Hobart Baroque

Inaugurated just 1 year ago, in April 2013, Hobart Baroque has already established a reputation as an important fixture on the national calendar of music festivals. It is the only festival in the country solely dedicated to performance of music of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

In 2014, Hobart Baroque  will run from March 28th – April 5th. It will feature world-class musicians performing in magnificent historic venues around Hobart, whose acoustic and intimacy support the style of music being performed. 

Artistic Director of Hobart Baroque, Leo Schofield AM nominates some of the highlights for the 2014 festival:

– The Australian premiere of  Handel’s Orlando,  directed by Chas Rader-Shieber, (who directed Pinchgut Opera’s 2013 production Giasone). This production of Orlando premiered at America’s Glyndebourne’, the Glimmerglass Summer Festival in New York, the forefront of Baroque resurgence in the USA, and later had a successful season at the Lincoln Centre.  Singing the role of Angelica, in Orlando, is American soprano Kathryn Lewek, who in December 2013 made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, as the Queen of the Night  in Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

– The first and only Australian appearance of the 23-year old Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva with orchestra, performing with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra,

– A unique collaboration between Melbourne early music ensemble Latitude 37 and MONA, an evening of Ottoman baroque music followed by an Ottoman banquet,

– A series of five early evening recitals by five different emerging young Tasmanian musicians and ensembles with an
admission price of just $5 to appeal to young audiences new to Baroque music,

–  The first appearance in Australia of the Barcelona-born countertenor Xavier Sabata, a soloist with Les Arts Florissants
and Le Jardin des Voix, In Hobart, he will perform with the Orchestra of the Antipodes, conducted by Erin Helyard.

As well, Helsinki-born Timo-Veikko Valve plays three of J S Bach’s unaccompanied cello sonatas on his 1725 Italian Baroque cello complete with gut strings.  Keyboard virtuosos Erin Helyard and Donald Nicolson alternate in a selection of sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti; Greek guitar virtuoso and composer Smaro Gregoriadou will play music from the Baroque through to the present. She’ll play on three guitars, each with a different type, number and material of strings, timbre and tuning. The guitars were crafted by Yorgos Kertsopoulos, whose instruments embody exhaustive historical and aesthetic research with practical acoustic applications for modern audiences.

Tickets and more information at HOBARTBAROQUE.COM.AU