CANCELLED – Salzburg Mozartwoche 2022
26-29 January 2022

We are very sorry to announce that the Mozartwoche 2022 has now been cancelled.

We were planning to perform one concert at the Salzburg Mozartwoche on 29th January with conductor François Leleux and violinist Lisa Batiashvili. The programme was to feature Mozart’s Symphonies Nos. 28 and 40 and Violin Concerto No. 5.

We were particularly looking forward to performing with our former principal oboe, François, who was going to conduct the COE for the very first time. Him and his wife, Lisa Batiashvili, have been great friends and artistic partners of the Orchestra for many years. They have both performed as soloists with the COE on a number of occasions with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Douglas Boyd (also former principal oboe of the COE), Frans Brueggen, Semyon Bychkov, Alan Gilbert, Thomas Hengelbrock, Andrew Manze, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Sakari Oramo, Sir Antonio Pappano and Osmo Vänskä. Back in 2007, François and Lisa also recorded a CD of works by Bach with the COE titled “Bleibet meine Freude” for Sony Classical, available on Amazon.

The COE’s first performance at the Salzburg Mozartwoche was in 1993 with Nikolaus Harnoncourt. After some years, the COE was invited again in 2004 and the Mozartwoche has since then been a regular occurrence in the Orchestra’s touring schedule.

Lisa Batiashvili, the Georgian-born German violinist, is praised by audiences and fellow musicians for her virtuosity. An award-winning artist, she has developed long-standing relationships with the world’s leading orchestras, conductors and musicians. As of 2021, Batiashvili has formed and leads the Lisa Batiashvili Foundation, which serves her lifelong dream and commitment in supporting young, highly talented Georgian musicians to thrive in their musical careers.

Batiashvili is the Artistic Director of Audi Sommerkonzerte, Ingolstadt. For the 2021 Festival, she performed Sibelius’ violin concerto under the baton of Sir Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under the motto ​‘Lights of Europe’.

Recording exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon, Batiashvili’s latest album ​‘City Lights’ was released in June 2020. The project marks a musical journey that takes listeners around the world to eleven cities with an autobiographical connection with music ranging from Bach to Morricone, and Dvořák to Charlie Chaplin. At the internationally renowned Concert de Paris on Bastille Day in Paris in 2020, she performed the title track City Memories which was broadcast internationally. Her previous recording – ​‘Visions of Prokofiev’ (Chamber Orchestra of Europe/​Yannick Nezet-Seguin) – won an Opus Klassik Award and was shortlisted for the 2018 Gramophone Awards.

She has won a number of awards: the MIDEM Classical Award, the Choc de l’année, the Accademia Musicale Chigiana International Prize, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival’s Leonard Bernstein Award and the Beethoven-Ring. Batiashvili was named Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year in 2015, was nominated as Gramophone’s Artist of the Year in 2017, and in 2018 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Sibelius Academy (University of Arts, Helsinki).

Lisa lives in Munich and plays a Joseph Guarneri ​“del Gesu” from 1739, generously loaned by a private collector.

François Leleux – conductor and oboist – is renowned for his irrepressible energy and exuberance. He is currently Artistic Partner of Camerata Salzburg.

As an oboist Leleux has performed as soloist with orchestras such as New York Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra, and the Swedish Radio and the NHK symphony orchestras. A dedicated chamber musician, he regularly performs worldwide with sextet Les Vents Français and with recital partners Lisa Batiashvili, Eric Le Sage and Emmanuel Strosser.

Committed to expanding the oboe’s repertoire, Leleux has commissioned many new works from composers such as Nicolas Bacri, Michael Jarrell, Giya Kancheli, Thierry Pécou, Gilles Silvestrini and Eric Tanguy. In recent seasons, he has premiered the cor anglais version of Debussy’s Rapsodie for saxophone, arranged especially for him by Silvestrini (2017/18); Jarrell’s oboe concerto Aquateinte (2016/17); and Thierry Escaich’s Double Concerto for Violin and Oboe, whose premiere performances Leleux and his wife Lisa Batiashvili gave with NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and New York Philharmonic.

Leleux’s latest recording, ‘Bienvenue en France’, released on Warner Classics is a collaboration with pianist Emmanuel Strosser featuring 20th century French composers including Saint-Saëns, Dutilleux and Debussy and the contemporary Thierry Pécou. Other recordings include works by J.S. Bach with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, an album of works by Bizet and Gounod for Linn Records with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Mozart with Camerata Salzburg, and Strauss’s Oboe Concerto with Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Harding.

François Leleux is a Professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München.