Netherlands Chamber Orchestra

The orchestra can be heard at the most beautiful classical concert stage in the world: the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. But also in other concert halls the orchestra always plays with great pleasure. As a regular orchestral partner of De Nationale Opera, the orchestra, together with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, is internationally counted among the best opera orchestras.

The Netherlands Chamber Orchestra has been an exceptional orchestra since 1955, with a rich history full of highlights. Since its merge with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra in 1985, the orchestra has not lost its own identity. Especially the dynamics between the orchestra members of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra is very special. The orchestra usually plays without a conductor. The musicians trust each other blindly, and you can feel that chemistry during a concert.

Gordan Nikolić

Gordan Nikolić has been the orchestra's musical director as concertmaster since 2004. With his temperament and inspiration, the violinist of Serbian origin manages to bring the chamber orchestra to great heights time and again. Nikolić (1968) learned his trade with conductor and violinist Jean-Jacques Kantorow in Basel and cites conductor Sir Colin Davis as his great inspiration. Under this legendary conductor, Nikolić was appointed concertmaster of the London Symphony Orchestra in 1997.

Nikolić has a reputation to uphold with the chamber orchestra. The orchestra gained world fame in the early 1960s when it played at New York's Carnegie Hall with founder Szymon Goldberg: “If ever a concert merited the epithet ‘perfect,’ it was the one given by Szymon Goldberg and his Netherlands Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall,” The New York Times wrote at the time. In 2004, Gordan Nikolić was appointed musical director. He does not stand in front of the orchestra as conductor, but leads the musicians from the first lectern.

Musical pleasure

The Netherlands Chamber Orchestra gives dozens of concerts a year in Amsterdam, mainly in The Concertgebouw, but also in the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ and on other major stages at home and abroad. In addition, the chamber orchestra does not shy away from less obvious venues. For example, the orchestra regularly performs in sold-out Paradiso with concerts focusing on 20th-century composers such as Mahler and Stravinsky.

Like the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra also plays a number of productions each season at De Nationale Opera. Recently, the chamber orchestra played the operas Il barbiere di Siviglia, Die Zauberflöte, The Rake's Progress, Trouble in Tahiti and Clemency. In its review of the opera Il viaggio a Reims , newspaper Trouw summed up the chamber orchestra's playing excellently: 'The jubilantly playing Netherlands Chamber Orchestra roars through the score with tumbling pleasure. The musical jokes are all successful. Even in the very fastest pieces, everything remains pointed and splashy.'