The Vienna Mozart Orchestra, with its 30 musicians, was founded in 1986 and has devoted itself entirely to that great composer of the Viennese classical period, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Since its foundation 36 years ago, the orchestra has found a permanent place in Viennese concert life, becoming a fixture in the City of Vienna's musical programmes for tourist entertainment every summer.
A number of musicians from famous Viennese orchestras and ensembles collaborate with the Vienna Mozart Orchestra as soloists and conductors, among them members of the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna Symphony orchestras. In addition, singers from world-famous opera houses, principally from the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Volksoper, perform with the Vienna Mozart Orchestra.
Best-known and most popular is the concert series "Vienna Mozart Concerts in historical costumes", performed every year from May until the end of October, four times a week. An ideal background for these concerts is provided by the Golden Hall of the Musikverein, the Vienna State Opera and by the Great Hall of the Konzerthaus (each about 40 concerts a year).
As a co-production with Klangbogen Wien within the framework of the Millennium celebrations in 1996, ten open-air concerts were performed on the Millennium stage in front of Schloss Schönbrunn.
A guest performance during the Carinthian Summer in Ossiach in August 1997, under the leadership of Ernst Ottensamer, member of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, was a great success.
In June 1996, the Vienna Mozart Orchestra performed in front of an illustrious international audience during a gala evening at the Vienna Hofburg organised by the Chase Manhattan Bank.
Beyond its regular concert program at the most important concert halls in its home city, the Vienna Mozart Orchestra develops intensive tour activities all around the world. The orchestra has visited Japan eight times, and had the honour of opening the 1991 Mozart Year in Tokyo and to represent Austria at the Festival Internacional Cervantino in Mexico in 2002. Further guest performances have taken the orchestra to Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Morocco, Malta, Germany, Slovenia, Italy, Spain, Greece, Canada, USA, Brazil, Panama, Turkey, Guatemala, Ukraine, Bulgaria and Cyprus.
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Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor, pianist, and composer. Born in Berlin, he escaped Nazi Germany in 1933, was naturalised as a French citizen in 1938, and settled in the United States in 1939. He worked closely with Gustav Mahler, whose music he helped to establish in the repertory, held major positions with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Salzburg Festival, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Staatsoper Unter den Linden and Deutsche Oper Berlin, among others, made recordings of historical and artistic significance, and is widely considered to be one of the great conductors of the 20th century.
Vienna Philharmonic is an orchestra that was founded in 1842 and is considered to be one of the finest in the world.
The Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. Founded in 1918 by the pianist and impresario Adella Prentiss Hughes, the orchestra is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the "Big Five". The orchestra plays most of its concerts at Severance Hall. Its current music director is Franz Welser-Möst.
Johann Nikolaus Harnoncourt was an Austrian conductor, known for his historically informed performances. He specialized in music of the Baroque period, but later extended his repertoire to include Classical and early Romantic works. Among his best known recordings are those of Bach, whose 193 cantatas he recorded with Gustav Leonhardt.
Claudio Abbado was an Italian conductor who was one of the leading conductors of his generation. He served as music director of the La Scala opera house in Milan, principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Vienna State Opera, founder and director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, founder and director of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, founding artistic director of the Orchestra Mozart and music director of the European Union Youth Orchestra.
Carlo Maria Giulini was an Italian conductor. From the age of five, when he began to play the violin, Giulini's musical education was expanded when he began to study at Italy's foremost conservatory, the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome at the age of 16. Initially, he studied the viola and conducting; then, following an audition, he won a place in the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
Zubin Mehta is an Indian conductor of Western classical music. He is music director emeritus of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) and conductor emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Renée Lynn Fleming is an American soprano, known for performances in opera, concerts, recordings, theater, film, and at major public occasions. A recipient of the National Medal of Arts, Fleming has been nominated for 18 Grammy Awards and has won five times. In June 2023, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced that Fleming would be one of the five artists recognized at the 2023 Kennedy Center Honors, which she received in December 2023. Other notable honors won by Fleming have included the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur from the French government, Germany's Cross of the Order of Merit, Sweden's Polar Music Prize and honorary membership in England's Royal Academy of Music. Unusual among artists whose careers began in opera, Fleming has achieved name recognition beyond the classical music world. In May, 2023, Fleming was appointed by the World Health Organization as a Goodwill Ambassador for Arts and Health. On April 9, 2024, Penguin Random House published Fleming's anthology Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness, a collection of essays about the health benefits of music and the arts, by scientists from leading research institutions, practitioners, educators, arts leaders, musicians, artists and writers.
