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The size of what was now truly an orchestra — stringed instruments had been added by the middle of the 16th century — varied according to both occasion and political circumstance. The 61 musicians who played for Christian IV's coronation had shrunk to just nine official players by 1690, although this micro-ensemble was the first to include woodwind and to play for the opera, which became a regular fixture in Copenhagen from 1703. Surviving the 16 years when an ardent Pietist monarch closed down theatres and frowned on music generally, the ensemble benefited from another royal wedding and the regular visits (from 1747 onwards) of an Italian opera troupe to increase their playing strength once more. In 1749 Gluck was guest conductor, premiering a 'theatrical serenade'. In 1769 the Kapel's close association with theatre was officially recognised and they became the Opera Orchestra at the Royal Theatre on Kongens Nytorv (the street where the present theatre is situated). Under its conductor, the composer Johan Gottlieb Naumann, the orchestra — in combination with an ensemble raised at the same time especially to play music to accompany plays — was able to mount a playing strength of 45. The connection with noted composers continued into the 19th century. Conductors Friedrich Kunzen and Claus Schall introduced Mozart's operas to Copenhagen, the latter attracting the praise of the composer's widow Constanze, who had moved to the city in 1810. "Nowhere does an orchestra play Mozart's works better than in this capital", she wrote. Weber conducted his then brand-new Freischütz overture with the Kapel. Heinrich Marschner rehearsed his opera Hans Heiling with them, and was offered (but declined) the conductorship in succession to Schall. Schall's 17 years at the helm saw the conductor's first use of a baton — instead of directing from the keyboard — and the programming of some concerts independent from the opera. His successors included Franz Glaser, briefly (and unsuccessfully) the composer Niels W. Gade, and Holger Simon Paulli. The orchestra was, of course, also responsible for accompanying ballet performances; the international reputation of the dance wing of the Royal Theatre dates from this time, when August Bournonville was creating a long sequence of classic ballets (especially La Sylphide and Napoli). Meanwhile, the orchestra of the Tivoli Concert Hall (with whom H.C. Lumbye, the Danish Johann Strauss, performed) had taken over Copenhagen's major contemporary concert series — under the auspices of the Musikforeningen, a private musical society. But the Kongelige Kapel's rare concerts, and their work at the opera, was of a sufficient standard to attract a star conductor to their helm: the Norwegian Johan Svendsen. His 25 years in Copenhagen (1883-1908) saw the establishment of two major concert series involving the Kapel. The players' first regular contact with the major symphonic literature brought local premieres of new works by Richard Strauss, Glazunov and Reger. In the opera pit, Svendsen shared duties with his young assistants Frederik Rung (who conducted the first Danish Ring cycle) and the ex-violinist, and rapidly emerging composer, Carl Nielsen. In 1902 and 1906 the latter premiered his own Saul og David and Maskarade, the major operas by a Dane for which the country had been waiting. The importance of symphony concerts increased under George Hoeberg, whose programmes between 1914 and 1930 included the local premiere of Strauss' Eine Alpensinfonie, barely a year after its completion, and a major concert in 1918 with Rachmaninov as soloist. The guest conductor list matched that of any international orchestra — Bruno Walter, Karl Muck, Hans Knapperts-busch and Franz Schalk all led performances in these years. Hoeberg also gave successful conducting lessons to the Crown Prince who, when he ascended the throne as Frederik IX, would (from 1938 onwards) take the baton for a regular series of birthday concerts, continuing and intensifying the connection between the orchestra and the royal family. Meanwhile, having survived the years of the Depression and assimilated the competition from the newly formed Danish State Radio Orchestra (in 1931), the Kongelige Kapel experienced another boom period under the joint leadership of the Italian Egisto Tango and the Dane Johan Hye-Knudsen. Both were praised for their Nielsen performances; both had the difficult task of guiding the orchestra through the years of German occupation which (bizarrely) included the European premiere, under Hye-Knudsen, of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. The guest list brought Stravinsky, Erich Kleiber and Stokowski to Copenhagen in the 1930s and, memorably, Furtwängler in the 1940s. John Frandsen began his 34 years at the head of the orchestra in 1946. His achievements within the opera house where he functioned as a kind of unofficial Artistic Director were as notable as his concert-giving: an early Danish premiere for Peter Grimes, the invitation of Wieland Wagner to stage two of his grandfather's operas in Copenhagen and the realising of the important Danish opera Fête galante by Poul Schierbeck. Frandsen's guest list in the concert hall brought Leonard Bernstein for a controversial but attention-garnering performance and recording of Nielsen's Third Symphony, as well as Erich Kleiber, Klemperer, Markevich, Celibidache, Böhm and Abbado. In more recent years the orchestra has recorded extensively under chief conductors Paavo Berglund and Michael Schønwandt and, with Poul Ruders' 1999 opera Tjenerindens Fortaelling ('The Handmaid's Tale'), helped create an acclaimed modern opera that is already establishing a place in the international repertoire. In the 21st century the Royal Theatre, Copenhagen continues to be one of the few houses outside Germany where opera, ballet and drama are produced in repertoire by the same company, the music provided by the same orchestra. There may have been plans for Otto Klemperer to work with the Royal Danish Orchestra in the 1930s but