Ensembles
Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble

The Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble was founded in 1997 on the initiative of conductor Ivor Bolton. The aim was to perform the cycle of operatic works by Claudio Monteverdi in a historical style.

The ensemble has twice won the Munich Opera Festival Prize for this, including the members of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Barbara Burgdorf, Corinna Desch and Christiane Arnold, who have now been performing operas on baroque instruments as soloists for 20 years: La Calisto, L’incoronatione di Poppea, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’Orfeo.

In the 500th anniversary year of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester in 2023, Il ritorno / The Year of Magical Thinking was added to the programme, in the always sold-out Cuvilliés Theatre.

The three musicians have also gained an enthusiastic regular audience in annual baroque chamber concerts, including with gambist Friederike Heumann.


Photo credit: Corinna Desch

Ensembles
Schumann Quartet
http://www.schumann-quartett.de .

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Consisting of members of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, the Munich Schumann Quartet performed Béla Bartók’s early piano quintet and Arnold Schönberg’s 2nd string quartet with soprano in 1994, the year it was founded. Since then, invitations to concert tours and festivals in Europe, Japan and the USA have followed. The close cooperation with singers and composers enables the ensemble to perform rarely heard works as well as world premieres and experimental pieces in addition to the widely diversified common quartet repertoire, which combine video and language arts beyond pure tonal language. The first violinist Barbara Burgdorf is concert master of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. Traudi Pauer has been playing here since 1996. Stephan Finkentey has been deputy principal violist since 1988, and one year later Oliver Göske joined the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. For the Schumann Year 2010, the quartet recorded two double CDs, which are available in stores or via http://www.schumann-quartett.de .

Ensembles
OPERcussion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oiPF874mZk


Photo credit: Dominik Gigler


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Unique in its kind, OPERcussion, the virtuoso percussion quintet, brings the art of percussion from the depths of the orchestra pit to the front row, realizing a new model of artistic creation while respecting history and championing innovation.

When we study the history of the Bayerische Staatsoper, we learn that the first timpanist with a contract began in 1600 in what was then the Court Orchestra. In more than 400 years of musical tradition, the greatest composers and conductors in history have influenced the members of this traditional orchestra and promoted chamber music activities. The members of the percussion group have not escaped this call and since 2008 have been organized in the formation OPERcussion. Thomas März, Pieter Roijen, Maxime Pidoux, Carlos Vera Larrucea and Claudio Estay bring to the ensemble their virtuosity, their knowledge, the traditions of their countries of origin and their peculiarities. This international ensemble has distinguished itself in the world of percussion and in the music scene in general for the innovation and diversity of its programs, which include collaborations and commissions with contemporary composer:s, as well as arrangements of music not originally written for percussion, from the eras: Baroque, Classical and Impressionist to the interpretation of Latin American music with grandiose improvisational ideas.

On January 20th, the drum quintet OPERcussion performed in the Muffathalle and presented their new CD on the in-house label BSOrec. Here you can experience the ensemble in a recording of the 10th Monday Concert 2020 with a varied program from Mozart to Claude Debussy to Astor Piazzolla in their own arrangements together with the violinist Julia Pfister, who also performed in the Muffathalle with OPERcussion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oiPF874mZk


Photo credit: Dominik Gigler


Ensembles
OperaBrass

OperaBrass is one of the chamber music ensembles of the Bavarian State Orchestra. Although the formation also exists in the classic brass quintet formation, it is preferable to enter the stage with four trumpets and trombones, a horn, tuba and, in some cases, drums.

In 1996 the eleven musicians made their debut with two concerts in the Cuvilliés Theater in the Munich Residenz with a program made up of works from a wide variety of stylistic periods. Since all ensemble members are not only at home in classical music, but have also gained a wide range of experience from jazz to pop, this type of music also plays a major role in the formation’s repertoire. Arrangements of opera highlights, jazz standards and big band evergreens specially designed for OperaBrass were commissioned. In addition, the trumpeters Andreas Öttl and Frank Bloedhorn have also contributed their own arrangements to the repertoire. The two musicians are particularly attracted by the fact that they can use all their instruments in the ensemble – from the piccolo trumpet to the flugelhorn.

A tour with the cabaret artist Bruno Jonas and the program “Full Pipe - Hot Air” took them off the beaten track: a satirical tin, so to speak, the content of which dealt with no less than 400 years of love and death in the opera.

The musical collaboration with two former General Music Directors of the Bavarian State Opera, Zubin Mehta and Kent Nagano, and other renowned conductors such as the baroque specialist Ivor Bolton played an important role in the artistic development of the ensemble.

In 2006, OperaBrass organized a concert together with the world-famous King’s Singers in the Prinzregententheater. Under the title “In Perfect Harmony”, both ensembles spanned the musical arc over the centuries. With Wagner & Friends, the musicians from OperaBrass 2012 ventured directly from the orchestra pit onto the stage of the National Theatre with a real crossover programme. Every summer OperaBrass are also involved in the Unicredit Festival Night at the beginning of the Munich Opera Festival.

Apart from that, you can experience the ensemble at the chamber concerts of the Bavarian State Opera and on tours. More recently, after the European tour in 2016 with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester and a guest performance in Asia in 2017, they went to Mallorca in September 2018, where the Munich brass band were guests in Palma Cathedral for the second time.


Photo credits: Wilfried Hösl


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