Christoph von Dohnányi is a German conductor.
Iván Fischer is a Hungarian conductor and composer.
The Salzburg Easter Festival is a classical music and opera festival held every year over the extended week before Easter in Salzburg, Austria since 1967.
Theodore Robert Bloomfield was an American conductor.
José Francisco Araiza Andrade is a Mexican operatic tenor and lied singer who has sung as soloist in leading concert halls and in leading tenor operatic roles in the major opera houses of Europe and North America during the course of a lengthy career. Born in Mexico City, he studied singing at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música de México and later in Germany, with Mozartian tenor Richard Holm, and lieder interpretation with Erik Werba. He made his operatic debut in 1970 in Mexico City as First Prisoner in Beethoven's Fidelio. Araiza initially came to international prominence singing in Mozart and Rossini operas, but in the 1980s broadened his repertoire to include Italian and French lyric tenor roles and Wagnerian roles such as Lohengrin and Walther von Stolzing. He was made a Kammersänger of the Vienna State Opera in 1988. Now retired from the opera stage, he teaches singing and serves on the juries of several international singing competitions.
The Dubrovnik Summer Festival is an annually-held summer festival instituted in 1950 in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It is held every year between 10 July and 25 August.
Royal Melbourne Philharmonic (RMP) is a 120-voice choir and orchestra in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It was established in 1853, and is reportedly Australia's oldest surviving cultural organisation. The Royal Melbourne Philharmonic is Australia's oldest musical organisation that has been continuously existing for over 150 years. Among its programmes, there have been large-scale concerts celebrating classical composers including Bach, Mendelssohn and Beethoven. The Royal Melbourne Philharmonic is managed under the direction of Andrew Wailes, the artistic director of the orchestra.
Sergei Stadler is a Russian violinist and conductor. He is currently Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Saint Petersburg Symphony Orchestra.
Valentin Radu is founder, artistic director and conductor of Vox Ama Deus, with performances at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia and other various city, suburban, and Main Line area venues, has led numerous orchestras and vocal ensembles in Europe and the U.S., including the Hungarian National Philharmonic, Bucharest, Arad, Oradea Philharmonics, the Budapest Chamber Orchestra and the Romania National Radio Orchestra. In 1996 he conducted the Bucharest Philharmonic in Handel's Messiah, and in 1997 led the Romanian National Radio Orchestra in Handel's Acis and Galatea.
The Mozart Boys' Choir is an Austrian boys' choir founded in 1956 to commemorate the 200th birth anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Originally it was named Mozart Sängerknaben, and it is now one of the most famous choirs in Europe, gaining recognition internationally.
Lisa Smirnova is an Austrian pianist, originally from Moscow.
Heidi Stober is an American operatic soprano who has performed leading roles in major opera houses internationally, including the Dutch National Opera, the Garsington Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, the Municipal Theatre of Santiago, the Semperoper, and the Vienna State Opera. She has been particularly active with the Houston Grand Opera where she has performed in more than a dozen operas since 2004, including the world premieres of Daniel Catán's Salsipuedes: a Tale of Love, War and Anchovies (2004), Mark Adamo's Lysistrata (2005), and Ricky Ian Gordon's The House without a Christmas Tree (2017). She has also performed in more than ten operas with the San Francisco Opera since 2010. Since 2008 she has been a resident artist at the Deutsche Oper Berlin where she has primarily performed roles from the lyric soprano repertoire. Also active as a concert soprano on the international stage, she has performed with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic, and the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest among other orchestras. She is particularly admired for her interpretations of the works of George Frideric Handel and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
