The Salzburg Bach Choir was founded in 1983, and is one of the leading vocal ensembles both in Austria and internationally. The choir regularly appears at the Salzburg Festival, performing to acclaim in numerous concerts and in staged opera productions. Highlights have included the world premiere of Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel, Handel’s Ariodante and Alcina and Orff’s De temporum fine comoedia.
At the Salzburg Easter Festival the choir has sung in several of Richard Wagner’s operas, under Antonio Pappano in Ponchielli’s La Gioconda and Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, under Esa-Pekka Salonen in Musorgsky’s Khovanshchina and in 2026 in Mahler’s Eighth Symphony under Kirill Petrenko. The choir has given guest performances at the Vienna Musikverein, the Brucknerhaus in Linz, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Berlin Konzerthaus and Philharmonie, at the Handel Festivals in Halle and Göttingen, at the Mozartfest Würzburg, and in France, Italy, Greece, Spain and Switzerland. The choir is also a permanent artistic partner of the International Mozarteum Foundation.
Thanks to its flexible resources and stylistic versatility, the Salzburg Bach Choir is able to perform a wide repertory, extending from the vocal polyphony of the Renaissance to the great Baroque, Classical and Romantic oratorios, and on to 20th-century works. It has also gained an international reputation for its interpretations of contemporary music.
In addition to its focus on Mozart, an important part of the Salzburg Bach Choir’s work is its own concert series, Chorage®. For its 40th anniversary in 2024, the choir commissioned compositions from Mark Simpson and Konstantia Gourzi, among others. The choir’s a cappella repertory spans more than five centuries: its performances of Thomas Tallis’s 40-part motet Spem in alium have been as much acclaimed as its interpretations of works by Ligeti, Eötvös, Haas and Furrer.
The Salzburg Bach Choir performs under many outstanding conductors and with renowned orchestras such as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Mozarteum Orchestra and Camerata Salzburg, Les Musiciens du Prince — Monaco, the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden and the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra. The choir enjoys ongoing collaborations with Ivor Bolton, Kirill Petrenko, Hans Graf, Gianluca Capuano, Adam Fischer, Sascha Goetzel, Roberto González-Monjas and Christian Thielemann.
Since 2025 Michael Schneider is artistic director of the Salzburg Bach Choir.
