About
The Royal Danish Orchestra is the world's oldest orchestra. Classic and modern resonant cultural heritage that embraces tradition and the future.
Like stringed instruments by the old masters, orchestras tend to improve with age. That gives the Royal Danish Orchestra a rare distinction even before you hear it play. For seniority, no ensemble in the world can match it.
As the oldest orchestras in the US and UK were celebrating their centenaries in the 1940s, this one was marking 500 years as a performing unit - the oldest musical ensemble of its kind on earth by some distance. The Dresden Staatskapelle, perhaps Germany’s most respected vintage orchestra, turned 400 in 1948 - a whole century younger than its Danish counterpart.
‘Unrivalled pedigree’ sounds like marketing speak. In the case of the Royal Danish Orchestra, it can be uttered with genuine meaning. Five years before its 1948 quincentenary celebrations, the two most sought-after conductors on the planet were fighting over which would secure a date to conduct the orchestra in Copenhagen. In the end, Herbert von Karajan trumped his rival Wilhelm Furtwängler by offering his services for free.