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Bavarian State Orchestra

One of the world's oldest instrumental ensembles, the Bavarian State Orchestra participates in Bavarian State Opera productions but also performs independently as a symphonic group. The opera company and the orchestra are led by a single General Music Director, and some of the most famous figures in German musical history have held this position. The ultimate origins of the Bavarian State Orchestra date back to 1523 when Bavarian court composer Ludwig Senfl established ongoing vocal and instrumental ensembles in Munich. The instrumental side got a boost in the 1560s, when the new maestro di cappella, Orlande de Lassus, established scholarships for the children of local farm families who showed talent as players, and again in the 1650s when opera performances became regular in Munich and required a standing orchestra. This operatic group was renamed the Hoforchester (Court Orchestra) in 1762, and it grew in stature in 1778 when Karl Theodor of Mannheim moved some of the Mannheim court's fabled orchestral musicians to Munich. In 1781, Mozart conducted the orchestra in the world premiere of his opera Idomeneo, and in 1811, the group gave its first concert as part of Munich's Musikalische Akademie, the city's first orchestral concert series and one of the first such series anywhere. As an opera orchestra, the group gave the premieres of four of Wagner's operas. The Bavarian State Orchestra took its present name in 1919 with the end of the Bavarian monarchy. The list of General Music Directors of the Bavarian State Opera and Bavarian State Orchestra (in German, Bayrisches Staatsorchester) from the 19th century to the present reads like a who's who of the greats of German and European conducting, including the Wagnerian specialist Hans von Bülow, Richard Strauss, Bruno Walter, Georg Solti (hired by American authorities in 1946 to replace the Nazi sympathizer Hans Knappertsbusch), Wolfgang Sawallisch (1971-1992), Zubin Mehta, Kent Nagano, Kirill Petrenko, and, as of 2021, Vladimir Jurowski. The orchestra performs in Munich's Nationaltheater, whose design is based on that of the original 1818 structure by Karl von Fischer. In addition to numerous operatic recordings, the Bavarian State Orchestra has issued instrumental recordings on its own, many of them for the Deutsche Grammophon and Farao Classics labels. For the latter, in 2013, Kent Nagano led the orchestra in a performance of the original 1887 version of Bruckner's Symphony No. 8 in C minor, WAB 108.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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Discography

8 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller

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