Wiener Akademie
div. Projekte
Biographie
Orchester Wiener Akademie was founded in 1985 by the distinguished conductor and organist Martin Haselböck. Since then the orchestra has achieved international praise for its unmistakably Austrian musicality, virtuosity and lively interpretation of repertoire ranging from Baroque to late Romantic music played on period instruments.
The orchestra presents a regular series of concerts in Vienna’s prestigious Musikverein, which in the 2010-11 season will include concerts of Schumann and Schubert with the violinist Isabelle Faust, Handel’s Messiah, Bach Cantatas and a programme of Liszt and Schubert with the mezzo soprano Elisabeth Kulman.  The orchestra also tours extensively, performing regularly at international music festivals and concert series such as the Frankfurter Fest, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Wiener Festwochen, Klangbogen, Carinthischer Sommer, Cuenca Festival, Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, Handel Festival Halle and many others.  The orchestra has appeared in major concert halls worldwide, including Suntory Hall Tokyo, Izumi Hall Osaka, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Philharmonie Köln, Palau de la Musica and Concertgebouw Amsterdam.
Orchester Wiener Akademie is Orchestra-in-Residence of the International Liszt Festival in Raiding, Burgenland, where the orchestra is undertaking to perform and record the complete orchestral music by Franz Liszt, the first such cycle on period instruments.  The first release in the ‘The Sound of Weimar’ series will include the Dante Symphony, to be released in January 2011 to mark the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
Opera is a very important aspect of the work of Orchester Wiener Akademie. Recent series have included productions of Mozart’s  Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Don Giovanni, Il Sogno di Scipione and Le Nozze di Figaro, Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice and several Haydn operas. In 2004 opera was a particular focus of the orchestra’s activities, with performances of Handel’s Il Trionfo di Tempo e del Disenganno at the Salzburg Festival Barock at whitsun, Mozart’s Il Sogno di Scipione and Il Re Pastore for the Vienna Festival Klangbogen and Zaide at the Musikverein in Vienna.  
Since 2007 Orchester Wiener Akademie has been the official orchestra of the Burgfestspiele Reinsberg, where they have presented productions of Weber´s Der Freischütz, Beethoven´s Fidelio (released on DVD  by NCA) and Handel’s Acis & Galatea.
In 2009 with the actor John Malkovich, Orchester Wiener Akademie gave the premiere of the theatre piece The Infernal Comedy in Vienna’s Ronacher Theatre, touring the work extensively throughout 2010 and beyond.  A new work with Malkovich, The Giacomo Variations, about Casanova, will be premiered in Vienna in January 2011.
Orchester Wiener Akademie has released more than 30 recordings in a wide range of repertoire, including the masses of Schubert, Bruckner’s First Symphony, Haydn’s three ‘Times of the Day’ symphonies (selected by Gramophone Magazine as the best available period-instrument recording of these works) and rarer works by Fux, Porpora and Graun.   A special project in 2004, in co-operation with the BBC and EuroArts, was the DVD ‘A Night in Vienna’, featuring the music of Family Strauss and the soprano Leslie Garratt.   

Future CD releases of Orchester Wiener Akademie include the symphonies of Schubert and Beethoven, Haydn’s Creation and Schubert’s complete masses.

2011/2012
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