In 1960, the Slovak Chamber Orchestra was founded on the premises of the Slovak Philharmonic, and the outstanding violinist of Silesian origin Bohdan Warchal (1930–2000) was at its birth. Since its foundation, it has been one of the most popular ensembles in the field of classical music in Slovakia. Under the leadership of Master Warchal, he became a leading representative of Slovak performing arts abroad. Expert criticism highlighted the elaborate phrasing and soft colored sound. The focus of the ensemble’s repertoire was baroque music, later also music of the 19th and 20th centuries, including many premieres by Slovak and foreign composers. The Slovak Chamber Orchestra has participated in important music festivals – Festival de Musique de Strasbourg, Salzburger Festspiele, Festival de Musique Montreux-Vevey, Budapest Zenei Hertek, Prague Spring, etc. He has performed on prestigious world stages in Europe, North and South America, Australia and Asia. Important performers worked with him – Vladimír Spivakov, Tabea Zimmermann, Miklós Perényi, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Cyprien Katsaris, Jean Pierre Rampal, Michala Petri, Heinz Hollinger, Peter Schreier, Francois Leleux, František Herman, Bernard Soustrot, Guy Touvron, etc. The ensemble has recorded more than 100 titles of music of various stylistic periods for domestic and foreign recording companies. Artistic director Bohdan Warchal led the orchestra for 40 years.
At the celebratory concert on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Slovak Chamber Orchestra, he expressed his wish that the Silesian native Ewald Danel, who has been artistic director since January 2001, would become his successor. In addition to regular concerts at the Slovak Philharmonic, performances at festivals and concert tours abroad, the orchestra realizes many extremely interesting projects.
For the first time in Slovakia, he performed Bach’s complete Brandenburg Concertos and Orchestral Suites in one concert. At his concerts, he successively performed all the Concerti grossi by Georg Friedrich Händel, Arcangelo Corelli and a unique set of string symphonies by the young F. Mendelssohn. In addition, he performed special concerts for important anniversaries of musical composers – Hommage and Bach, Dvořák, Mozart, Shostakovich, Suchoň. The orchestra commemorates its founder’s significant contribution to Slovak music every year with an extraordinary Hommage and Bohdan Warchal concert. The orchestra discovered for the Slovak audience many works by world authors that had not been performed in Slovakia until now. He plays a significant role in presenting Slovak music, since 2001 he has premiered more than fifty compositions.
On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the orchestra released a CD recording of the Serenade by A. Dvořák and J. Suk, which has been part of the SKO’s core repertoire throughout its existence. The orchestra performed at music festivals in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Poland, at the Musikverein and at the Konzerthaus in Vienna, and toured Japan. A special feature was the performance at the Pohoda festival, where the musicians performed Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. As part of its subscription concerts, the orchestra and its artistic director performed, among other things, the Slovak premiere of Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons and maintains the old Bratislava tradition of performing Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Our Savior on the Cross in St. Martin on Palm Sunday. On the initiative of artistic director Ewald Danel, the cycle Music in the Temples was also created, the culmination of which was the extremely successful performance of Handel’s oratorio Messiah. Based on the responses of the audience and performers, a new tradition of regular performances of this work is emerging.
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