Playing music in ensemble – at a high level and in a relaxed atmosphere: that was the reason why musician friends, all colleagues of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, met together for the first time in 1999 at the Landsberger Sommermusiken, a summer music festival created and directed still now by the same musicians of the ensemble.
At the end of this first experience all of them expressed the desire to play again: the Ensemble Berlin was born. Since 1999 the ensemble has performed numerous concerts, performing at major festivals and concert halls of Europe.
The Ensemble Berlin is a flexible and versatile team which can include strings, winds, and sometimes the piano. The group’s repertoire have no restrictions: original compositions for classical chamber music in traditional casting for quintet, octet and nonet, classical, romantic and modern music – further musical adaptations also form an additional point of emphasis in this artistic work. To date, a whole series of musical jewels has resulted from the exceptionally fertile collaboration between the Ensemble Berlin and the arranger Wolfgang Renz; e.g Franz Schubert’s Wanderer-Fantasy in a version for nonet.
The Ensemble Berlin has recorded severals Cds. Among them the trascriptions of two of the most important works of the music history: a version for nonet from Schubert’s Wanderer-Fantasy and a version for wind quintet of Verdi’s String Quartet (warmly welcomed by critics); a Cd dedicated to Pasculli’s music and published for Emi (Editor Choice for Gramophone Magazine) and recently the transcriptions of two masterpieces, Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Le Tombeau de Couperin by Ravel (record of the week for the Rbb Kultur).