in the event his debut in Copenhagen had to wait until 1947. The programme was announced in the press as Beethoven Egmont Overture, Gluck Chaconne, Mozart Haffner Symphony and Brahms Symphony No.1; at the actual concert (on May 6) Harold Byrnes' arrangement of a suite from Purcell's semi-opera The Fairy Queen and Mozart's Serenata Notturna in D replaced the first three items. The venue was the main hall of the Odd Fellow Palaet, where the orchestra regularly gave concerts until the new Tivoli Koncertsal (Concert Hall) was completed in 1955. Klemperer had performed in Stockholm in 1946, but this Copenhagen concert was still one of his earliest appearances in Europe after the Second World War — a time the conductor had spent in America in varying states of mental and physical health, which seemed to threaten the brilliant if controversial career he had carved out for himself prior to 1933. (He was billed in the Danish press as the 'now American' conductor from New York.) In the audience on that first visit to the Danish capital was Aladár Tóth, soon to be the Intendant (general manager) of the Hungarian State Opera; according to Klemperer's daughter Lotte the concert's success was instrumental in leading to her father being offered the post of music director of that company, a vital stepping stone to the resumption of his mainstream activities. By the time of his second visit in January 1954, Klemperer's career had taken a decidedly upward turn. The years in Budapest (his last regular ones in an opera house) were dramatic and successful, as posthumously issued 'live' recordings demonstrate. Fine commercial records of Beethoven and Mahler had been made in Vienna, a regular contract with EMI and the Philharmonia Orchestra in London beckoned and he was about to move house to Zurich. As with all his guest appearances now, the visit was mapped out in advance by Lotte Klemperer. An orchestral seating plan (including the familiar Klemperer trademarks of the woodwind section raised up and the double-basses spread out behind the first violins) was sent to the orchestra and a pre-rehearsal meeting arranged with the leader to go through bowings. The concerts in the 1950s were led variously by Carlo Andersen, Peder Lynged and Julius Koppel; there were four rehearsals, the last on the morning of the concert. The 1954 concert took place, like that of 1947, in the Odd Fellow Palaet; the 1957 concert (for the orchestra's pension fund) in the new Tivoli Koncertsal. Both guests and hosts were enthusiastic about the engagements. "We always liked it there", says Lotte Klemperer, "the orchestra was very willing". The players remember clearly at a distance of nearly 50 years how Klemperer, physically weak, was so strong on the podium. "He was a sick man with really only one arm", says Johan Poulsen, principal double-bass in 1957. "It was fascinating. We did our best with him. It was very good, very fine". Erwin Jacobsen, second oboe, remembers the conductor's "long arms and big hands. His black eyes told us everything". "He could be impatient, perhaps because he was so weak", says Julius Koppel, one of the concert-masters, "but he could certainly make music." (A newspaper article from 1957 quotes a story about the conductor starting to leave the podium only 12 bars into the rehearsal. "Do you not want to play with us?", asked the orchestra's chairman. "Yes, but you do not want to play with me!", answered Klemperer.) Koppel had been entrusted by Lotte Klemperer with helping her father on his route to and from the podium, support that the conductor was reluctant to accept. Verner Nicolet, second flute at the concert in 1957 (his first full season with the orchestra), also remembers the contrast between the frailness of the man and the strength emanating from his conducting. "We played better for him as a whole orchestra together than the sum of our individual parts. I remember the feeling of an explosion when the Eroica started; you could never get a better first chord". Nicolet, who had also been present as an enthusiastic spectator at the 1954 concert, felt that in Klemperer's interpretations you could "understand everything" about the music and recalls the "instinctive" communication of rehearsal with him. The press agreed. Respectful in 1947, the reviews became increasingly enthusiastic. The 1954 Brahms Four was called by one critic "a celebration — every little detail had been attended to, all the great instrumental lines of the score were delivered for all their worth"; another remarked on Klemperer's "world of expressiveness, where everything was kept within a framework relating to the strictly controlled romanticism of the symphony". Three years later, the Eroica drew even greater praise. "Pathos, horror, excitement, the fanfares of victory, light and darkness — all were introduced with an extreme precision, tied together in a wonderful whole, realised through a never-failing fidelity to the score and a genius-like exploration of Beethoven's writing for wind and brass". According to some members of the orchestra, another Brahms symphony had been planned originally for the 1957 Pension Fund concert, but Klemperer arrived in Copenhagen determined to perform the Eroica, a work which inevitably brought out the most dynamic in him, whatever his mood. (Jacobsen says this decision was announced almost conspiratorially by the conductor to the waiting delegation at the airport.) The first half of this programme, no longer preserved on tape, was Bach Suite No.3 and Haydn's Clock Symphony. The concert proved to be Klemperer's last with the Royal Orchestra. A return visit was contracted for May 28, 1965 in the Odd Fellow Palaet: Beethoven Leonore III Overture, Mozart Symphony No.41 and Brahms No.1. Klemperer came in from Stockholm where he had been made an honorary member of that city's Philharmonic Orchestra but, upon arrival in Copenhagen, he was hospitalised with a short but debilitating illness and could not conduct. Instead, the orchestra returned to the theatre pit for ballet.
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