Chamber Wind Music with Ensemble Wien-Berlin and Members of the Berliner Philharmoniker Chamber Wind Music with Ensemble Wien-Berlin and Members of the Berliner Philharmoniker

Biography

Ensemble Wien Berlin

The Ensemble Wien-Berlin unites two great orchestral traditions: the Viennese and the Berlin sound. It all began in 1983 at a small festival in Lower Saxony, where five principal wind players from the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras met to make music together – with such success that they decided to form an ensemble. In the same year, they embarked on a major tour, and Ensemble Wien-Berlin soon acquired a reputation as an outstanding international wind quintet. Since then, the group has appeared in the world’s leading concert halls and at major festivals such as the Salzburg Festival, the Mozart Week in Salzburg, the Vienna Festival, and the Lucerne Festival.

Its repertoire spans almost the entire wind quintet literature, with a particular focus on 20th- and 21st-century music. By choosing the name Ensemble Wien-Berlin rather than Quintet Wien-Berlin, the five musicians deliberately left room to expand the core line-up. Strings, piano, or, as in today’s concert, additional wind instruments may be added. The ensemble’s current regular members are, alongside Jonathan Kelly (principal oboe) and Stefan Dohr (principal horn) of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Karl-Heinz Schütz, principal flautist of the Vienna Philharmonic, as well as Gerald Pachinger (principal clarinet) and Richard Galler (principal bassoon) of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.