The Scharoun Ensemble Berlin

photo by Thomas Kierok

In 1983, double-bassist Peter Riegelbauer had been in the Berlin Philharmonic just about a year, and he was, he recalls, one of the orchestra’s handful of young members.

“The orchestra in general was very old then,” he said in a recent phone conversation from Berlin, “and there were only a few young musicians. We thought we would like to be together in a chamber-music group. Of course, there were other groups in the orchestra already, but we had the idea that we would do an ensemble that would mix strings and winds and play a wide repertoire.”

Thus was founded the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin — it’s named for the architect of the wonderful Berlin Philharmonie hall — composed of eight Berlin Philharmonic players, arrayed perfectly, and not by accident, to play the Schubert Octet: clarinet, horn, bassoon, two violins, viola, cello, and double bass.

That landmark of chamber-music literature became the Scharoun’s debut work and the group’s signature piece. The players, still counting Riegelbauer and hornist Stefan de Leval Jezierski from the original eight, offer it at Rackham Auditorium Wednesday, along with an arrangement of Dvorak’s “Czech Suite.” The performance marks the ensemble’s University Musical Society debut.

In the years since its founding, the Scharoun Ensemble has developed a repertoire that reaches back and forward from the Schubert, encompassing works from the baroque to the present; its reputation is equally far-reaching. Though the current U.S. tour is the group’s first, it is well-traveled across Europe and Asia and runs an annual chamber music festival, with a teaching component, at Zermatt, in Switzerland.

“When we founded this ensemble, we didn’t have the expectation that this would be so successful,” said Riegelbauer, “or that it would be such a strong part of our musical life. The expectation in those days was first of all the fun of playing chamber music, but also to have something to do outside the orchestra with our own musical wishes, without a conductor, to have artistic possibility of our own expressions.”

If it’s a nice change for the orchestral musicians to play chamber music and, for most members of the ensemble, to be one of a kind rather than a section player, Riegelbauer says their work together in the Scharoun Ensemble also contributes to their life as orchestral players.

“They also bring something back to the orchestra, the way to play together, to listen to each other, that is so important in the orchestra,” he said. “This is one of the strengths of the Berlin Philharmonic — almost everyone does solo or chamber music.

“It’s a very, very busy scene in the orchestra and very high quality, I must say. The way we are playing and working in the orchestra allows us a lot of freedoms to do the extra chamber music activities. That’s not possible in every orchestra.”