Jean sibelius Pohjola's Daughter op. 49 / Violin Concerto op. 47 in D minor
Olivier messiaen Un sourire
esa-pekka salonen Foreign Bodies
Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen / Violin Vilde Frang / MCO Academy Project

The MCO Academy was created through a collaboration between the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Orchesterzentrum|NRW in Dortmund (North Rhine-Westphalia) with the goal of offering the next generation of orchestral musicians education and training. The Academy is a foundational pillar of the MCO’s NRW residence. The most important activities include the annual MCO Academy concerts, in which students are chosen through an audition process to sit and play among the members of the MCO, gaining practical experience under the batons of internationally-renowned conductors. Previous concerts were conducted by Daniel Harding, Ton Koopman and Pierre Boulez, and the fourth and upcoming MCO Academy concert will be led by Esa-Pekka Salonen. The rehearsal period and first concert take place this time in Essen, with further performances of the programme in Dortmund and Cologne.

Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen is familiar not only to NRW but also to the MCO: Salonen appears regularly at Dortmund’s concert hall, where he is an artist-in-residence for the years 2010 to 2013, and he first conducted the MCO in 2010 in Ferrara. Salonen himself chose the pieces for this programme, in keeping with the orchestra and promoters’ wish that he include one of his own works.

Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang, born in 1986, will perform the Sibelius Violin Concerto in her second collaboration with the MCO since she stepped in for her Dutch colleague Janine Jansen in an MCO concert in 2010.