Making Music Matter: Prince Donatus on the Future of the English Chamber Orchestra

In conversation with Rebeca Riofrio, Editor-in-Chief

At Rosewood Chancery in London, Rebeca Riofrio sat down with Dr Prince Donatus of Hohenzollern for a conversation that moved far beyond the conventional boundaries of classical music.

Newly involved at trustee level with the English Chamber Orchestra and serving as Chairman of its International Advisory Board, Prince Donatus brings to the institution an unusual combination of experience: entrepreneur, philanthropist, patron of the arts and scholar of epistemology.

The conversation was ostensibly about the future of one of Britain's recognised chamber orchestras. It soon became something broader: an exploration of why music matters, what culture contributes to society, why experience can sometimes communicate what analysis cannot, and why preserving great artistic institutions requires more than preserving their past.

For Prince Donatus, the challenge facing classical music is not simply one of audiences, programmes or funding.

It is one of relevance.

A Life Connected to Music

Prince Donatus has spent many years supporting charitable, cultural and musical organisations. His associations include the Purcell School for Young Musicians, Arts4Dementia and the Teahouse Baroque musicians' network, alongside longstanding support for musical education and young talent.

His decision to become closely involved with the English Chamber Orchestra therefore comes against a considerable background of cultural philanthropy.

Asked why the ECO now commanded his attention, he was careful not to enter into simplistic comparisons between Britain's great orchestras.

“You will not expect me to say that the English Chamber Orchestra is the best of all the top-notch orchestras and that the latter are inferior in their quality.”

Britain, he argued, possesses a remarkable concentration of orchestras operating at an international level. Collectively, they help sustain a European musical tradition admired around the world.

Yet he sees something particular in the English Chamber Orchestra: its ability to communicate music not merely as technical excellence, but as experience.

That distinction sits at the heart of his thinking.

Beyond Hearing Music

Prince Donatus holds a doctorate in philosophy and has written extensively on epistemology and the philosophy of science under his former and pen name, Markus von Hänsel-Hohenhausen.

For him, the relationship between knowledge and experience is fundamental to understanding music.

Modern society, he argues, has become accustomed to treating that which can be analysed, measured or proven as more objectively real than that which is experienced through the senses.

He challenges that assumption.

The pain from a cut finger is real, he observes, although the precise sensation of that pain cannot be transferred to another person or completely demonstrated through analysis. Sensory experience, in his philosophical framework, is therefore not simply an inferior or subjective cousin of analytical knowledge.

It represents another means through which human beings encounter reality.

And music belongs powerfully to that realm.

Classical music, he believes, can communicate something recognisable between composer, musician and listener. Were music entirely subjective, he suggests, there could be no meaningful standards by which musicians were trained or performances assessed.

The performer becomes essential to that process.

Prince Donatus describes the musician metaphorically as a living “tube”: not a passive channel, but an interpreter through whom the composer's communication must travel and resonate.

Technology may reproduce extraordinary technical accuracy, but for him it cannot completely substitute that living human presence.

“Sensory experience,” he explained, “affects us as a whole person, which makes music that aims at it so powerful.”

When Music Becomes Experience

To illustrate the point, Prince Donatus turns to Tchaikovsky.

A large audience hearing the Pathétique, he suggests, does not need an academic explanation before recognising sorrow within the work. Something is communicated almost immediately.

Music, in his conception, becomes what he calls a “reality magnifier”.

It allows an audience to experience ideas and emotions that cannot necessarily be contained by language alone.

That is also where he sees an important role for the English Chamber Orchestra.

Under artistic leader Stephanie Gonley, he believes the orchestra possesses a particular ability to negotiate the transition between Baroque traditions of service to the musical work and the later Romantic emphasis on the individuality and virtuosity of the performer.

For Prince Donatus, this is more than a discussion about musical periods. It speaks to changing ideas about the artist, the individual and society itself.

The ECO's repertoire and history place it, in his assessment, at an especially interesting point between those traditions.

The Business of Protecting Culture

There is, however, another side to the Prince's involvement with the orchestra — and it is considerably more pragmatic.

Prince Donatus spent more than four decades building businesses and working as a chief executive. When discussing the future of the ECO, the philosopher quickly gives way to the businessman.

Artistic excellence, he argues, cannot by itself guarantee institutional survival.

Following the death of ECO co-founder Quintin Ballardie in 2022, Prince Donatus says the orchestra faced considerable financial pressures while continuing to produce concerts of exceptional quality.

“Delivering the product alone is not enough,” he said.

His assessment is that an organisation seeking sustainable philanthropic and corporate support also requires a compelling vision of where it intends to go.

He credits CEO James Rutherford and the ECO's team with helping steer the organisation through a difficult period and believes Rutherford can play an important role in returning the orchestra to a more influential position.

Prince Donatus has also put his own resources behind that conviction.

Rather than confining his contribution to advice, he provided funding to cover the salaries and costs of three fundraising specialists who, under the leadership of Elvijs Plugis, are developing new revenue opportunities for the orchestra.

It is an approach consistent with one of his most direct observations during our conversation:

“I believe more in deeds than in words.”

A Royal Gala and a New Chapter

That philosophy will take tangible form on 17 October, when the English Chamber Orchestra's Royal Gala takes place at Banqueting House in Whitehall.

The evening is intended to do more than raise funds. Prince Donatus sees it as an opportunity to strengthen the national and international relationships surrounding the orchestra and build a community capable of supporting its next chapter.

The wider ambition is clear: sustainability, visibility, education and renewed cultural relevance.

For the Prince, the future of classical music cannot depend solely upon those who already understand it.

It must reach the next generation.

“In the near future, God willing, the orchestra will once again take up its significant role in the musical sector,” he said.

Its mission, as he describes it, is to bring the high culture of Western music into the centre of society while retaining an older ideal of artistic service — making music not simply something beautiful to hear, but something meaningful to experience.

He reduces that ambition to three words:

Making Music Matter.

Service Beyond the Concert Hall

That emphasis on service extends well beyond music.

Prince Donatus supports numerous charitable organisations, but speaks with particular affection about several whose work is highly personal to him.

The Purcell School for Young Musicians occupies an important place in his musical philanthropy. He describes it as an institution with an atmosphere difficult to reproduce elsewhere and considers its role in developing future generations of musicians vital to the wider classical music ecosystem.

He also highlights Arts4Dementia, founded by Veronica Franklin-Gould MBE, and Farnham Sinfonia under conductor Matthew Taylor.

But when asked which cause lies closest to his heart, his answer takes the conversation somewhere unexpected.

Blind Dog Rescue UK.

The charity is run by three volunteers who, he says, devote extraordinary energy to helping vulnerable animals alongside their everyday working lives.

His connection is intensely personal.

A widower, Prince Donatus lives with Alexis, a large rescue dog who is blind after having been shot.

Living with Alexis has altered his understanding of blindness in animals. He describes a dog capable of constructing and navigating a world through other sensory information, adapting in ways that challenge conventional assumptions about disability.

The story also circles back, perhaps inevitably, to the philosophical theme running throughout our conversation: there is more than one way of perceiving reality.

Nobility as Service

Our conversation at Rosewood Chancery eventually turns from music and philanthropy to monarchy.

Prince Donatus, who has German-English heritage, describes his understanding of nobility not principally in terms of title, but obligation.

“I advocate nobility as an obligation to serve the community,” he said.

His comments on the British monarchy are strongly supportive and reflect his own personal perspective. He regards the Royal Family's public service as an important example of duty and speaks warmly of his own encounters with King Charles III, including a meeting for tea at Clarence House in connection with charitable work.

His philosophical interpretation of constitutional monarchy goes further.

Prince Donatus draws a parallel between what he regards as two complementary ways of understanding reality — analysis and lived experience — and the different functions performed within Britain's constitutional arrangements.

It is an intellectual argument rather than a conventional political one, and distinctly his own. In his interpretation, Parliament represents an analytical dimension of public life while monarchy embodies an experiential and symbolic one.

He similarly views the House of Lords as occupying a space between those two dimensions.

Whatever one's constitutional perspective, the argument reveals something central to Prince Donatus's worldview: institutions, like music, cannot always be understood purely through data, structure or measurable utility. Their meaning can also reside in human experience, continuity, symbolism and collective memory.

The Question Behind the Music

Perhaps this is ultimately what makes Prince Donatus's involvement with the English Chamber Orchestra particularly interesting.

He does not speak about classical music as though it were an artefact to be protected behind glass.

Nor does he appear interested in preservation for preservation's sake.

He talks instead about function.

What can music still do?

What can it communicate?

How can an orchestra founded in another era speak meaningfully to people growing up in this one?

And how does a cultural institution preserve the seriousness of its artistic inheritance without allowing that inheritance to become remote from contemporary society?

These are difficult questions for classical music, particularly at a time when orchestras must negotiate artistic ambition alongside the realities of funding, philanthropy, education and audience development.

Prince Donatus believes the English Chamber Orchestra has the capacity to answer them.

His forthcoming epistemological study, written in German and expected to be published in October under the name Markus von Hänsel-Hohenhausen, examines the transition from Baroque to Romanticism and the implications of that transition for the modern worldview.

But at Rosewood Chancery, the philosophy ultimately returned to something remarkably simple.

Music has to reach people.

An orchestra can possess history, exceptional musicians and an enviable repertoire. It can perform with technical brilliance. But for those things to endure, music must remain connected to human experience — and each generation must be given the opportunity to discover why it matters.

For the English Chamber Orchestra, that may prove to be both its greatest challenge and its greatest opportunity.

Making music is not enough. The ambition now is to make music matter.