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Conductor and violinist Antonello Manacorda first appeared on the conducting scene in a 2000 production of La clemenza di Tito. At the time, he had virtually no conducting experience, but influential figures accurately spotted his talent, and he has emerged as a versatile and innovative figure.

Manacorda was born in 1970 in Turin, Italy. His father was an accountant, but both his parents were amateur music enthusiasts, and when Manacorda, as a child, expressed a desire to become a conductor, they encouraged his instincts. In school at the Turin Conservatory, however, Manacorda studied violin. He graduated with honors and won a scholarship from the DeSono Vereinigung für Musik, enabling him to pursue further violin studies in Amsterdam with Herman Krebbers, Eduard Schmieder, and Franco Gulli. Claudio Abbado named him concertmaster of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester in 1994, and when a group of musicians from the orchestra joined with Abbado to form the Mahler Chamber Orchestra three years later, he was a natural choice for concertmaster.

Manacorda's turn toward conducting occurred in 2000 when "I was asked out of the blue," he recalled, to conduct Mozart's La clemenza di Tito for an Italian touring company. At first, he declined, but he brought up the offer with Simon Rattle, who was conducting a Mahler Chamber Orchestra performance and was surprised to find that Rattle had already pegged him as the kind of concertmaster who could conduct. The Mozart production won critical acclaim, and at Rattle's recommendation, Manacorda went on to study for four years with conductor Jorma Panula. In 2003, Manacorda became artistic director of chamber music at the Académie Européenne de Musique at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, and high-level conducting engagements soon followed in both orchestral and operatic realms.

In 2006, he led a production of Giovanni Paisiello's The Barber of Seville at the Teatro degli Arcimboldi in Milan, and he became artistic director of the Neues Kammerorchester in Bamberg. In 2010, Manacorda assumed the conductorship of the Kammerakademie Potsdam, where he introduced elements of historical performance practice and recorded a noted cycle of Schubert symphonies for Sony Classical. The following year, he also became conductor of Het Gelders Orkest in the Netherlands, a more conventional symphonic ensemble. In 2017, Manacorda and the Kammerakademie Potsdam released a recording of Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56 ("Scottish") and Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 107 ("Reformation"). That became part of a complete cycle of Mendelssohn symphonies, released on the Sony Classical label. Manacorda led Het Gelders Orkest in a 2018 recording of Debussy's La mer and Ravel's Ma mère l'oye for Challenge Classics, but he returned to Sony Classical with the Kammerakademie Potsdam, leading acclaimed recordings of Mozart's last three symphonies, and, in 2022, Beethoven's Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, and 7. ~ James Manheim

Since its founding in 2001, the Kammerakademie Potsdam has become a leading chamber orchestra in the Berlin region and one of the most versatile of such ensembles in all of Germany, with a repertoire ranging from Baroque to contemporary music. It is one of the few small orchestras to perform on both historical and modern instruments, depending on the needs of the music it is playing, and it has sometimes taken the rare step of mixing the two.

The Kammerakademie Potsdam was founded when two ensembles, Ensemble Oriol Berlin and Potsdam's own Persius Ensemble, merged at the turn of the century. The Ensemble Oriol, in existence since 1987, brought a diverse repertoire, made still broader by the addition of the Persius Ensemble's brass instruments. Each of the combined ensemble's music directors -- Peter Rundel, Sergio Azzolini, Andrea Marcon, Michael Sanderling, and Antonello Manacorda (chief conductor since 2010) -- has emphasized a different repertory, and the orchestra has sometimes performed without a conductor as well. It did not take the group long to attract a recording contract; in 2005, the orchestra backed Sergio Azzolini on an album of bassoon concertos by Villa-Lobos, Hindemith, Jolivet, and Gubaidulina.

