Orchestra Of Radio Luxembourg

Since its debut in 1933 under the aegis of Radio Luxembourg (RTL), the orchestra of the Grand Duchy, the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg (OPL) has been present all over Europe. Publicly administered since 1996, the OPL has been, since 2005, in residence at the Philharmonie Luxembourg.
Since January 2012 both institutions have formed one and the same entity.

The acoustics of its residence, its long-standing connections with institutions like the Salle Pleyel in Paris and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and with festivals like Musica (Strasbourg) and ArsMusica (Brussels) have contributed to making the OPL an orchestra renowned for the elegance of its sonority. Moreover, the precision and musicality of its music director, Emmanuel Krivine, and the orchestra’s close collaboration with first-rate musical personalities such as Evgeny Kissin, Julia Fischer, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Jean-Guihen Queyras have consolidated the orchestra’s reputation. Its standing has been confirmed by an impressive list of prizes awarded for some twenty CDs, all released in the last seven years: Grand Prix Charles Cros, Victoires de la musique classique, Orphée d’Or de l’Académie du DisqueLyrique, Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Télérama ffff, Pizzicato Excellentia, IRR Outstanding, BBC Music Choice, as well as several Diapasons d’Or, Choc du Monde de la Musique, Pizzicato Supersonic, Classica R10 and many others.

Now in his seventh season, Emmanuel Krivine is the sixth music director of the OPL (after Henri Pensis, Louis de Froment, Leopold Hager, David Shallon and Bramwell Tovey). A disciple of Karl Böhm, Emmanuel Krivine holds to the ideal of a symphony orchestra, adapting to all available idioms and repertoires. This open attitude and the clarity of his readings have enabled the OPL to make a name for itself as «a transparent, elegant orchestra with a beautiful palette of colours» (Le Figaro), «free from anything flowery or nebulous but imbued with stylistic security and attuned to the specific qualities of each piece» (WDR). Alongside the classic and romantic repertoire, the orchestra’s programme reserves an important place for music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: works by Ivo Malec, Hugues Dufourt, Toshio Hosokawa, Klaus Huber, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Helmut Lachenmann, Georges Lentz, Philippe Gaubert, Philip Glass, Michael Jarrell, Gabriel Pierné, Arthur Honegger and many others are regularly performed. The orchestra has also recorded the complete orchestral works of IannisXenakis.

The orchestra demonstrates its diversity with regular opera productions staged at the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg; film concerts like «Live Cinema» in collaboration with the Cinémathèque de la Ville de Luxembourg; «Pops at the Phil» evenings with such stars as Patti Austin, Kurt Elling, Dionne Warwick, Maurane and Angélique Kidjo; open-air concerts with jazz and rock groups as part of the Fête de la Musique and so on. Soloists featured in the 2013/14 season include Martin Grubinger, Tine Thing Helseth, Vesselina Kasarova, Angelika Kirchschlager, Nikolaï Lugansky, Truls Mørk, Emmanuel Pahud, Alina Pogostkina, Baiba Skride, Alexandre Tharaud, Camilla Tilling and Arcadi Volodos, and conductors Richard Egarr, Susanna Mälkki, Juanjo Mena, Antonio Méndez, Tito Muñoz, Franck Ollu, Philip Pickett, Jonathan Stockhammer, Stefan Soltesz, Juraj Valčuha, Gast Waltzing and Ulrich Windfuhr.

Since 2003, the orchestra’s own music education team «login:music» has organised concerts and workshops for schools, children and families; DVD productions as well as ‹pocket concerts› in schools and hospitals. In addition, it prepares school classes for subscription concerts with music appreciation workshops, and it arranges the «Dating:» cycle, which draws on actors and multi-media tools for encounters with the works of selected composers.

Tours take the orchestra to many music venues in Europe as well as in Asia and the USA. OPL concerts are regularly broadcast by Luxembourg radio 100,7 and internationally by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

The OPL is supported financially by the Ministry of Culture of the Grand Duchy and by the City of Luxembourg. Its partners are BGL BNP Paribas as well as Garage Arnold Kontz, Crédit Agricole Private Banking and P&T. Since December 2012 a cello made by Matteo Goffriller (1659–1742) called «Le Luxembourgeois» has been put at the OPL’s disposal by BGL BNP Paribas.