Mahler Chamber Orchestra
The Mahler Chamber Orchestra, one of the world´s most acclaimed touring orchestras, is on the move approximately 200 days each year. The 45 core members of the MCO come from 20 different countries and live all over Europe.
The ensemble had its breakthrough just a few months after its founding in 1997 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. The MCO is orchestra-in-residence at Ferrara Musica in Italy, at the LUCERNE FESTIVAL in Switzerland (where it also forms the core of Abbado´s Lucerne Festival Orchestra) and in the German region of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Beethoven Journey with Leif Ove Andsnes is a key project of the MCO over the next four years.
Alongside founding mentor Claudio Abbado, Daniel Harding has been a formative figure in the MCO’s history. Further important conductors include Pierre Boulez, Kent Nagano, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Daniele Gatti, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Tugan Sokhiev.
The MCO is accompanying The Beethoven Journey with an education project, which picks up on the themes of music and deafness: famously, Beethoven was increasingly afflicted by hearing problems over the course of his life. Under the title “Feel the Music”, the MCO and Leif Ove Andsnes in co-operation with the British organisation “Music and the Deaf” are leading hearing-impaired children into the world of the orchestra, letting them explore music through hearing, feeling and creating. The project involves school workshops and visits to rehearsals in the concert venues themselves. With “Feel the Music”, The Beethoven Journey becomes a journey of the senses, a journey on which musicians and children feel and make music together.
The Mahler Chamber Orchestra has been recognised as an official European Cultural Ambassador for the years 2011 to 2013.
Stiftelsen Kristian Gerhard Jebsen
The Beethoven Journey is sponsored by the Stiftelsen Kristian Gerhard Jebsen, a Bergen based foundation established to honour the memory of Kristian Gerhard Jebsen and his contribution to the Norwegian and international shipping business.
The SKGJ's contribution to Leif Ove Andsnes is a special commitment to an artist who has given so much to Bergen cultural life. The foundation's three year engagement as Primary Cycle Sponsor includes sole sponsorship of Leif Ove Andsnes' performances of Beethoven's Piano Concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra at the Bergen International Festival.
Kristian Gerhard Jebsen was born in Bergen in 1927 and worked as a shipbroker in New York, Paris and London until he joined the family shipping company, Kristian Jebsens Rederi AS, in 1953. He made a major contribution to its modernisation, and played a key role in the development of bulk carriers. After starting on his own in 1967 with KGJS, he built up a worldwide business which today includes the ownership and operation of 110 ships. His unique knowledge of international shipping, combined with his visionary talents, great capacity for work and ability to motivate and lead, allowed Jebsen to build up a business which ranks today as a world leader in its fields. He is remembered as a distinctive and innovative player in the development of the shipping industry from the 1950s and until his death in London in 2004.
After its creation in 2009, the Kristian Gerhard Jebsen Foundation first concentrated its support on projects within the fields of medical and maritime research. In 2011, for the first time, it has also reached out to the arts. A common denominator for its engagement is a vision of contributing to the realisation of projects on the highest international level.