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Perhaps no single musician ever achieved such high accomplishment across such a broad span of repertory as Nikolaus Harnoncourt. His first professional job was as cellist for the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Almost immediately, however, Harnoncourt sought to specialize in performing music of the past upon historically correct instruments; he was one of the first professional musicians to do so. Over the course of a stunningly influential career, Harnoncourt gradually worked forward into more modern repertories. His many awards included repeated top recording medals from at least six European countries, and a Grammophone Award for Special Achievement in 1990. His decades of recordings on the Teldec label fully encompassed seven centuries of music history.

Harnoncourt considered his own life strongly influenced by an adolescence under the shadow of Nazism. He was born Nikolaus de la Fontaine und d'Harnoncourt in Berlin; his aristocratic family moved south to its ancestral mansion in Graz, Austria. After years of hardship under the Nazi regime, the Harnoncourt family fled to Salzburg in 1945. There he found his calling, and began studying the cello under Paul Grummer. No less a figure than Herbert von Karajan accepted Harnoncourt into the Vienna Symphony in 1952. However, his path was destined elsewhere. While in college, Harnoncourt became fascinated by the original Baroque instruments languishing in antique shops, and wondered why professional musicians didn't use these brilliant artifacts to produce the music of their time.

In 1953, Harnoncourt and his wife Alice founded the Concentus Musicus Wien, the first professional Baroque orchestra. They took players from the symphony, trained collaboratively for four years on early instruments, and exploded onto the European scene in 1957. Their first recording project was the Purcell Viol Fantasias, followed by a series of highly acclaimed recordings of the major works of Bach. In the 1970s, Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt collaborated on a massive recording project of all Bach's cantatas. Meanwhile, Harnoncourt and Concentus Musicus romped through much of the Baroque literature, including Monteverdi's operas, Telemann, Rameau, and Fux. Later, he broadened his repertory to include Haydn and Mozart with Concentus Musicus, as well as masterworks from the 19th century operatic and symphonic repertory (including a million-selling cycle of Beethoven symphonies) with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. He taught as professor of performance practice at the Salzburg Mozarteum (1972-1993), and wrote three full-length books on the subject closest to his heart. He maintained a close relationship guest conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in the years just before his retirement in late 2015 for health reasons. Harnoncourt passed away soon after, leaving behind a legacy as a widely knowledgable, collegial, and well-respected conductor.

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, or, as it is often called, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, was founded in 1888, its first concert taking place on November 3 of that year. Concertgebouw means concert hall in Dutch, and the ensemble adopted that name from the lavish site where it has been based since 1888. The building, known for its splendid acoustics, houses a large auditorium (the Grote Zaal) and a small one (Kleine Zaal).

The Orchestra's first conductor was Willem Kes, who enforced a common etiquette on Dutch audiences previously unobserved: eating, late arrivals, and talking during performance were banned. Kes built the orchestra into a fine one, even if it still fell short of world-class caliber. Upon Kes' departure in 1895, the legendary Willem Mengelberg was appointed music director. He would serve for nearly 50 years in that capacity, molding the orchestra into a first-rate ensemble and making many famous recordings with the group.

During his reign Mengelberg took sabbaticals to conduct other orchestras in Europe and America, including the New York Philharmonic. During his absences, other conductors were engaged to serve as substitutes, including Pierre Monteux and Bruno Walter. While Mengelberg was highly respected and his orchestra widely admired, the repertory tended to be somewhat narrow, focusing largely on the Germanic sphere, especially on Beethoven and Richard Strauss. But he conducted works by Gustav Mahler, and the orchestra featured appearances by Rachmaninov and Prokofiev in performances of their works.

During World War II, Mengelberg sided with the Nazis, and after 1945 was banned from conducting the ensemble for six years. That same year Eduard van Beinum was appointed his successor. He broadened the repertory and maintained the orchestra's high performance standards during his 14 years on the podium. He died in 1959 during a rehearsal, and for the next four years, leadership of the orchestra was shared by Eugen Jochum and Bernard Haitink. Haitink was appointed chief conductor in 1963 and served in that capacity until 1988. During his tenure, the orchestra made numerous highly acclaimed tours and recordings.

Haitink's successor was Riccardo Chailly, who further broadened the repertory of the orchestra, and like his predecessors, produced a spate of critically acclaimed recordings. In 2004, Mariss Jansons was appointed conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Today the ensemble consists of 120 players and is widely considered one of the finest orchestras in the world.

The Camerata Salzburg is a chamber orchestra associated with Mozart's music and the Mozarteum University in the composer's hometown of Salzburg. Inspired by various conductors, the group has experimented with historical performance practice and with music as far forward in time as that of Arnold Schoenberg. The Camerata Salzburg has a recording catalog dating back well into the LP era. In the 2000s, it has recorded for major labels including Decca and Deutsche Grammophon, where it backed cellist Kian Soltani on the album Schumann in 2024.

The Camerata Salzburg was founded in 1952 by Bernhard Paumgartner, a Viennese conductor and musicologist who specialized in Mozart's music. The group's original name was Camerata Academica des Mozarteums Salzburg, later shortened to Camerata Academica Salzburg and finally, by the late 2010s, to Camerata Salzburg; the first album issued under the short name, Mozart: Horn Concertos 1-4 (2019), featured hornist Felix Klieser. At first, the group's membership comprised Paumgartner's students and fellow faculty members at the Salzburg Mozarteum University. Paumgartner remained conductor until his death in 1971 and led the group in a cycle of Mozart piano concertos with pianist Géza Anda in the '60s. He was succeeded three years later by Antonio Janigro, who introduced subscription concerts in Salzburg. Under Janigro and violinist-conductor Sándor Végh, principal conductor from 1978 until his own death in 1997, the group's activities steadily took on a more international scope. In the '80s, the group recorded with pianist András Schiff. An early digital recording was one of Vivaldi's Die vier Jahreszeiten ("The Four Seasons") in 1988.

Végh's influence on the Camerata Salzburg was fundamental, but the group has also been shaped by later conductors and by guest artists. Roger Norrington, who has a strong historical performance orientation, served as principal conductor from 1997 until 2006. Violinist Leonidas Kavakos held the title of principal guest artist in the early 2000s and served as artistic director from 2007 to 2009. France's Louis Langrée became principal conductor in 2011 and served until 2016. He was the last principal conductor to date; since then, the orchestra members make artistic decisions, with guests stepping in when a conductor is necessary. Those guests are a prestigious group that includes Franz Welser-Möst, John Eliot Gardiner, Philippe Herreweghe, and Theodor Currentzis; guest instrumentalists and singers are similarly notable and include violinists Janine Jansen and Anne-Sophie Mutter, pianist Vikingur Ólafsson, and tenor Rolando Villazón. The orchestra appears not only at the Mozarteum but frequently in Vienna at such venues as the Konzerthaus, and also in cities beyond Austria. It has continued to record frequently for such labels as Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, and Orfeo. On Deutsche Grammophon, the Camerata Salzburg appeared on the 2022 album Hélène Grimaud Plays Valentin Silvestrov, followed on the same label by 2024's Schumann, featuring cellist Kian Soltani. ~ James Manheim