Nikolaus harnoncourt biography channel

Nikolaus Harnoncourt was born in Berlin, grew up in Graz Austria and studied the cello in Vienna, where from to he was a cellist with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. In he became Professor for Performance Practice at the Salzburg Mozarteum, a position he held until In Mr. Harnoncourt and his wife Alice Harnoncourt founded the Concentus musicus Wien as a specialist ensemble for the performance of early music on authentic instruments.

By he was giving regular concerts with the group, as well as making recordings of music from the 13th to the 18th century.

Here you will find a collection of online links to radio and TV programmes about Nikolaus and Alice Harnoncourt or the Concentus musicus Wien (CMW).

Countless tours, including five to the United States, took the ensemble to every part of the world. Today, forty-five years later, Concentus musicus Wien and Nikolaus Harnoncourt continue to appear in highly acclaimed performances and to produce award-winning recordings. Since Nikolaus Harnoncourt has worked as a conductor both in the opera house he has appeared in Milan, Zurich, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Vienna conducting a repertory ranging from Monteverdi to Johann Strauss and in the concert hall, where he has worked with the great European orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony, the London Philharmonia, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, among others.

Harnoncourt's recording activities have expanded since to include the operas, oratorios and symphonic works of the 18th and 19th centuries. He has performed and recorded the late symphonies of Mozart and Haydn, Beethoven's complete symphonies and violin concerto, Schubert's complete symphonies and Schumann's complete symphonies, as well as the piano and violin concertos.

Harnoncourt is in the process of completing a Mozart symphonies cycle, several recordings of which were released in , as were the complete Mozart Sacred Works. In he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh. His recordings of Beethoven's Missa solemnis and Symphonies Nos. In , Mr. Harnoncourt was awarded the prestigious Polar Music Prize.

An exclusive Teldec recording artist for over thirty years, Mr. Harnoncourt made his first recordings with what was then Telefunken in