Tour with Matthias Pintscher and Emanuel Ax
17-24 February 2020

The Chamber Orchestra of Europe is looking forward to working again with Matthias Pintscher with whom it performed for the first time in 2018 in Bilbao in the context of the Musika-Musica Festival. On that occasion, the Orchestra had performed works by Martinu, Ravel, Poulenc and Schoenberg. The repertoire also included Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite and this year, the COE will be performing the entire ballet under Pintscher’s baton, alongside soprano Kate Royal, tenor Benoît Rameau and bass Otto Katzameier. The other works on the programme are Fauré’s Masques Bergamasques, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 (which you can listen to on Idagio here) and Chopin’s Andante Spianato & Grande Polonaise.

The COE and Emanuel Ax have had wonderful projects together and are delighted to be reunited on this tour. We have particularly fond memories of our concerts with him and Bernard Haitink at the Lucerne Festival, the BBC Proms, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and Paris’s Salle Pleyel as part of our Brahms cycles back in 2011 and 2014.  Other memorable concerts include our first tour together in 2009 with conductor James Conlon (Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2) and a concert with Herbert Blomstedt in Ferrara in 2012 (Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4) . When asked how he felt about the COE, Manny said: “The members of the COE are all great artists in their own right, but one immediately feels the delight that they have in playing with each other -their aim is to share their individual gifts, and to produce a unified vision of the music they they play. Most of all, they extend to musicians like me, who get to join them on occasion, the gift of friendship, both musical and personal. I always feel that playing with the COE is a true privilege, and it is a highlight of my musical life. In short, I am a devoted and grateful fan!”.

The three concerts on this tour will take place on 20th February at Bozar in Brussels, on 22 February at the Teatro Romolo Valli in Reggio Emilia and on 23rd February at the Teatro Comunale in Ferrara.

Matthias Pintscher is Music Director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain and currently in his seventh and final year as Artist in Association with the BBC Scottish Symphony.

Matthias began his musical training in conducting with Hungarian Composer and Conductor Peter Eötvös during his early twenties, during which time composing took a more prominent role in his life. Soon after, he divided his time equally between conducting and composing studying with teacher and mentor Pierre Boulez, soon rising to critical acclaim and more recently is conducting as a major role.

In 19/20, Matthias will make debuts with the Montreal, Baltimore, Houston, Pittsburgh and Detroit Symphony Orchestras as well as his debut at the Vienna State Opera conducting the premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s new opera Orlando. Matthias will also return to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin to conduct revival performances of Beat Furrer’s Violetter Schnee, which he premiered in January 2019. Other returns this season include to the Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Chamber Orchestra of Europe and in summer 2020, Matthias will be the Music Director of the 74^th Ojai Music Festival.

Matthias is a prolific composer whose works are performed by leading orchestras and artists worldwide. The debut of his Cello Concerto Un Despertar was premiered last season by Alisa Weilerstein and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and in April 2017 the World Premiere of Shirim for Baritone and Orchestra with Danish singer Bo Skovhus and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester in Hamburg. Matthias is also professor at The Julliard School since 2014 and is published by Bärenreiter-Verlag.

Born in Lvov, Poland, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. His studies at the Juilliard School were supported by the sponsorship of the Epstein Scholarship Program of the Boys Clubs of America, and he subsequently won the Young Concert Artists Award. Emanuel captured public attention in 1974 when he won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv and in 1979 he won the coveted Avery Fisher Prize in New York.

This season Emanuel joins the Wiener Philharmoniker and long-time collaborative partner Bernard Haitink at the Salzburg, BBC Proms and Lucerne Festivals, as well as the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle on an extensive tour of China and Hong Kong, and joining the Rotterdam Philharmonic at home in the Netherlands and on tour to the United States. He also returns to the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and Tonhalle Zurich, playing concertos by Brahms, Mozart and Chopin. During Summer 2020 Emanuel will also join the Staatskapelle Dresden on tour in the Mediterranean with Myung-Whun Chung.

He also performs extensively in North America, including three concerts with regular partners Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma at Carnegie Hall in March 2020.

Emanuel has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987.