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 Academy Festival. Sadly, our dear friend and COE Honorary Member Sir András Schiff will not be joining us as planned as he has broken his leg. However, we are very fortunate to be led by Maria Włoszczowska, who will also be the soloist in Bach’s Violin Concerto No. 2 on 29th September. Other soloists featuring in our five concerts include Martin Helmchen, Kirill Gerstein, Martina Consonni, Stephen Waarts and our very own principal flute Clara Andrada.

On 25th September, we celebrate with Heinz Holliger, who turned 85 on 21 May 2024 and who will conduct the COE winds with pianist Kirill Gerstein and violinist Ilya Gringolts in performance of Berg’s Kammerkonzert, one of the masterworks of the 20th century and truly revealed as such with Heinz’s interpretation and direction. On 28th September, the COE and Maria Włoszczowska – joined by soloists Martin Helmchen, Kirill Gerstein, Cosima Soulez Lariviere and Oliver Herbert – 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 Sir András Schiff’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 alumnus). Maria Włoszczowska will feature as the soloist in the second concert in performance of Bach’s Violin Concerto No.2.

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.