The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen

“Everything is alive with this ensemble, both fresh and free.”
Der Standard

The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen is one of the world’s leading orchestras, captivating audiences everywhere with its unique style of music-making. The Estonian conductor Paavo Järvi has been the orchestra’s Artistic Director since 2004. This year, the dream team (NDR Kultur) celebrates 20 years of trusting and fruitful connection, a special feature in these fast-moving times.

One of the many highlights of the collaboration with Paavo Järvi has been their Beethoven Project, on which conductor and orchestra concentrated for ten years. Their Beethoven interpretations have been acclaimed worldwide by audiences and critics alike as benchmark performances. Following the ‘Beethoven Project’, The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Paavo Järvi focused on Robert Schumann’s symphonic works with equal success. Since 2015, the orchestra and its conductor focused on the German composer Johannes Brahms. The highlights of the project was the internationally acclaimed performance of A German Requiem on the 10^th of April 2018 at Bremen Cathedral, 150 years after the first performance.

Although the Brahms cycle and the associated intensive examination of Brahms‘ works are not yet finished, the orchestra has turned to another composer, Joseph Haydn. At special request of Paavo Järvi, the musicians deal with Haydn’s twelve London symphonies. The first concerts were to be heard in Vienna in autumn 2021. And according to the Wiener Zeitung, the Viennese audience “appreciated them with bravi and long applause…” Winter of 2022, The Kammerphilharmonie and Järvi went on a tour of Asia with London symphonies – starting in Hamburg via Vienna to Japan and South Korea. In April 2023, the first CD with two of Haydn’s twelve London symphonies was released — with five star review from BBC Radio 3/“finely tuned” and for Gramophone/“brimming with life” – for which the orchestra was awarded the Orchestra of the Year Award by the prestigious British classical music magazine Gramophone in October 2023 and the Opus Klassik 2024 also in the category ‘Orchestra of the Year’. The next CD is planned for late 2024.

The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen has been honoured with numerous prizes such as Echo, Opus and Diapason d’Or for its recordings and its unique future laboratory, a driving force for development for society and now a global movement.

For years, The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen has cultivated close musical friendships with international soloists such as Christian Tetzlaff, Maria João Pires, Janine Jansen, Igor Levit, Hilary Hahn and Martin Grubinger. In addition to the long-time artistic director Paavo Järvi, the young Finnish conductor Tarmo Peltokoski has been the first Principal Guest Conductor since February 2022.

Since opening in 2017, The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen has been one of the resident orchestras of the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and a long-standing resident orchestra of the Kölner Philharmonie. In 2019, the orchestra was the first orchestra in residence at the Rheingau Music Festival and was awarded the Rheingau Music Prize for its pioneering projects and the associated writing of interpretation history.

“Their account of Brahms’s serene but not untroubled Second Symphony had a tonic freshness and transparency that bowed to the grand tradition without being overwhelmed by it.”

The Arts Desk, August 2017

“In the middle movements, sumptuous oboes, clarinets and horns relished their starring roles while the sleek, burnished strings suggested not some band of cold-eyed iconoclasts but an outfit that can, when it wishes, re-ignite the superbly purring German orchestral engine of the past.”

The Arts Desk, August 2017

“I have rarely heard a gentler or more sensitive account of Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante (K364); every phrase was nurtured with care by soloists and orchestra alike.”

Classical Source, August 2017

“The energy currents flow and intensify with each moment. Weariness is not something that this cohesive ensemble know of. They are driven only by their desire to raise our perception of Brahms. And this is what the Bremen musicians precisely achieved in this blazing evening.”

Der Tagesspiegel , December 2015

“Seldom do you experience an orchestra where there is so much eye contact and laughter. Such enjoyment was clear from the outset of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen’s performance of Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 … the freedom with which this orchestra played with music is quite unique.”

Die Welt, December 2015