Focus Point – Ideal Ensembles

Making music as a "harmony of free beings"

Historically, it is a rather new development for musicians to join together on their own initiative to form an ensemble. So what does it sound like when the performers themselves determine the artistic ideal? In the Heidelberger Frühling Musikfestival 2023, this can be experienced almost day after day.

Ideal and idealistically minded team constellations of committed individuals form a common thread in the festival program: Klangforum Wien will perform three of György Ligeti's fascinating instrumental concertos with a small ensemble under the direction of Péter Eötvös as part of the "Ligeti 100" focus. The chamber concert for 13 instruments completes the program. Outstanding Hungarian virtuosos take on the soloist parts, each of which is compositionally integrated into extremely vividly divided orchestral groups.

Het Collectief from Belgium is an elite formation that has made it its business to charge chamber versions of orchestral works with the expressive intensity of solo playing – resulting in even particularly colorful early works by Arnold Schoenberg or Anton Webern beginning to speak with the utmost urgency.

In Václav Luks' early music group Collegium 1704 and the progressive compact orchestras Kammerakademie Potsdam, Amsterdam Sinfonietta and Münchener Kammerorchester, all participants together influence the interpretation. The rehearsal work resembles a workshop among enthusiasts – and this is audibly reflected in the vitality of the music-making.

Excellence among equals also exists in the concerts of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and the Aurora Orchestra from London, two top international associations in which economic and artistic concerns are shared by all.

Even its own "ideal ensemble" will be formed at Heidelberger Frühling Musikfestival in 2023: The Festival Campus Ensemble is an orchestra of around 20 young instrumental talents who will perform the opening concert as well as chamber concerts on the festival campus and district concerts in various formations.

To the concerts