Concentus Musicus Wien, Director: Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Chamber Orchestras

Concentus Musicus Wien was founded in 1953 by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Today, 55 years later, the ensemble remains at the forefront of historical performing practice.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt drew the instrumentalists of Concentus Musicus Wien from the ranks of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.  They came together as a specialist ensemble to play early music on period instruments, "not for historical but for artistic reasons, since the music of every period can be performed most vividly and convincingly using the resources of the time."  The group gave its first public concert at the Schwarzenberg Palais in Vienna in 1957, an event that marked the start of an annual concert series.

Concentus Musicus Wien made its first recordings for Teldec, which was then still called Telefunken, in 1963.  Around that same time, the ensemble undertook concert tours throughout Western Europe, performing repertoire including Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and music from the Austrian Baroque. Their first tour of the United States and Canada took place in 1966.

In 1970 Concentus Musicus Wien began recording the complete Bach cantatas for Teldec, an ambitious project which was completed in 1989.  At the same time, they continued to expand their own concert series at the Vienna Musikverein and to record works by Monteverdi, Purcell, Bach, Handel and Mozart.  Their recordings of the Bach B minor Mass and of Monteverdi’s three operas and Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers of 1610) have set international standards for early music performances.

The recordings of Concentus Musicus Wien continue to win prizes on a regular basis.  Mozart’s Lucio Silla and Handel’s Theodora, for example, were awarded the German Record Critics Prize in 1990 and 1991 respectively. Their recording of the complete Bach cantatas received a Gramophone Award for Special Achievement in 1990.  More recent accolades include the 1995 Cannes Classical Award for Bach’s St. John Passion, the Grammy Award 2001 for Bach's St. Matthew Passion and the 2006 Echo Classic Award for the recording of Handel's Messiah.

Concentus Musicus Wien continues to appear regularly in Vienna and to undertake tours throughout the world. 

SEASON 2011/2012

Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Nikolaus Harnoncourt was born in Berlin in 1929 and grew up in Graz, Austria. He studied cello with Paul Grümmer and at the College of Music in Vienna with Emanuel Brabec. From 1952 to 1969 he was a member of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. His principal interest during that time was acquainting himself with the performance practice of music of the Renaissance through to the Classical era and learning the playing technique and sound possibilities of period instruments. To this end, in 1953, Nikolaus Harnoncourt founded the "Concentus Musicus" ensemble, which gave its first public performance in 1957. This was followed shortly afterwards by commercial recordings of repertoire ranging from 1200 to 1800. The central point in this work was the entire cantata output of J.S. Bach, which developed into a recording project spanning almost 20 years, in collaboration with Gustav Leonhardt. Since the 1978/79 season, Nikolaus Harnoncourt has been directing his own Concentus Musicus cycle for the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna.

While in the early years Harnoncourt was seen as a specialist for Renaissance and Baroque music, a label he did not relish, he did later perform works from the Classical and Romantic eras. Since 1985 he has been regularly involved in the annual Styriarte Festival in Graz, which he helps to plan. At that event, he has repeatedly performed and recorded whole cycles of works by Haydn, Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Brahms with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

He is a regular guest conductor, especially with the Royal Dutch Concertgebouw Orkest of Amsterdam, and the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras. Nikolaus Harnoncourt's first opera production was Monteverdi's Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria at the Theater an der Wien in 1971. Shortly afterwards, he embarked upon a mutually successful collaboration with Jean-Pierre Ponnelle at the opera house in Zurich. Following the highly acclaimed Monteverdi cycle, performed between 1975 and 1979 in the most important centres of music in Europe (Edinburgh, Milan, Vienna, Berlin, Munich), there followed the Mozart cycle, from 1980 to 1987. Nikolaus Harnoncourt has retained his close ties to the Zurich opera house to this day. New productions which he has directed at the Vienna State Opera, at the opera house in Amsterdam and at other venues, presented works by Handel, Rameau, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Weber and Johann Strauss. Nikolaus Harnoncourt's involvement with opera is well documented on numerous recordings.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt's career as a conductor both in the field of the symphonic repertoire and in musical theatre has led via the Viennese Classical era through the Romantic repertoire into the twentieth century. Just a few stations on his career path include a Mozart cycle with the Vienna State Opera, and Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and La clemenza di Tito for the Salzburg Festival. In between these milestones he frequently spent time in Zurich, directing productions including Weber's Der Freischütz, Schubert's Des Teufels Lustschloss and Alfonso und Estrella, Offenbach's La belle Hélène, La Périchole and La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, and Verdi's Aida.

In the field of orchestral work, Nikolaus Harnoncourt has built up and in some cases rediscovered a vast repertoire with the Concertgebouw Orkest of Amsterdam, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras. This repertoire ranges from Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven by way of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Dvorák and Bruckner through to Bela Bartók and Alban Berg.

The focal venue for many of these projects was and is the Styriarte festival, founded in 1985 in Graz, which links Nikolaus Harnoncourt more closely to his home city. That is where he has conducted many works, including the first performance of Schumann's Genoveva, the overture and the dramatic death of the lovers from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde and in 2001 Verdi's Requiem. 2003 saw the performance of his first opera in the form of Offenbach's La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein. Yet another highlight was the staged performance of Bizet's Carmen at the Styriarte in 2005, followed by Mozart’s Idomeneo in 2008 – widely celebrated by national and international critics alike (“Event of the century”, Frankfurter Rundschau). In 2009, with a highly acclaimed production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess he proved that he even has “the blues in his blood” (Die Welt). His latest staged performance was Smetana’s The Bartered Bride in July 2011.   

Harnoncourt has also endeavoured, as the author of a number of acclaimed books translated into over 20 languages, to impart his views on the element of dialogue in music, and to pass on his knowledge as a teacher. For twenty years, he taught as a professor of performing practice at the Mozarteum University of Music in Salzburg.

His work has been honoured with numerous international awards. Nikolaus Harnoncourt is an honorary member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (society of the friends of music) and the Konzerthausgesellschaft (concert house society) in Vienna (since 1992); he holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh and from the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and is also an honorary member of the universities of music in Graz and Vienna. In 2002 he was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize and the Polar Prize in Stockholm, while in 2005 he received the Kyoto Prize, the world's most important independent arts prize awarded to outstanding international personalities from the fields of the arts and science.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt's discography comprises almost 500 recordings, many of which have won all of the main international classical music prizes including a GRAMMY® for his version of the St Matthew Passion. In 2006 he received the ECHO KLASSIK award for his recording of Messiah together with the Arnold Schoenberg Choir and Concentus Musicus Vienna and in 2009 he received the ECHO KLASSIK award for the recording of Robert Schumann’s  Paradise and the Peri.  J. Haydn's Seasons were released in time for the Haydn anniversary year of 2009 to mark the 200th anniversary of the composer's death and were awarded the ECHO KLASSIK 2010 as the best choral music recording of the year. Harnoncourt’s recording of Brahms’ German Requiem  with the Vienna Philharmonic was released in March 2011.

Today, Nikolaus Harnoncourt is one of the few true stars among conductors worldwide. Performances like the New Year’s Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra enable him to reach an audience of millions, displaying the characteristic passion and fiery intensity that identify him, first and foremost, as a true servant of his art.

SEASON 2011/2012