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About
The Balthasar Neumann Choir is a professional vocal ensemble made up of vocal soloists. The Balthasar Neumann Ensemble is a professional orchestra specializing in historical performance practice.
In 1991 the conductor Thomas Hengelbrock founded the choir in Freiburg im Breisgau and named it after the baroque master builder Balthasar Neumann, whose architectural works were characterized by holistic planning of building, painting, sculpture and garden. Based on this way of thinking, the choir and ensemble strive for harmony between music and performance conditions. In a small cast and with the option of casting virtuoso roles with their own singers, the choir performs compositions such as Monteverdi's Marienvesper up to Bach's vocal works; in a larger cast it is dedicated to the music of the 19th to 21st centuries.
In 1995 Thomas Hengelbrock formed the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble. Following a historically informed performance practice, it makes music on the instruments appropriate to the time. The repertoire of both orchestras ranges from the early baroque to the modern.
The close and continuous collaboration between the Balthasar Neumann Choir and the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble of the same name results in concert programs and music theater productions under directors such as Achim Freyer, Philippe Arlaud or the founder Thomas Hengelbrock. With the discovery of forgotten works and new interpretations of well-known repertoires, Thomas Hengelbrock and his ensembles emerge internationally.
In addition to carnival music of the 17th century or the metamorphoses of melancholy, programs that trace the idea of the baroque world theater, stage music such as Robert Schumann's Manfred or Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt was interpreted in a new way in the context of Byron and Ibsen's dramas. The choir and ensemble worked closely with the actors Graham Valentine and Klaus Maria Brandauer. In cooperation with the director Achim Freyer, a staged performance of the B minor Mass by Johann Sebastian Bach was created for the Schwetzingen Festival and the Bonn Opera in 1996. The solo parts are made up of the choir, who sings the work by heart. Resumptions with the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble have been successful since 2002.
From 1998 to 2005 Südwestrundfunk carried out its own concert series with the Balthasar Neumann Choir and Ensemble under the motto Adventure Music. Less well-known works, such as the Missa superba by Johann Kaspar Kerll or the Missa sapientiae by Antonio Lotti, were presented to the public here. In this series, Antonio Lotti's Requiem in F major was performed again for the first time.
Both ensembles presented themselves at the Opéra national de Paris in 2005 and 2008. Playing together with the ensemble in the orchestra pit, the choir performed the opéra dansé Orpheus and Eurydice in the choreography by Pina Bausch (music: Christoph Willibald Gluck).
The choir's own concert projects took place at the Expo 2000 with the Bremen Chamber Philharmonic or with programs such as the Romantic Choir Night 2007 in Lörrach.
In 2006, under Hengelbrock's direction, the ensemble opened the M22 project of the Salzburg Festival: on the occasion of W. A. Mozart's 250th birthday, various orchestras, choirs, conductors and soloists performed all of the composer's 22 scenic works during the festival. Under Hengelbrock's direction and musical direction, the orchestra and five soloists brought Mozart's early opera Il re pastore from 1775 to the stage.
Since it was founded, the choir and ensemble have received numerous awards, including the Echo Klassik several times over. In 2005 they received the Baden-Württemberg Culture Prize (main prize, shared with the Panoptikum Action Theater). In 2010 the recording of choral works by Jan Dismas Zelenkas, Johann Sebastian Bach and Antonio Lottis received a Gramophone Award in the Baroque Vocal category.