The Orchestra’s History

Its concert debut in 1923 makes the Cologne Chamber Orchestra the oldest German chamber orchestra. The concept of interpretations appropriate to the work in question led to the founding of the Cologne Chamber Orchestra in 1923; during its earliest years it performed under the baton of Hermann Abendroth, later under Erich Kraack. Since then, music historians were able to document the founding concert on November 30, 1923 at the concert hall of the new building of the Kunstverein on Cologne’s Friesenplatz, as part of the concert series of the Society for New Music. This first concert was conducted by Gustav Classens, who had studied piano performance and conducting with Hermann Abendroth at the Cologne Conservatory since 1914 and would go on to become Bonn’s Music Director from 1933 to 1949, exerting considerable influence on local cultural life. Under the direction of Otto Klemperer and Hermann Abendroth, during the 1920s the newly-founded orchestra also performed at the “Rhenish Chamber Music Festivals” in Cologne every May and at the concert hall of Brühl Palace.

When Abendroth left Cologne in the early 1930s, his student Erich Kraack took over as conductor of the young ensemble, moving its operations to Leverkusen. There, he was able to cement its good reputation at the Bayer Casino Concerts, gaining international attention by working with major soloists. Erich Kraack exerted considerable influence on the concert and cultural life of the city of Leverkusen for 36 years, during which he was also the artistic director of the Bayer Philharmoniker.

In 1963 Erich Kraack turned the leadership of the Cologne Chamber Orchestra over to Helmut Müller-Brühl. The latter had studied philosophy, Catholic theology, art history and musicology, acquiring a comprehensive theoretical foundation for the interpretation of baroque and classical music, complemented by violin courses with his mentor Wolfgang Schneiderhan and by beginning to conduct early in life. In the autumn of 1964, he took the Orchestra and pianist Wilhelm Kempff on a much-acclaimed tour of Switzerland, marking the beginning of the Orchestra’s collaboration with many renowned soloists. Ever since, the Orchestra has celebrated many a success on tour in Europe, Asia, North and South America and at festivals in Germany and abroad.

Helmut Müller-Brühl opened up a new venue for the musicians – as a resident orchestra, they performed opera and concerts at the Brühl Palace Concerts, an institution he directed artistically for more than three decades.

From 1976 to 1986, the Cologne Chamber Orchestra performed exclusively on historical instruments and under the name Capella Clementina. During this time, Helmut Müller-Brühl created benchmarks for historically informed performance practice and the revival of baroque musical theatre. Since 1987 the Cologne Chamber Orchestra has transferred the insights gained during this period to its performances on modern instruments. Thus, today the Cologne Chamber Orchestra is a formation which is historically informed and inspired, yet commands a modern sound, enabling it to perform a repertoire ranging from the baroque to classical works, classical modernism and contemporary pieces.

The Cologne Chamber Orchestra has presented its own concert series “Das Meisterwerk” (“The Masterwork”) at Cologne’s Philharmonie since 1988 – beginning just one year after the hall was opened to the public.

From 1997 to 2007 the Cologne musicians appeared regularly at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris and at Munich’s Prinzregententheater. One essential characteristic of the “Masterwork” concerts was the presentation of gifted young musicians under Helmut Müller-Brühl’s baton, both within the ensemble and as soloists.

The Cologne Chamber Orchestra has participated in more than 200 recordings for CD, radio and television productions, featuring over 500 compositions. Since 1995 it has been affiliated with the Naxos label, thereby gaining a worldwide presence. On the occasion of the Bach Year 2000, it recorded Johann Sebastian Bach’s complete orchestral works under Helmut Müller-Brühl’s baton, assembling on CD for the first time all 35 suites and concerti in the original versions that have come down to us, in transcriptions made by the composer himself and in more recent reconstructions of originals believed lost. In the meantime, the ensemble has added all of Bach’s 16 solo cantatas on four CDs – a welcome complement for its recordings of the Mass in B-Minor and the St Matthew Passion. In 2001 its recording of the three Darmstadt Overtures by Georg Philipp Telemann won the Cannes Classical Award in the category “18th Century Orchestral Music”. In 2003 Helmut Müller-Brühl and the Cologne Chamber Orchestra embarked upon a complete recording of Ludwig van Beethoven’s symphonies; only the Ninth Symphony is still outstanding today.

Over the course of 2007 they recorded 24 instrumental concerti by Joseph Haydn, ten of which had never been recorded before in the original instrumentation. On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Haydn’s death, the Cologne Chamber Orchestra and Helmut Müller-Brühl were invited by Pope Benedict XVI to provide the music for the 2009 Whitsun service at St Peter’s Cathedral in Rome.

Helmut Müller-Brühl was born in Brühl in 1933. There, he attended elementary school and a humanistic grammar school, serving as an altar boy and leader of various youth groups. There he also took his first violin lessons and was an enthusiastic member of the school orchestra. After graduating, he first joined the Archiepiscopal House of Studies in Bonn as a seminarian, studying philosophy and theology. However, after only a few semesters a severe health crisis forced him to leave the Collegium Albertinum. Having contracted tuberculosis, Müller-Brühl travelled to the Disentis Monastery in Grisons (Switzerland), the oldest Benedictine abbey north of the Alps. The well-meaning abbot enabled him to attend the Lucerne Conservatory, where the novice met Wolfgang Schneiderhan, one of the most important violinists of the time. This encounter changed everything: in Schneiderhan, Müller-Brühl had found a mentor, teacher and friend.

Having returned to the lowlands, the young violinist continued to study philosophy and theology, but also art history and musicology with teachers including Joseph Ratzinger, Heinrich Lützeler and Josef Schmidt-Görg. He also strove to realise his own musical dreams. It was not only 18th century music which fascinated Müller-Brühl, but the unique confluence of all spiritual and artistic powers at the time in the total work of art which was the baroque period, that paradox attempt to unify the conflicts between lust for life and death-wish, sumptuousness and transience of the world, through music. What was more obvious than performing the music of the 18th century at original, genuine locations, such as the ones offered by the Brühl Palace?

Reviving the tradition of the Rhenish Chamber Music Festivals of the early 1920s, Müller-Brühl initiated the Brühl Palace Concerts in 1958, as well as his first orchestra, the Young String Ensemble Cologne. Starting in 1960, the Cologne Soloist Ensemble united members of the large Cologne-based orchestras and the Cologne Music Academy around the young conductor, pursuing the same goals. Three years later, the Cologne Chamber Orchestra performed for the first time in the splendid stairwell of the Elector’s Residence, where it became the house ensemble for almost 30 years.

Soon thereafter, Augustusburg Palace became the podium for important soloists: these included singers Irmgard Seefried and Maria Stader, violinist Wolfgang Schneiderhan, cellists Gaspar Cassadó and Pierre Fournier and pianists Jörg Demus and Wilhelm Kempff.