Beethoven-Zyklus mit Yannick Nézet-Séguin
11.-27. April 2020
Special announcement
Sie treffen mehr Informationen zu diesem Projekt hierunter auf Englisch:
It is with great disappointment that we must inform you that the Luxembourg and Paris Philharmonies have been forced to cancel our forthcoming concerts with Yannick Nézet-Séguin who was due to be conducting Beethoven symphony cycles in both cities. This project was of course going to be a major milestone in the close to 40 year life of the COE and the concerts, apart from being sold out weeks ago, were going to be recorded for Deutsche Grammophon.
Beethoven’s symphonic repertoire has been at the very heart of the COE since its foundation in 1981, and it is an immense blow for us to lose this opportunity to be able to rediscover, perform and record these extraordinary works with Yannick, our special Honorary Member.
It is almost 30 years ago that we performed and recorded our first Beethoven symphony cycle with our first Honorary Member, Nikolaus Harnoncourt , a recording which went on to win every major recording award and which sold over one million CDs. Looking to the future, we will hopefully find a way to bring our current project back to life with Yannick and will announce our rescheduled plans as soon as possible.
Inevitably, we are very concerned about all our concerts that are scheduled in the coming months, particularly those in Germany in May and early June as well as our visit to the Bravo Vail Festival in Colorado with Yuja Wang at the end of June. While we hope a miracle may yet happen, we have to be realistic and accept that all our forthcoming projects in the next few months are in jeopardy as a result of the Coronavirus outbreak. We can however assure you that we have every intention of fighting our way through these difficult times and indeed being in a position to continue to make music at the highest level throughout the world, as we have done for almost four decades.
A message from Yannick
Partnerschaft mit B&H
For this project, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the German music publishing company Breitkopf & Härtel were proud to announce their collaboration and partnership for the upcoming concerts and recordings to celebrate “LvB 250” – Ludwig van Beethoven’s 250th birthday in 2020.
The Symphony Cycle under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin was going to use the now complete performance material featuring the musical text of the “New Beethoven Complete Edition” by Breitkopf & Härtel. “This is a premiere in more than just one aspect for all of us involved: conductor, orchestra and publisher. We are proud to join this wonderful and inspiring team of the COE, Nick Pfefferkorn (CEO of Breitkopf & Härtel) says. Especially in Symphony No. 9 one can literally hear and experience the difference, as Beethoven’s original and recently re-discovered Double Bassoon part is used for the very first time.”
Das COE und Yannick
Performing and recording all of Beethoven symphonies with Yannick Nézet-Séguin was a particularly special project to us, not only because Beethoven has been at the very heart of the COE since its foundation in 1981, but also because Yannick is such a great friend of the Orchestra. Since our first tour together back in 2008, we have embarked on many exciting musical adventures and released a large number of recordings, all with Deutsche Grammophon:
- Two symphony cycles: Schumann in 2014 and Mendelssohn in 2017
- Five Mozart operas: Cosi fan tutte in 2013, Die Entführung aus dem Serail in 2015, The Marriage of Figaro in 2016, La Clemenza di Tito in 2017 and The Magic Flute in 2019
- Visions of Prokofiev featuring violinist Lisa Batiashvili in 2018
- Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 with pianist Seong Jin Cho in 2019
These recordings are all available to listen to on Idagio, partner of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the world’s first classical music streaming platform, and you can access them by clicking on the links above.
Images speak better than words and the short film below portrays the very special relationship between Yannick and the COE.
Das COE und Yannick
Memories of the recording of the Beethoven Symphonies (1991)
The Beethoven recordings of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in 1991 under Nikolaus Harnoncourt represented then the culmination of what can now be seen as the beginning of a long-standing artistic collaboration and friendship.
Indeed, the first encounter ever of these two forces was a pure Beethoven project – something which, in retrospect, seems so obvious and natural.
The first rehearsals in October 1986 took place in a musty recording studio in the bowels of the Wiener Konzerthaus. This musical “blind date” was arranged by an adventurous (visionary?) impresario and subtly nudged along by a handful of COE members who had contact with Nikolaus Harnoncourt through other ensembles.
At the time no one could have foreseen the outcome of this venture. Beethoven’s Sixth and Eighth Symphonies, both pieces the COE had performed extensively, were the first to be rehearsed and the impressions of those earliest rehearsals remain strongly implanted in our minds.
Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s strong musical-historical perspective, combined with his extraordinary imagination and his ability to effectively communicate and synthesise them both, quite naturally matched the COE’s desire for “answers” and its ability to transfer – usually very quickly – complex concepts into the orchestral context. We quickly and readily grasped the ides and techniques of a rhetorical approach to music-making. The similarities and differences of modern orchestral instrumentarium and that of our 18th- and 19th-century counterparts were also consciously and critically reconsidered in regards to developing a playing style (our use of historically-oriented brass and timpani being the most obvious aspect of this). The results were often instantaneous. The “Pastoral” Symphony with its clear programme was perhaps the most eye-opening example. The Scene at the Brook or the Thunderstorm for example, were alive with flow and power of “nature” as we had collectively never experienced it in this music before. A “journey” through the antique church modes over cantus firmus style motives in the last movement of the Eighth Symphony – a piece we thought we knew well – had more than a few of us thinking “… is he making this up?” He was not.
The monumental Fifth Symphony ended our first set of concerts. Playing this piece for the first time, the Orchestra was possessed by the music and the new musical language it was learning. So possessed was it, in fact, that still today many cannot remember how the concert actually was. One certain memory is that, after the final chord there was only silence followed by a loud groan from a member of the audience and then a spattering of applause which slowly grew.
Dane Roberts
COE Double-Bass