STRAUSS FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA VIENNA
In 1978 Peter Guth founded his Strauss Festival Orchestra Vienna and established it as the international top ensemble for Viennese music with worldwide concert tours, numerous festival performances and series of CD and DVD recordings.
Strauss Festival Orchestra Vienna in the TV show "Music from Vienna", 1982
In more than forty years since the orchestra was founded, he succeeded to inspire several generations of participating young musicians for this genre. Also his wife Apollonia, formerly member of the first violins in the RSO Vienna, was from the very beginning in the SFO, where she played viola as principal and organized the orchestra’s extensive archive of sheet music.
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Every year since the millennium 2000 the orchestra received enthusiastic acclaim for its three sold-out Strauss New Year's Galas in the great hall of the Vienna Konzerthaus. New audiences were acquired constantly, also with regular trips to Asia (Japan, South Korea, PR China, Taiwan) and before the Covid pandemic also in Russia and Eastern Europe.
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Alternating with Peter Guth, the SFO was also frequently conducted by Willy Büchler, concertmaster of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.
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Regular concerts of the Strauss Festival Orchestra Vienna since the opening of the new Kölner Philharmonie in 1986.