Vita
The cellist Christoph Dangel engages with music in many different ways.
Early music and an interest in historical performance practice play an important role in his professional work. In 2012 deutsche harmonia mundi released the album viaggio italiano with Baroque cello sonatas from the collection of the Counts of Schönborn-Wiesentheid. As solo cellist of the Basel Chamber Orchestra, he is involved in the Haydn2032 project, which aims to record all of Haydn’s symphonies under the direction of Giovanni Antonini. The album 1824, released in 2022, brings together early romantic cello music in different instrumentations. The album is supplemented by a calendar-like booklet in which historical research brings back to life the musical events of 1824. Under the direction of Thomas Hengelbrock, the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble, in which Christoph Dangel has also been a solo cellist for many years, is dedicated to a broad repertoire from Monteverdi to Wagner played on instruments appropriate to the times. Other ensembles such as Il Giardino Armonico or the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées under the direction of Philippe Herreweghe ask him to be a guest principal and continuo cellist.
Coming from a family of musicians, from early on Christoph Dangel was active in various ensembles and chamber music became a natural part of his life. For the past twenty years, his Basel-based ensemble Camerata Variabile, has been organizing its own chamber music series with concerts in Basel, Zurich, Schaffhausen and Fribourg. Every year it commissions new compositions and arranges demanding programmes primarily with music from the 19th and 20th centuries and performed by ensembles in varying instrumentations. He has also performed at international festivals with renowned artists such as Isabelle Faust, Rachel Podger, Victoria Mullova, Joshua Bell, Riccardo Minasi, Kristian Bezuidenhout, Maurice Steger, Andreas Scholl and Bobby McFerrin.
Teaching is close to Christoph Dangel’s heart and therefore takes up a major space in his work. As a lecturer in historical cello he teaches at the University of Music in Freiburg, he is involved in the Balthasar-Neumann-Ensemble’s academy programme, regularly gives private tuition and conducts workshops for both chamber music and orchestra. In addition he is responsible for the Academy of the Basel Chamber Orchestra, which is aimed at students of the Basel Academy of Music. There he occasionally stands in for his former professor Thomas Demenga and has been asked to give introductory workshops on introductory Baroque literature and orchestral studies. Arte frizzante, the orchestra founded by young Swiss and German musicians, has repeatedly invited him as a coach.
In recent years he has been involved in leading numerous educational projects carried out by the Basel Chamber Orchestra. Together with some of his colleagues and directed by Salomé Im Hof, plays for the classroom were created. So far Heimspiel has been performed more than 60 times.
As part of the Basel Chamber Orchestra ‘s Nachtklang format, the experimental trio with double-bassist Stefan Preyer and media artist Janiv Oron has created its individual wooden-electronic sound. This has led to collaborations with artists such as Renée Levy, the dancer Andrea Tortosa and writer/ songwriter Michael Fehr. The trio has recently been commissioned to curate the Don Boscos Garden series.
Christoph Dangel is a regular guest on Swiss Radio SRF ‘s programme Discothek im 2.
He plays a classical Viennese instrument by Bernadus Stoss (1815) and a baroque cello, a replica of an Andrea Guarneri (1762), by Friederike Dangel. In addition, a privately owned cello by Nicoló Amati (ca. 1670) is made available to him.
Discography
