About the orchestra
The Munich Chamber Orchestra, founded in 1950 by Christopher Staple, is a veteran Chamber Orchestra in Europe and one of the oldest surviving chamber orchestras in Europe.
In addition to performing traditional works, the Munich Chamber Orchestra is also a versatile modern orchestra.
The orchestra is funded by the City of Munich, the Bavarian State Government and the Upper Bavarian District Government, and has been the main official sponsor of the Orchestra since the 2006-2007 season.
Chief Conductor
First commander
Founder Christops Strope founded the Munich Chamber Orchestra in 1950.
Second Commander
In 1956, conductor Hans Stoudemire took over the orchestra, leading and conducting the orchestra for nearly 40 years, serving as the orchestra's artistic director, under whose leadership the orchestra successfully performed more than 4,000 concerts and appeared on the radio and world music stages.
Third Commander
In 1995, conductor Christopher Poppen became the new conductor of the orchestra, and he outlined a very dynamic development goal for the orchestra, formulated a repertoire arrangement model compatible with classical and modern music, and led the orchestra to premiere more than thirty new works by well-known composers.
These initiatives not only brought the orchestra many awards – such as the Best Programme Award of the German Music Publishing House from 2001 to 2002 and from 2005 to 2006 – the Munich Music Prize in 2000, the Cannes International Classical Prize and the Kristof and Stefan Kassk Foundations – but also laid a solid foundation for the orchestra's international standing.
Since then, the orchestra has been frequently invited to tour the world's major music cities.
Fourth Commander
In 2006, Alexander Lieblech, the outstanding representative of the new generation of conductors, became the fourth conductor of the Munich Chamber Orchestra, a contemporary successor who not only perfectly balanced the tradition and innovation of the orchestra, but also deepened the exploration of new sounds with the orchestra with his unique aesthetic perspective.
Under his leadership, the orchestra received the New Music Award from the Contemporary Music Dialogue Fund in 2008 for successful contemporary music groups.
Orchestra Honors
Today, the Munich Chamber Orchestra performs more than 60 times a year in concert halls around the world, and it is also a guest art group at prestigious European music festivals and music centers such as the Menuhin Festival, the Rhine Regional Music Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, and the Beethoven Festival in Poland.
The orchestra has performed with many well-known artists such as Giovanni Antonini, Andrés Shore, Victoria Mulova, Sabina Meyer, Jenny Janssen and many others.
As an ambassador for the dissemination of modern and contemporary musical works, the orchestra has repeatedly collaborated with contemporary music labels (EMC) to record new works by contemporary composers such as Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Webern. Recently, the orchestra has recorded albums by Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa. Another album, which combines Haydn with the work of South Korean composer Isang Yun, has been praised by the media and is considered "one of the most satisfactory classical music records in recent times".
In addition to the repertoire, the "innovation" of the orchestra is also reflected in participating in and hosting different forms of performances and activities. As a long-time collaborator of the "New Season" of the Munich Contemporary Music Theatre, the orchestra has performed several modern operas by composers such as Tan Dun, Chaya Czernowyn and Vykintas Baltakas; Christoph Willibald Gluck's Pilgrimage to Mecca, first performed with Klaus Zenhelein and the Bavarian Drama Academy, was also a great success.
Since 2003, the orchestra has presented a series of concerts at the Museum of Modern Art in Munich called "Museum of Modern Art", which focuses on the musical works of a modern composer three times a year in the "Modern Nocturne" event held in the museum hall, which has become a popular programme in the Munich music scene. In 2006, the orchestra and its artistic director Liebrich launched a new musical event called the "Munich Project". The event consists of different concerts, seminars and other events aimed to further promote the band's connection with the city of Munich on a family-based basis in cooperation with children, adolescents and social institutions. The first "Munich Project" was titled "Children's Concert with Down Syndrome", which subsequently appeared in an award-winning documentary on Bavarian television.
In addition, the orchestra has also created a series of musical events such as the "White Paper", which is considered by the cultural community to have a unique personality , the "concert ideas" that have not been announced in advance, and the "Munich Chamber Orchestra AIDS Concert", which has attracted much attention. In 2010, more than seventy musicians from all over the world spontaneously joined the "Munich Chamber Orchestra AIDS Concert" and performed Mahler's Fourth Symphony at the Regent's Theatre. The concert for charitable purposes was unprecedented and hard to come by, and the Süddeutsche Zeitung said in its report that "classical music has never faced such a large number of young and enthusiastic listeners".
The Munich Chamber Orchestra has also invited working professors from German higher music schools to perform together, such as Professor Stephen Picard, a violin professor at the Berlin Conservatory in Germany.
In 1995, Stephen Picard was invited to be professor of violin at the Hans Eisler Conservatory in Berlin, and the students he taught are now successful figures in the music industry, some of them becoming professors, some becoming soloists, and some joining famous chamber orchestras or orchestras.
In addition to teaching at the Berlin Conservatory, Stephen Picard teaches as a visiting professor at universities around the world, in addition to running numerous master classes across Europe, and he is also a professional professor of online one-on-one master classes, providing students with professional violin education courses.