BIOGRAPHY The Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO), an international touring orchestra, is on the move approximately 200 days each year. The ensemble had its breakthrough just a few months after its founding in 1997 with a production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the opera festival in Aix-en-Provence under the direction of Claudio Abbado. Since then, the MCO has appeared all over the world, giving performances in major musical centres as well as at exclusive festivals from the North Pole to the Red Sea. With wide-ranging education projects, the MCO is also increasingly involved in community and outreach work. The MCO has been recognised as an official European Cultural Ambassador for the years 2011 to 2013.
Alongside founder Claudio Abbado, Daniel Hardinghas been a formative figure in the MCO’s history. Further important artistic partners include the conductors Pierre Boulez, Kent Nagano, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Sir John Elliot Gardiner, Daniele Gatti, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Tugan Sokhiev and the soloists Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Martha Argerich, Isabelle Faust, Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Harteros. The MCO is orchestra-in-residence at Ferrara Musica in Italy, at the LUCERNE FESTIVAL in Switzerland and in the German region of North Rhine-Westphalia.
