Two baroque oboists from Concerto Copenhagen, a man and a woman, have given up the profession.

He went into the drinks trade in Sweden, and she began studying medicine.

They also play on the latest CD "Armonico Tributo" with music by Georg Muffat (Berlin Classics).

"The CD was made in 2020, at a time when we were no longer allowed to give concerts, but could at least make recordings," says Nikolaj de Fine Licht, while we are sitting in the foyer of the Black Diamond, the new Royal Library in Copenhagen on the canal.

In 1991, De Fine Licht was one of the co-founders of Concerto Copenhagen, which has developed into one of the world's best special ensembles on period instruments.

He has been the managing director of "CoCo" since 2011.

Jan Brachmann

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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On March 10, 2020, the FAZ published one of the last current opera reviews before the Corona lockdown: Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" at the Royal Opera House with Concerto Copenhagen and its chief conductor Lars Ulrik Mortensen.

It was a delicate, intelligent production, played with oppressive grace.

Only half the audience was allowed to attend the premiere;

the rest had been unloaded at short notice by telephone.

“We were able to play three performances, after that it was over.

We were no longer allowed to perform Monteverdi's 'Marienvesper'.

Nobly enough, the opera house paid the full fee at the time,” says de Fine Licht.

All musicians at Concerto Copenhagen are freelancers.

That means: “We have no long-term contracts.

Everything is project related.

There is no social security.

If we don't play, we don't get any money.

You have to be willing to take risks and have a strong belief that this is the right way to express yourself artistically,” explains Mortensen, a fiery spirit who has been making Concerto Copenhagen glow for over thirty years.

The Corona period was tough for him and his ensemble.

Of the sixty regular musicians, thirteen asked for emergency aid, which the Danish state had not provided for.

Nikolaj de Fine Licht organized a collection for the ensemble's private circle of friends, which raised so much money that the thirteen people received a one-off payment of about a thousand euros per head.

There were musicians in Denmark

The ensemble only receives basic funding of two million Danish kroner (almost 270,000 euros) a year from the state.

"We were fortunate that the many private foundations that play a major role in cultural funding in Denmark paid out their promised funding without us being able to carry out the projects we had applied for," reports de Fine Licht.

The orchestra did not believe in streaming concerts without an audience, but a lot of money was put into digital formats: YouTube videos with rehearsal excerpts and interviews, music clips with their own visual language and the visually and musically very concentrated series "Spaces" in unusual places, such as a ruinous one Control tower on an abandoned military site.