Academy for Early Music Berlin

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Academy for Early Music Berlin

The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin ( Akamus for short ) is an orchestra founded in East Berlin in 1982 for the stylish performance of baroque and classical music . For this, the respective music is played on the instruments of the time of origin or their replicas. Furthermore, the historically handed down instructions for playing the respective instruments and the implementation of the musical context in terms of articulation , dynamics , phrasing , tempo , agogic etc. should play a major role in their time of creation. The orchestra mostly works without a conductor. A guest conductor is only occasionally invited for projects with a large orchestra ( classical , romantic ), such as Emmanuelle Haïm , Bernard Labadie , Paul Agnew , Diego Fasolis or Rinaldo Alessandrini . CD recordings by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin were made for the labels Harmonia Mundi France (since 1994), Pentatone and Accentus.

history

Two years after its founding in 1982, Akamus received its first concert series in what was then the Berlin Schauspielhaus on Gendarmenmarkt , today's concert hall , which is still available today as a concert subscription. In 1987 the ensemble's first album was released by Eterna and Capriccio in both parts of Germany. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the international importance of the academy continued to develop through fruitful contacts with musicians beyond the now-fallen Iron Curtain and numerous tours through Europe, Asia, South and North America. A milestone was the close cooperation with the RIAS Chamber Choir and its chief conductor at the time, Marcus Creed , which began in 1992 and which was continued under his successors Daniel Reuss and Hans-Christoph Rademann and Justin Doyle. In addition, there is close cooperation with the Bavarian Radio Choir under the current artistic direction of Howard Arman .

A close relationship with the Belgian countertenor and conductor René Jacobs was already established during the GDR era . Under his direction there has been an abundance of concerts not only with opera performances, but also with oratorios , cantatas and orchestral music , many of which have also been recorded and awarded. Akamus regularly works with soloists such as Anna Prohaska , Isabelle Faust , Alexander Melnikov , Bejun Mehta and Michael Volle .

The ensemble is a central pillar in Berlin's cultural life. In addition to the subscription series in the Konzerthaus Berlin, his musical signature has shaped the baroque repertoire at the Berlin State Opera since 1994 . The orchestra also performs regularly in the Berlin Philharmonic . The ensemble has also been a guest at the Munich Prinzregententheater with its own concert series since 2012 . In autumn 2018 the ensemble was named “Orchestra in residence” of the city of Augsburg.

Concert tours and festival participation take the orchestra regularly to European countries as well as to the USA, South America and Asia. Here the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin is a guest at internationally important concert stages such as the Concertgebouw Amsterdam , the Wigmore Hall London, the Theater an der Wien , the Toppan Hall Tokyo and the Carnegie Hall New York.

With the staged concert 4 Elements - 4 Seasons (choreography: Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola) the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin consolidated its international reputation as a creative and innovative ensemble. Together with the choreographer Sasha Waltz and her dance company, productions such as Dido & Aeneas (music: Henry Purcell ) and Medea (music: Pascal Dusapin ) were created. As here with Dusapin's opera, the academy has often performed works with new music that were composed specifically for the baroque instrumentation. B. by Christian Jost , Toshio Hosokawa and Oscar Strasnoy .

The orchestra was nominated as one of ten top international orchestras as "Orchestra of the Year" at the Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2019.

Members

The trunk of the orchestra consists of about 30 musicians. The number of participants fluctuates between 7 and 45 depending on the repertoire . The best-known ensemble members include concert masters Bernhard Forck and Georg Kallweit, violinist Stephan Mai, cellist Jan Freiheit , flautist Christoph Huntgeburth, oboist Xenia Löffler and harpsichordist Raphael Alpermann . The orchestra named conductors René Jacobs and Marcus Creed as honorary members .

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klassik Prize Winner 2014 / ( Memento from January 21, 2015 in the Internet Archive ).