Salut Salon

It was the early 1980s and the two founders of Salut Salon, then eleven years old, shared the baton in a local Hamburg school orchestra. From the very first time that the two girls burst into fits of laughter together, violinists Angelika Bachmann and Iris Siegfried knew they would play music together for many years to come, and are still going strong 30 years later. Out of this friendship Salut Salon was born.

It was at a regular meeting of musicians, actors and artists who performed on the last Friday of every month in a kind of salon held in an apartment in the Hamburg neighbourhood of Eppendorf that Angelika and Iris played regularly in a piano quartet. At some point a gallery owner asked the four musicians whether they would like to give a public performance in the gallery. Suddenly the quartet needed a name. The four quickly came up with 'Salut Salon';  'Salut' because one of the quartet’s very first repertoire items was Edward Elgar’s Salut d‘amour, and 'Salon' because it was there that it all began. Salut Salon had their break-though in 2002 with sell-out concerts in their home city of Hamburg.

Now along with Sonja Lena Schmid (cello) and Anne-Monika von Twardowski (piano), Angelika and Iris give more than 120 concerts a year. Salut Salon also appear in guest performances in cities all over Europe, in the USA, in China and South America. Salut Salon are at home all over the world. They record exclusively for Warner Classics; their album Christmas with Salut Salon sees the ensemble tour Germany in 2014, with an international tour for the 2015-16 season.