Directed by Katharina Spreckelsen

The Academy Baroque Soloists will perform a colourful selection of chamber music taken from Telemann’s dazzling baroque masterpiece Essercizii Musici.

Many of the most outstanding performers in the current generation of Historical Performance specialists studied at the Academy. In addition to a wonderfully vibrant department of first-study students, other performers take up Historical Performance as an additional strand of their professional development, resulting in a substantial community of students who come together for projects, classes and music making.

As well as being leading performers, many of the professors in the Historical Performance Department undertake ground-breaking research which they share in classes and workshops, inspiring lively debate and cultivating an atmosphere of enquiry in the quest for both new repertoire and exciting new ways of performing well-known music.
Students take part in projects with well-known historical performance specialists from all over the world including Trevor Pinnock, Philippe Herreweghe, Masaaki Suzuki and Ton Koopman, as well as collaborating with other institutions such as The Juilliard School. Other significant engagements include regular concerts at Wigmore Hall with Rachel Podger and opera productions such as Handel’s Semele with Laurence Cummings and Dido and Aeneas with Elizabeth Kenny. The Royal Academy of Music/Kohn Foundation 10 – year Bach Cantata Series has now been followed by Bach in Leipzig. The series began in 2022 with a performance directed by John Butt.

Katharina Spreckelsen
Katharina was born in Germany and after studying with the late Michel Piguet in Basle, she moved to London for further studies with Paul Goodwin at the Royal College of Music. She soon became a much sought-after player with many European Ensembles. Katharina was principal oboist with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, the Gabrieli Consort & Players and Florilegium and she now divides her time between The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Christian Curnyn’s Early Opera Company. Katharina has recorded extensively. She can be heard on many of Ton Kopman’s Bach Cantata recordings. With the Gabrieli Consort & Players she has recorded Oratorios by Handel, sacred works by J S Bach and Haydn’s Creation. With The English Concert she appears notably on discs with David Daniels, Elizabeth Watts, Danielle De Niese and Lucy Crowe. One of Katharina’s passions is to examine and perform works by JS Bach and his German predecessors, and to pass on this keen interest of hers to the next generation of musicians.