piano quintet and Strauss’s Schatz-Waltzer arranged for piano, string quintet and harmonium by Webern. On 28th September, the COE and Sir András Schiff will give two concerts (18.15 and 20.30), performing works by Haydn and Beethoven. The second concert will also feature pianist Martina Consonni, with whom members of the COE performed in Eisenstadt back in May this year and who is one of András’s Building Bridges artists. On 29th September, they will again perform twice (18.15 and 20.30), this time in a programme by Bach and Mendelssohn. The first concert will feature soloists Clara Andrada (COE principal flute) and Stephen Waarts (violinist and Kronberg Academy alumni).

It is always a great joy for us to be able to perform with Sir András, with whom our last project dates back to last May when we performed together at the Schloss Esterházy in Eisenstadt in a concert also featuring soloists from the ranks of the Orchestra – principals Lorenza Borrani, Richard Lester and Rie Koyama – as well as oboist Olivier Stankiewicz in Haydn’s Sinfonia Concertante. They then toured this programme to Hamburg, Bergamo and Ferrara.

In September 2022, Sir András performed with the COE at the opening of the brand new concert hall of the Kronberg Academy, the Casals Forum, where the COE has been resident since. He has been a strong artistic partner of the COE almost since its creation (in 1981) and this very special relationship, which has developed over almost 35 years, is crystallised in Sir András’s title of Honorary Member of the Orchestra. Together, they have performed across the world in major festivals and venues such as the Berlin, Cologne and Paris Philharmonies and Kammermusiksaal, London’s Royal Albert Hall and Barbican Centre, New York’s Carnegie Hall, Frankfurt’s Alte Oper, Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Zurich’s Tonhalle and the Lucerne and Edinburgh Festivals. Sir András also performed for the COE’s 35th anniversary private concert in St John’s Smith Square in London back in 2016. Together, they recorded Bach concertos BWV 1052 to 1058 to great acclaim for Decca, “a clear first choice” according to the Penguin CD guide.

COE podcast interview with Sir András Schiff:

It was in the evening on 23rd May 2022 that the COE set foot for the first time in the newly-built, not yet open, Casals Forum, a concert hall commissioned by the Kronberg Academy for its students to perform in a hall that truly showcases the outstanding level of music education provided by the Academy. For a number of years, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Kronberg Academy have been working in Partnership, with the COE being invited to perform a number of times in Kronberg, including for the celebration of the Academy’s 25th anniversary in 2018. We are thrilled that this partnership has resulted in an invitation to become orchestra-in-residence at the Casals Forum where we can rehearse ahead of tours as well as perform smaller scale concerts with some of the Kronberg Academy students and teachers.