The members of Ensemble Recherche have been dedicated to the new and unknown since 1985. The Freiburg-based ensemble has shaped contemporary music and musical history in this period of four decades – with more than of 1.000 premieres and 60 CD recordings. The nine musicians, all internationally-known soloists in the field of contemporary music, are enthusiasts for experimentation and passionately confront musical issues of the present. Bringing their musicality and their individual personalities to the collective, the nine soloists search for answers together, as an ensemble. The considerable energy and personal commitment of each and every member explains why the independent ensemble has been recognised as one of the most important players in the field of contemporary music for four decades.
Ensemble Recherche is regularly invited to the most prestigious festivals in Europe, and has made guest appearances at, among others, the Salzburg Festival, the Lucerne Festival, the Elbe Philharmonic Hall, the Concertgebouw
Amsterdam, the Venice Biennale, the Donaueschingen Music Festival, the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, and the Vienna Modern. International concert tours have taken the ensemble to, among other places, Israel,
Japan, China, Russia, Mexico, the USA and South America. In Freiburg, the ensemble introduces its audience to the latest developments in contemporary music and new voices of diverse composer personalities in its own series of subscription
concerts. Ensemble Recherche won the City of Freiburg’s Reinhold Schneider Prize in 2018.
In collaboration with both young and established composers, Ensemble Recherche generates new impetus and greatly influences the development of contemporary music. Composition students at music academies in, among
other places, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Linz, Freiburg, Antwerp, Reykjavik and Cambridge have profited from the ensemble musicians’ years of pedagogical experience within the framework of the its long-standing ‘Class Work’ project. The
ensemble’s personal links to important composers of the 20th century (particularly with Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm, Salvatore Sciarrino, Gérard Grisey, Hans Abrahamsen and Hans Werner Henze) make its musicians experts
in ‘historical performance practice’ in contemporary music of the last century.
The ensemble invests deeply in the future and nurtures this spirit of research in the next generation through numerous teaching engagements, such as school workshops, children’s concerts, participative youth projects, and masterclasses.
Ensemble Recherche thus advocates a culture of sensitive listening, the celebration of diversity, and a joyful and curious approach to complexity.
Ensemble Recherche, together with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, has been headquartered in the Ensemble House Freiburg since 2012. In recent years, the ensemble has gradually rejuvenated itself with younger musicians and a new management team – ideal prerequisites for continuing to shape musical history in the future…
The ensemble recherche is sponsored by the City of Freiburg and the state of Baden-Württemberg.
