Bamberger Symphoniker Tickets

The Bamberger Symphoniker is an extraordinary orchestra in an extraordinary city. Bamberg without the Symphony would be a city bereft of something essential, something basic, like the air we breathe. Nigh on 10% of its inhabitants subscribe to one of the five home concert series. There are also quite a few special concerts, almost without exception fully sold out, so that Bamberg’s citizens attend a concert with their Orchestra on average once a year.

Yet the Bamberger Symphoniker is much more than simply the musical hub of the city and the entire region. It’s one of Germany’s most-travelled orchestras: since 1946, it has been delighting audiences worldwide with its characteristically dark, rounded, radiant sound. In that time, it has given well over 7,000 concerts in more than 500 cities and 63 countries, and as the Bavarian State Philharmonic it regularly criss-crosses the globe as cultural ambassador to the world for Bavaria and all of Germany.

In terms of cultural and political significance, some of the most striking instances have been the Bamberger Symphoniker’s trips to China, seven to date – its inaugural tour, in the autumn of 1986, was one of the first to the country by any western orchestra. Since then, the Bambergers have returned six times, under their Principal Conductors Horst Stein, Jonathan Nott and, most recently, Jakub Hrůša, in May 2017. During the first tour, some of the concerts were conducted by TANG Muhai, while in 2007 Lang Lang performed as soloist with the Orchestra, both indicative of the special bond between the Bamberger Symphoniker and its Chinese hosts and audiences.

The circumstances surrounding its birth make the Bamberger Symphoniker a mirror of German history. In 1946, ex-members of Prague’s German Philharmonic Orchestra met fellow musicians who had likewise been forced to flee their homes by the war and its aftermath. Together they founded the Bamberg Musicians’ Orchestra, soon after renamed the Bamberger Symphoniker. Its lineage can be traced back through the Prague Orchestra to the 18^th and 19^th centuries, so that the Bamberger Symphoniker’s roots reach back to Mahler and Mozart.

Now, more than 70 years after it was founded, and with Czech-born Jakub Hrůša, the Orchestra’s fifth Chief Conductor, at the helm since September 2016, once again there is a living link from the Bamberger Symphoniker’s historic roots to its present.

From the beginning, the Bamberger Symphoniker’s global brand has also received a substantial boost from innumerable collaborations with Bavarian Radio – live concert relays, studio recordings and CDs. Recent as the partnership with Jakub Hrůša, it has already produced several recordings, released by Tudor: the first was Smetana’s Má Vlast, followed by a 2-CD set of Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 and Antonín Dvořak’s Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”). And in the spring of 2018 came recognition of the high value that this partnership places on concert programming, with the German Music Publishers’ Association’s award for “Best Concert Series”.