The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra is based in Enschede, in the province of Overijssel. Performing at an international level, as evidenced by its highly acclaimed CDs and invitations for international tours, the orchestra is firmly rooted in society.
Jan Willem de Vriend has been its artistic director and chief conductor since 2006. He will be succeeded by Ed Spanjaard in 2017. Under De Vriend’s leadership, the orchestra has expanded its repertoire to cover music from four centuries. Its use of period instruments in the Classical repertoire gives the orchestra a distinctive and highly individual character.
The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra performs amongst others in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Enschede, Zwolle and Deventer. In addition, it has made successful tours of the United States, Spain and England and it often works with the Dutch National Touring Opera Company. In its home town Enschede, the orchestra builds on a symphonic tradition of more than 80 years, and it is known as one of the most modern and entrepreneurial orchestras in the Netherlands.
The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra created a number of ensembles, such as a chamber orchestra, the Baroque Academy of the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra (BANSO) and various chamber music ensembles. The orchestra’s commitment to expanding its social relevance is also reflected in the large number of projects in which education is a key element.
The orchestra has worked with distinguished conductors, such as its former chief conductor Jaap van Zweden, Vasily Petrenko, Edo de Waart, Claus Peter Flor and Tan Dun. It also has accompanied many celebrated soloists, including Gidon Kremer, Ronald Brautigam, Natalia Gutman, Charlotte Margiono, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Thomas Zehetmair.

The Storioni Trio has established itself as the leading Dutch piano trio, with concerts in Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall), Concertgebouw, Wigmore Hall and the most prestigious European festivals. The Trio has worked with national and international orchestras, like the Münchner Kammerorchester, the RTE Orchestra Ireland and Orchèstre de Chambre de Wallonie. The recordings by the Storioni Trio, for the Pentatone label, have received great international acclaim.
The members of the trio are artistic directors of the annual Storioni Festival in Eindhoven, of which the 5th edition will take place in January 2012. Guest musicians from all over the world will join the trio for a festival during which unique chamber music programmes with top international musicians as well as upcoming talented musicians of the highest calibre are presented. In the last editions they had special guests like Gidon Kremer, Vadim Repin, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Vladimir Mendelssohn, Natalia Gutman, Mischa Maisky, the Brentano and Skampa Quartets and many others. In addition, the Storioni Festival presents a yearly commission for a new work for piano trio.
The Storioni Trio was founded in 1995 by Bart van de Roer (piano), Wouter Vossen (violin) and Marc Vossen (cello). The trio derives its name from the Laurentius Storioni violin from Cremona, which dates from 1794 and is played by Wouter Vossen. Marc Vossen plays a Giovanni Grancino cello from Milan, dating from 1700. In order to develop its ensemble-playing, the trio has worked over the years with great musicians such as Isaac Stern, Mstislav Rostropovich, Menahem Pressler, and Ralph Kirshbaum, as well as members of the Emerson Quartet and the Vermeer Quartet.
The Storioni Trio offers an expansive repertoire ranging from Haydn and Mozart via Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Ravel and Shostakovich, to exciting works by contemporary composers. Composer Kevin Volans wrote a triple concerto for the 10th anniversary of the Storioni Trio. The season 11-12 saw performances of the Martinu Triple Concerto with Musikkolegium Winterthur and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic and Jaap van Zweden and the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra and Jan Willem de Vriend. In the 2012-13 season the Storioni Trio returns to the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. In 2013-14 the Storioni Trio will undertake a huge task: to perform all Beethoven’s piano trios in Switzerland (Fribourg), the Netherlands (Eindhoven) and in other countries.
The 2012 Storioni Festival showed two world premières: a new piano trio by Peteris Vasks and a special commission by the Storioni Festival: a Triple Concerto by Willem Jeths. Recently the Storioni Trio has performed the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the orchestras of Limburg, Brabant, Enschede, Mannheim and Dortmund. The performance of Beethoven’s triple concerto during the New Ross Piano Festival will be the 27th time the Storioni Trio performs this masterpiece.
The trio has received various prizes and awards, and performs regularly on radio and television. The 4 CDs recorded for the label Pentatone - including the piano trio’s of Brahms, Röntgen, Schubert and Beethoven – gained international recognition from the music press, like the Gramophone and The STRAD. In July 2012 the Storioni Trio recorded the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra and Jan Willem de Vriend. Together with this piece the Storioni Trio will record Beethoven’s Archduke trio. The CD will be released on Challenge Classics during the Storioni Festival 2013.
On an international level, the trio is also highly active, giving concerts at various festivals like Kuhmo, Mecklenburg Vorpommern Festival, Osnabruck Kammermusiktage, Trio Festival in the Philharmonie Moscow, and goes on tour to India, the Middle East, Australia, Taiwan, Japan and the United States.

Jan Willem de Vriend, designated “a godsend from the Netherlands” by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, is driven by the pioneering spirit of historically informed perfomance practice. As music director of the Combattimento Consort Amsterdam, which he founded in 1982, he specialised in repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries, reviving a wealth of rarely heard works through historically informed performances on modern instruments, praised by Gramophone magazine for their “technical finesse and a lively feeling for characterization”.
An award-winner for his creative contribution to classical music, Jan Willem de Vriend has more than 50,000 followers on Spotify and is in demand as a conductor around the world, appearing regularly with such orchestras as the Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Residentie Orkest Den Haag, Belgian National Orchestra, Tonhalle Zurich, Orchestre National de Lyon, Bergen Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic, the symphony orchestras of Netherlands Radio and Hessischer Rundfunk (Frankfurt Radio Symphony), Melbourne Symphony, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony and Hong Kong Philharmonic. He is Principal Conductor Designate of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, and Principal Guest Conductor of the City of Kyoto Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Stuttgart Philharmonic and Orchestre National de Lille, and former Principal Guest Conductor of the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya and the Brabant Orchestra.
For the Challenge Classics label, de Vriend and the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra have recorded the complete Mendelssohn symphonies and all Beethoven’s symphonies and concertos with, among others, pianist Hannes Minnaar and violinist Liza Ferschtman. De Vriend’s interpretation of the Symphony No 7 prompted Classic FM to admire “a bounding flair that does real justice to the composer’s capacity for joy”. A further landmark of his recorded catalogue is his complete recording of the Schubert symphonies with the Residentie Orkest Den Haag.
De Vriend’s collaborative spirit is equally evident in his work for the stage, notably with opera director Eva Buchmann and Combattimento Consort Amsterdam. In addition to works by Monteverdi, Haydn, Handel and Telemann, their productions in Europe and the USA have included staged versions of Bach’s ‘Hunting’ and ‘Coffee’ Cantatas at the Bachfest Leipzig, and operas by Mozart, Rossini, Verdi and Cherubini, among them Mozart’s Don Giovanni und Rossini’s La gazzetta, both toured in Switzerland. De Vriend has also conducted operatic productions in Amsterdam (with the Nederlandse Reisopera), Barcelona, Strasbourg, Lucerne, Schwetzingen and Bergen.