Biography
In 1983, a small music festival in the south of Lower Saxony invited five first wind players from the Vienna and Berliner Philharmoniker to play chamber music together: This was the birth of the Vienna-Berlin Ensemble. The collaboration proved to be so harmonious that the musicians did not want to leave it at a one-off event. The Ensemble Wien-Berlin undertook its first major tour in the same year it was founded and quickly established its reputation as an internationally outstanding wind quintet. The ensemble performs in the world's most renowned concert halls and is represented at international festivals such as the Salzburg Festival, the Mozartwoche Salzburg, the Wiener Festwochen, the Lucerne Festival, the Ravenna Festival and the Rheingau Music Festival.
The chamber ensemble's repertoire includes almost all works of the wind quintet genre, with a clear emphasis on music of the 20th and 21st centuries. In 2003, Wolfgang Rihm dedicated a wind quintet to the ensemble; as part of the Lucerne Festival 2008, the ensemble premiered Brett Dean's sextet Polysomnography together with pianist Lars Vogt. By choosing the name Ensemble - and not Quintet - Vienna-Berlin, the five musicians have always kept the option open to expand the core line-up: with string instruments or piano, depending on what the chosen literature demands. Even in the early years, prominent partners joined them: Maurizio Pollini, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Alexander Lonquich, Simon Rattle, Lars Vogt and many more.
Musicians
Andreas Ottensamer
Jonathan Kelly
Stefan Dohr
Karl Heinz Schütz (Flöte)
Richard Galler (Fagott)