Ensemble Wiener Collage

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The Ensemble Wiener Collage stands for performance at the highest level of contemporary music in all of its aspects.

The Ensemble includes members of the Vienna Philharmonic together with outstanding independent musicians from the contemporary music scene. This combination leads to a continuous beneficial exchange between performers of music with complementary characteristics.

Decisive for the acoustic character of the Ensemble Wiener Collage is the combined foundation of the typical “Viennese sound” enriched through all aspects of contemporary modern performance practice.
This circumstance positions the Ensemble Wiener Collage as an ideal group for interpretation of music of the Second Vienna School and its successors, a fact among others documented by close cooperation as Ensemble in Residence (since 1998) with the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna.

The Ensemble Wiener Collage is dedicated above all to contemporary music: in contrast to most other groups specializing in performance of new music, the Ensemble Wiener Collage maintains ongoing contact with composers of whose music it is convinced. In the nearly 25 years since its founding the Ensemble has offered first performances of some 200 new works, often utilizing quite unusual instrumentation.

Although the Ensemble performs mainly without a conductor, well-known musical personalities have sought cooperation with the group. Guest conductors have included Pierre Boulez, Friedrich Cherha and Erich Urbanner; performers with the Ensemble have included Anja Silja, Sylvie Rohrer, Ildikó Raimondi and Alexis Hauser.

Engagements of the Ensemble Wiener Collage:

Appearances in Italy, France, Spain, Turkey, the Ukraine, Germany, Slovakia, Portugal; further, in the Cologne Philharmonic, at the festival “Stars of the White Nights” in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Budapest Autumn Festival.