Netherlands Wind Ensemble

The NBE performs concert series at Amsterdam’s major venues: the Concertgebouw, Paradiso and the new Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, and tours abroad twice per season.

The core of the NBE was a wind octet (pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns), but the ensemble usually expanded to larger dimensions.

Kevin Volans, Roger Doyle, Alexander Raskatov, Carmen Linares, Guido Morini, Luca Francesconi, Cornelis de Bondt, Theo Loevendie, Guus Janssen, John Psathas, Maarten Altena, Martijn Padding, Ayub Ogada, Iva Bittova, the Pokrovsky Ensemble, the Hilliard Ensemble, Jordi Savall, Marco Beasley, Aynur Dogan and Manos Akhalinotopoulos have all been featured in this way.

In addition, the NBE regularly stages programs like Mail from Mozart, which alternates the seven parts of Mozart’s ‘Gran Partita’ with readings from his letters to his father; Schumann’s Diary, which tells the story of Schumann’s deteriorating mental health through passages from his diary and new interpretations of his piano works by Dutch composer Otto Ketting; or The Creation, which takes, as its point of departure, an 18th century version of Joseph Haydn’s Die Schöpfung but frames it with an updated Creation myth by Flemish author Bart Moeyaert.

Around the Mozart year 2006, the NBE staged Le Nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte and Cosi fan Tutte as a trio of original chamber operas performed on period instruments and featuring the voices of soprano Johannette Zomer and baritone Frans Fiselier.