Salzburg, the hometown of the
Mozart family, has been a center of chamber music and Classical-era music performance since the founding of its famous Mozarteum by Franz von Hillebrandt in 1841. The annual Salzburg Festival (July and August) has been the leading festival in the German-speaking world since 1920.
The
Salzburg Camerata Academica is a regular participant in the festivals. It was founded in 1951 by
Bernhard Paumgartner. His principle, still professed by the organization, was to bring the cooperative, even familial, quality of chamber music playing to the small orchestra repertoire.
In addition to working in the festivals, the
Camerata plays around 90 performances a year in local concerts (often given in connection with the Mozarteum) and on tours. Over the years these tours have included trips to Vienna (where it has an annual series of concerts), Germany, France, Italy, and North and South America.
Naturally, the music of
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a mainstay of the
Camerata, but it plays music by other Classical- and Baroque-era composers, as well as a significant amount of the Romantic-era and 20th century chamber orchestra literature. Some of the leading solo performers of the world play with it (for example,
Sabine Meyer,
Zoltan Kocsis,
Peter Schreier, and
Elisabeth Leonskaya,
Murray Perahia,
Maria-João Pires, and
Rudolf Buchbinder), and it has worked with conductors including
Pierre Boulez,
Trevor Pinnock,
Franz Welser-Möst, and
Richard Hickox.
It gains worldwide recognition for its recordings, mostly under longtime music director
Sándor Végh, who led the
Camerata from 1978 until his death in 1997. These include complete sets of
Mozart's serenades, divertimenti, and cassations, and several of the piano concertos. After
Végh's death, the English conductor and period instrument specialist
Roger Norrington was appointed music director, followed by
Leonidas Kavakos (2007-2011) and
Louis Langrée.