The Camerata Salzburg chamber orchestra was founded in 1952 by the Salzburg conductor and music teacher Bernhard Paumgartner with the participation of the teachers and pupils at Salzburg’s music school, the Mozarteum University. The ensemble gives concerts frequently on important stages around the world, and at home in Salzburg it appears regularly in the summer at the prestigious Salzburg Festival, at the Mozart Week, and in its own concerts. The orchestra’s domain is the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but it also devotes itself to the music of other composers, especially from the period of Viennese Classicism and Romanticism. The ensemble was especially famous internationally during the period when its conductor was the outstanding Mozart expert Sándor Végh (1978–1997), thanks to whom the orchestra’s special sound became a byword in the music world. The Camerata Salzburg has a number of superb recordings to its credit for the Decca, Warner Classics, and Sony Classical labels.

The French oboist and conductor François Leleux is a versatile artist. He began his noteworthy artistic career at the age of 18, when he became the principal oboe player at the Paris Opera. He then began appearing as a successful soloist with numerous leading orchestras including the New York Philharmonic and the NHK Symphony Orchestra. He has conducted such renowned orchestras as the Oslo Philharmonic and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He is now working closely with the Camerata Salzburg, and in the 2020/21 season he is an artist-in-residence of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. In an effort to expand the oboe repertoire, he has encouraged several contemporary composers to write new works for the instrument. He also is active as a pedagogue, having long taught as a professor at the Academy for Music and Theatre in Munich.