The Divertissement Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1992 thanks to the enthusiasm of Professor Elena Komarova of the St Petersburg Conservatoire and several of her students. The unity of the musicians' school and fidelity to St Petersburg chamber traditions allowed the orchestra to make an immediate name for itself, first in its native city and later beyond its borders. Since 1998 the orchestra has been led by Ilya Ioff.
The ensemble's almost quartet-like flexibility and ensemble mobility has allowed the ensemble to develop a huge repertoire, including the most complex scores from all eras - from the Baroque to the twenty-first century. An important place in the Divertissement's repertoire is occupied by Russian music: Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussorgsky, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev and Alfred Schnittke. "Divertissement" collaborates extensively and successfully with contemporary Russian composers. Leonid Desyatnikov, Nastasya Khrushcheva, Pavel Karmanov, Sergei Akhunov, Vladimir Martynov - this is by no means a complete list of the composers whose music can be heard in the orchestra's concert programmes. Not limiting itself to Russian culture, the orchestra has become known in Russia as a performer of masterpieces of Western European music from various eras - from the Baroque to current experiments with electronics and performance. "Divertissement has collaborated with such outstanding musicians as Natalia Gutman, Grigory Sokolov, Julian Milkis, Alexei Lyubimov, and has toured in Russia, the Baltics, Europe, the USA and Japan.
