{oh!} Essence - NOSPR

Founded in 2012, {oh!} Orkiestra quickly established itself as the leading orchestra specialising in early music in Poland. The ensemble has appeared in some of the world’s finest concert venues, including Wigmore Hall, Theater an der Wien, Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow, and Auditorium de l’Opéra de Dijon, as well as at major festivals such as Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival, Bachfest Leipzig, Händel-Festspiele Halle, Tage Alter Musik Regensburg, and Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci.

{oh!} Orkiestra has released fourteen CD albums with instrumental and operatic music from different periods. The ensemble continues to explore forgotten Baroque operas, bringing works – such as Alessandro nell’Indie and Gismondo re di Polonia by Leonardo Vinci, and Il Venceslao by Antonio Caldara – back to life. The year 2022 brought the orchestra a fruitful collaboration with the Misteria Paschalia festival. {oh!} Orkiestra was invited to be a resident ensemble at the festival, with Martyna Pastuszka as Artistic Director. The orchestra also served as resident ensemble at the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival 2022. Since 2018, the orchestra has collaborated regularly with the Fryderyk Chopin Institute. Through this collaboration, {oh!} Orkiestra received an invitation from the Institute to record the complete Mozart symphonies, as well as works from the Polish Romantic repertoire.

The same qualities that have become synonymous with {oh!} Orkiestra in concert performance – vitality, rhythmic drive, sophistication of phrasing, and a strong sense of individuality, but also an intuitive rapport with the inherently dance-like spirit of the music – are no less evident in a smaller, more intimate, almost ‘pocket-sized’ formation. What is offered here is something approaching the very essence of {oh!}: from two musicians engaged in dialogue to a small ensemble sustaining conversations of remarkable complexity and colour. Chamber programmes, both those recorded on CD and entirely new repertoire proposals, have been brought together in a new setting and under a new name – {oh!} Essence.