Camerata Salzburg is one of the world’s leading chamber orchestras and is regularly invited to perform at the most important venues, from Paris to Beijing. At home, the chamber orchestra is one of the core ensembles at the Salzburg Festival and the Mozartwoche Festival and has its own subscription cycle in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum Foundation. The core of its repertory is the work of Salzburg’s genius loci Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as well as Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert. Above all, it is the characteristic ‘Salzburg Mozart sound’ that has made Camerata a cultural ambassador and international figurehead for Mozart’s hometown for years.
In the 2023/24 season, along with appearances at the Salzburg Festival and Mozartwoche Festival, the orchestra has performed at international festivals such as the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, the Festival de Pâques in Aix-en-Provence, the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest, the Festival of Nations, and festivals in Hong Kong and Shanghai.
When Bernhard Paumgartner founded the orchestra in 1952, the artistic credo of each individual member was clear: making music independently with a sense of community, a maxim the orchestra and its members live by today. As its greatest inspirers and most longstanding directors, Bernhard Paumgartner and Sándor Végh shaped the sound of Camerata. After Végh’s death, Roger Norrington had a lasting influence as chief conductor of the orchestra, and he remains its director laureate.
Since 2016, the musicians of Camerata have governed their own artistic direction. The orchestra is led by its two concertmasters, Gregory Ahss and Giovanni Guzzo, as firsts among equals. The ensemble has also worked with guest conductors including Franz Welser-Möst, John Eliot Gardiner, Philippe Herreweghe, Andrew Manze and Teodor Currentzis. Over the course of more than 70 years, Camerata has made numerous recordings. Its latest CD, The Messenger, with Hélène Grimaud, was released in 2020 by Deutsche Grammophon and features works by Mozart and Valentin Silvestrov.
