Mozart with Robin Ticciati
21-30 January 2019

The Chamber Orchestra of Europe starts the New Year with an exciting tour with Robin Ticciati from 21 to 30 January, taking us to Austria and Germany. Soprano Louise Alder will join us for an all-Mozart programme in Salzburg and Hamburg, while Magdalena Kožená is the soloist in French romantic repertoire for our concerts in Berlin and Cologne.

We are delighted to work again with Robin Ticciati, the Music Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera and current Chief Conductor of the Deutsches Symphony Orchestra. This varied tour to some of Europe’s most-established concert venues will be our third collaboration after he joined the COE last on our very first concert tour to the United Arabic Emirates last autumn.

Showcasing Mozart’s early work in alternation with his later compositions, Ticciati will conduct Mozart’s Serenade No. 1, which he composed at the age of 13. The eight movements of this orchestral work will be interspersed with a selection of late opera arias for soprano, sung by Louise Alder. She is the Young Singer of the 2017 International Opera Awards and winner of the Audience Prize at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition that same year. Additionally, Alder will sing Mens sancta Deo for soprano, bassoon and orchestra, attributed to Mozart, while Ticciati will also take us through Symphony No. 36, better known as the “Linz Symphony”.

This all-Mozart programme will be performed in Salzburg on 25 January and at the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg on Tuesday 29 January.

In addition to the great “Linz Symphony”, the concert programme at the Kammermusiksaal in Berlin and the Cologne Philharmonie on 26 and 27 January opens with Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande. The orchestral suite forms an ideal introduction to Berlioz’ song cycle Nuits d’été, based on six love poems by the poet Théophile Gautier, for which acclaimed mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená will take to the concert stage.

Following our collaboration with the Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón for the Mozart Opera Cycle at the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus, the COE is delighted to appear at the first Mozartwoche in Salzburg under his artistic direction. By emphasizing how relevant and vital the composer continues to be for us today, Villazón programmes the Mozart Week Festival until 2023 under the central theme ‘Mozart lives’. We are looking forward to making Salzburg a regular feature in our concert schedules over the coming years.

The COE is excited about the prospect of returning to the Kammermusiksaal in Berlin, where we held a residency from 1988 to 2002. Building upon the vast legacy of our founding mentor Claudio Abbado, the COE has been invited by the Berlin Philharmonie to take part in a special concert series in his memory, to mark the 5^th anniversary of his death on 20 January 2014.

Together with Claudio Abbado, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe gave over 150 concerts, made 25 recordings of which numerous are award-winning, and went on its first tours outside Europe. As his legacy resonates in what makes the COE what it is today, a few players explain how Claudio continues to inspire by sharing some of the magical moments the Orchestra experienced with him in this video: