Ensemble Marsyas / Peter Whelan

Irish-born Peter Whelan is among the most exciting and versatile exponents of historical performance of his generation, with a remarkable career as a conductor, keyboardist and solo bassoonist. He is Artistic Director of the Irish Baroque Orchestra and founding Artistic Director of Ensemble Marsyas.

As conductor, Peter has a particular passion for exploring and championing neglected music from the baroque era. Recent projects funded by The Arts Council (Ireland) and Creative Scotland involved recreating and staging live performances of choral and symphonic music from eighteenth-century Dublin and Edinburgh. This led to his award-winning disc ‘Edinburgh 1742’ for Linn Records and his 2017 reconstruction of the ‘Irish State Musick’ in its original venue of Dublin Castle.

2018 sees Peter joining the Irish Baroque Orchestra as Artistic Director with an ambitious programme to champion period performance in Ireland and showcase Irish talent internationally including a tour to the US in 2019. Other recent highlights with the IBO include a production of Acis and Galatea with Opera Theatre Company in 2017. 2018 also sees Peter join Irish National Opera as artistic partner, conducting Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro with the Irish Chamber Orchestra and Gluck’s Orfeo et Euridice with the IBO during INO’s inaugural season. In Autumn 2018, Peter will make his debut with English Touring Opera.

As founding Artistic Director of Ensemble Marsyas, Whelan has performed at the Edinburgh International Festival (2017), Kilkenny Arts Festival (2017), Bath Festival (2017) and Wigmore Hall (2016). Ensemble Marsyas has an impressive and award-winning discography with its disc of Barsanti being named Editor’s Choice in Gramophone Magazine in 2017 and ‘Recording of the Year’ in MusicWeb International 2017, as well as reaching second place in the Official UK Specialist Classical Chart. Ensemble Marsyas has performed internationally under Peter’s direction including performances at the Lammermuir Festival, Göttingen Handel Festival, Tetbury Festival and at Great Music in Irish Houses.

Peter is ‘as exciting a live wire as Ireland has produced in the world of period performance’ (Irish Times). His artistic direction in live performance and the recording studio has been praised for its ‘stylish verve’ (BBC Music Magazine), its ‘exuberance and elegance’ (Irish Examiner’), and its ‘slick tempi, grit and character’ (Golden Plec).

 

 Dresdner Kammerchor

The Dresdner Kammerchor is one of the leading choirs in Germany. Since its foundation in 1985 by Hans-Christoph Rademann, it has become firmly established on the German and European musical scenes. With initiatives such as the first complete recording of Heinrich Schütz (since 2011) and a continuing interest in researching and promoting the musical legacy of central Germany, the choir helps shape the cultural identity of this region, working internationally as an ambassador for Dresden and Saxony. In collaboration with the Dresdner Barockorchester and other musical partners, numerous works have been rediscovered, performed and recorded. Recordings of works by Heinrich Schütz, Johann Adolf Hasse, Johann David Heinichen and Jan Dismas Zelenka have been honoured with numerous prizes including the German Record Critics’ Award.

Alongside the oratories and sacred works of Baroque masters such as Bach, Telemann and Händel, the choral-symphonic repertoire of the Classical and Romantic periods from Mozart via Mendelssohn to Brahms forms another main focus of the choir’s work. The Dresdner Kammerchor is also renowned for the performance of challenging a cappella literature from the 19th and 20th centuries by composers such as Max Reger, Alfred Schnittke, Ernst Krenek, Olivier Messiaen and Herman Berlinski.

The choir specializes in modern and contemporary music. This is reflected in numerous premieres, first performances, and new works commissioned by the choir. In 2009 Hans-Christoph Rademann and the Dresdner Kammerchor initiated the Dresden Chorwerkstatt fur Neue Musik. The choir was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for its services to contemporary music.

The Dresdner Kammerchor has received broad acclaim on its numerous concert trips in and outside Europe, i.e. USA, South Africa, India and China. The choir also receives regular invitations to international music festivals of great reputation like the Rheingau Musik Festival, Oude-Muziek-Festival Utrecht, Festivales Musicales Buenos Aires, Bachwoche Ansbach and Händelfestspiele Halle and Göttingen.

Frequent co-operations with renowned orchestras and conductors from Germany and abroad underscore the reputation of the choir. Among the most famous are the conductors René Jacobs, Sir Roger Norrington, Ádám Fischer, Riccardo Chailly, Herbert Blomstedt and the ensembles Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Concerto Köln and Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin.

 

Ensemble Inégal

Ensemble Inégal and its conductor Adam Viktora earned international acclaim thanks to its highly praised concerts and awarded CD-recordings, thus becoming synonymous with the ongoing rediscovery of the legacy of the ingenious Czech baroque composer Jan Dismas Zelenka, of whose works it performed and recorded an unparalleled number of World Premieres. The interpretative range of the highly versatile Ensemble Inégal spans from renaissance to contemporary music. In addition to early music, the ensemble has on its account innovatory performances and recordings of romantic (Dvořák, Rossini) and contemporary music (Britten, Pärt, Tormis). Ensemble Inégal has performed on prestigious European festivals such as the Prague Spring Festival, Musica Antiqua Brugge, Oude Muziek Utrecht, Lufthansa Festival London, Bachfest Leipzig, Tage Alter Musik Regensburg, Stockholm Early Music Festival and many others. Ensemble Inégal has recorded 16 successful CDs earning a range of international awards (Diapason d’or, IRR Outstanding, Goldberg 5 stars, a.o.), it features regularly in broadcasts of television and radio stations (BBC, EBU, Czech Television, Czech Radio, Deutschlandradio Kultur a.o.).

 

Orkiestra Historyczna

he {oh!} Orkiestra Historyczna was founded in 2012 in the city of Katowice by a group of passionate enthusiasts of early music focused around the concertmaster, Martyna Pastuszka, and the manager, Artur Malke.

The {oh!} Orkiestra Historyczna is, above all, an ensemble of young passionate professional artists with strong bonds with Upper Silesia, whose aim is to take early music performance in the region to a new level, becoming its cultural trademark in Poland and abroad.

In their dedication to historically informed performance, the members of the {oh!} Orkiestra never forget about what is most important: making their music reach their audience as fully as possible. Working on every aspect of a work in order to emphasise the rhetorical dimension of music results in concerts whose aim is to achieve excellent communication not only among the performers, but, above all, between the musicians and the audience.