Lisa Batiashvili, Robin Ticciati and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe

Violinist, pianist, percussionist, and conductor: Robin Ticciati was already playing timpani with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain at the age of 15. It was there that Sir Simon Rattle discovered the conducting talent of the young musician, who had previously been appointed “Sir Colin Davis Fellow of Conducting” by the Royal Academy of Music, and became his mentor. Sir Simon let Ticciati take over a rehearsal in which he showed that he could engage the orchestra and motivate it to perform at its best. Conducting engagements with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra followed, then invitations to La Scala in Milan and the Salzburg Festival. Since the 2017/18 season, Robin Ticciati has been chief conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. The Briton with Italian roots is constantly credited with a love of experimentation and a wide-ranging repertoire. “You have to dare to be creative,” says Ticciati, because ultimately it is about “asking the musicians to follow a musical idea, and to inspire", whereby everyone should play "as if it were the most important thing in their lives at that moment”. Since summer 2014, Ticciati has also been music director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera, where he has caused a sensation in new productions of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Strauss’ Rosenkavalier and Dvořák’s Rusalka, among others.

A glorious, nuanced tone characterises Lisa Batiashvili’s playing, and for good reason. She herself says: “Many musicians think that beauty of sound is less important than expression. You need that, too. But for me, the sound of the violin – like the human voice – reflects the soul of the musician.” There is no doubt about it: Lisa Batiashvili, who studied under Mark Lubotsky in Hamburg and Ana Chumachenko in Munich, is one of the world’s most renowned violinists. She regularly works with orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, and she has also been a regular guest with the Berliner Philharmoniker since 2004. Her recordings have received prizes such as the Echo-Klassik and the Midem Classical Award, and Musical America named her “Instrumentalist of the Year” in 2015. The Georgian-born German musician, who received an honorary doctorate from the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts in Helsinki in 2018, established her own Foundation in 2021, which is committed to supporting young, highly talented musicians from Georgia.

“Music is greater than the individual” is the motto of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2021. The ensemble emerged from the European Union Youth Orchestra, which Claudio Abbado, chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker from 1990 to 2002, initiated and led for many years. Some of the former members wanted to carry on the fire that Abbado ignited in the young people by founding the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. The formation was decisively influenced by Abbado’s style of music-making, in which the idea of community played a central role. With Abbado, the orchestra made award-winning recordings, including Gioacchino Rossini’s opera Il viaggio a Reims and all of Franz Schubert’s symphonies. But other conductors have also made their mark on the orchestra’s character: Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Bernard Haitink and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, to name but a few. The Chamber Orchestra of Europe, whose members also work successfully as soloists and as teachers at music colleges, is one of the best chamber orchestras of our time. It appears all over the world and has been a regular guest at the Philharmonie since the 2018/19 season at the invitation of the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation. A mainstay of its repertoire is the music of the First Viennese School.