Ossian's Dream
Ossian's Dream is a collective of musicians focused on performing mainly chamber music from the 18th and 19th centuries under historically informed conditions. We are comitted to rediscover and reenact salon practises in Europe during that time, understanding the salon as place of artstic freedom, interdisciplinearity and gender issues. For that, we aim to bring back practises such as arrangements and transcriptions, melodrams or improvisation, which were a central part of the salonnières demands and needs for aesthetical experiences.
To achieve it, Ossian's Dream acts as a flexible ensemble, which plays in different constellations in a same or in different concerts, but its founding and main members are: Jaume Guri and Léa Al-Saghir (violins), Anne Sophie van Riel (viola), Martin Egidi (cello), Claudia Reyes (clarinet), Ángel Álvarez (bassoon) and Pau F. Benlloch (keyboards).
1st prize winners of the International Van Wassenaer Competition 2025, of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis Ensemble Competition 2024 and finalists of the UBS Jeunes Solistes Prize 2025, the ensemble has already performed in various locations in Switzerland and Europe, and its members are frequent collaborators to renowned ensembles and orchestras such as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Balthasar Neumann Ensemble, La Cetra Baroque Orchestra, and Il Pomo d’Oro.
The name, inspired by the famous painting by Dominique Ingres, refers to one of the most fascinating phenomena of the Romantic era, the revival of the mythical figure of Ossian, dressed like an ancient bard, whose texts were presumably discovered by a Scottish scholar. The entire story could not better describe the Romantic spirit in its complexity and its inevitable influence on us.