The Kammerakademie Potsdam, supported by the city of Potsdam, performs in the city's Nikolaisaal concert hall and in the Friedenskirche (Peace Church). It organizes the Potsdam Winter Opera concert series in addition to presenting orchestral concerts, and it is also a frequent guest at the large Philharmonie concert hall in Berlin. Guest soloists who have worked with the orchestra have come from the top ranks of both the mainstream (Julia Fischer, Sol Gabetta, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Steven Isserlis, and many more) and early music (Konrad Junghänel, Bernhard Forck, and Erich Höbarth) worlds. The Kammerakademie Potsdam was signed to Sony Classical, releasing an album of rediscovered Bach wind concertos in 2009; in 2017, it released a Mendelssohn symphony pairing under Manacorda; that grew into a complete cycle of Mendelssohn symphonies, followed by releases covering Mozart's last three symphonies and, in 2022, Beethoven's First, Second, and Seventh symphonies, performed with a small group featuring modern strings but period brass and winds. Since 2010 the Kammerakademie Potsdam has taken an active role in music education in its home state of Brandenburg, performing numerous concerts and interactive events for children and adolescents. ~ James Manheim

The events of Beethoven's life are the stuff of Romantic legend, evoking images of the solitary creator shaking his fist at Fate and finally overcoming it through a supreme effort of creative will. His compositions, which frequently pushed the boundaries of tradition and startled audiences with their originality and power, are considered by many to be the foundation of 19th century musical principles.

Born in the small German city of Bonn on or around December 16, 1770, he received his early training from his father and other local musicians. As a teenager, he earned some money as an assistant to his teacher, Christian Gottlob Neefe, then was granted half of his father's salary as court musician from the Electorate of Cologne in order to care for his two younger brothers as his father gave in to alcoholism. Beethoven played viola in various orchestras, becoming friends with other players such as Antoine Reicha, Nikolaus Simrock, and Franz Ries, and began taking on composition commissions. As a member of the court chapel orchestra, he was able to travel some and meet members of the nobility, one of whom, Count Ferdinand Waldstein, would become a great friend and patron to him. Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792 to study with Haydn; despite the prickliness of their relationship, Haydn's concise humor helped form Beethoven's style. His subsequent teachers in composition were Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Antonio Salieri. In 1794, he began his career in earnest as a pianist and composer, taking advantage whenever he could of the patronage of others. Around 1800, Beethoven began to notice his gradually encroaching deafness. His growing despondency only intensified his antisocial tendencies. However, the Symphony No. 3, "Eroica," of 1803 began a sustained period of groundbreaking creative triumph. In later years, Beethoven was plagued by personal difficulties, including a series of failed romances and a nasty custody battle over a nephew, Karl. Yet after a long period of comparative compositional inactivity lasting from about 1811 to 1817, his creative imagination triumphed once again over his troubles. Beethoven's late works, especially the last five of his 16 string quartets and the last four of his 32 piano sonatas, have an ecstatic quality in which many have found a mystical significance. Beethoven died in Vienna on March 26, 1827.

Beethoven's epochal career is often divided into early, middle, and late periods, represented, respectively, by works based on Classic-period models, by revolutionary pieces that expanded the vocabulary of music, and by compositions written in a unique, highly personal musical language incorporating elements of contrapuntal and variation writing while approaching large-scale forms with complete freedom. Though certainly subject to debate, these divisions point to the immense depth and multifariousness of Beethoven's creative personality. Beethoven profoundly transformed every genre he touched, and the music of the 19th century seems to grow from his compositions as if from a chrysalis. A formidable pianist, he moved the piano sonata from the drawing room to the concert hall with such ambitious and virtuosic middle-period works as the "Waldstein" (No. 21) and "Appassionata" (No. 23) sonatas. His song cycle An die ferne Geliebte of 1816 set the pattern for similar cycles by all the Romantic song composers, from Schubert to Wolf. The Romantic tradition of descriptive or "program" music began with Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony No. 6. Even in the second half of the 19th century, Beethoven still directly inspired both conservatives (such as Brahms, who, like Beethoven, fundamentally stayed within the confines of Classical form) and radicals (such as Wagner, who viewed the Ninth Symphony as a harbinger of his own vision of a total art work, integrating vocal and instrumental music with the other arts). In many ways revolutionary, Beethoven's music remains universally appealing because of its characteristic humanism and dramatic power. ~ Rovi Staff