Istanbul Music Festival Success

Delivering all sold-out performances on their June 2015 tour to Turkey, Simon Murphy and The Hague's Baroque orchestra, The New Dutch Academy (NDA), appeared at the 43rd Istanbul Music Festival performing their internationally successful concert programme “Bach and his Dutch Contemporaries”. Other festival-artists included Magdalena Kožená, Arabella Steinbacher, Yuri Bashmet and the Moscow Soloists, Sol Gabetta, Yuja Wang, Kim Kashkashian, and The Borodin String Quartet. Murphy and the NDA performed at the Palais de Hollande (1612) in the historical heart of Istanbul.

Created by international award-winning conductor Murphy, the programme celebrates the richness, inventiveness and enormous variety present in the music of the 17th and 18th centuries – particularly in the music of Bach and in the musical gems written by his Dutch contemporaries. Delivering an intimate and personal musical experience, Murphy offers a captivating view of the cosmopolitan European music scene of the period, brought to life in an authentic, immediate, personal and dynamic sound-scape.

Murphy has performed the programme in various forms throughout Europe on the festival circuit, including at the prestigious Bachfest Leipzig in 2010. In 2006, Murphy toured the programme to Australia, with highly successful subsequent tours to Canada and the US in 2007 and 2009, and Hong Kong and China in 2014.  In 2013, at home in The Hague, Murphy and the NDA were invited to perform a very special version of the programme for the Dutch Council of State and the Dutch royal family (pictured below).

The programme features breathtaking Dutch Baroque works by Hacquart – a member of the Huygens circle and the composer of the very first opera written in Dutch – as well as by The Hague statesman Van Wassenaer, by Handel’s Dutch concertmaster De Fesch, and by Schickhardt from his revolutionary L’Alphabet de la musique, a collection of 24 sonatas with one appearing in each (!) of the musical keys.

Alongside the Dutch works, German star Soprano Gudrun Sidonie Otto sang classic Bach arias such as “Bist du bei mir” and “Schlummert ein”, and Handel’s beautifully rejuvenating spring aria “Meine Seele hört im Sehen”, and recorder virtuoso Elisabeth Champollion performed Vivaldi's sopranino concerto in C (RV 443). For the Istanbul Music Festival performance, Murphy also included music by Bach's flautist PG Buffardin and by Bach's brother JJ Bach, both residents of Istanbul in the early 18th century.

During the tour, the NDA also give a special concert performance for embassy guests in Ankara at the newly opened Erimtan Museum in co-operation with the Ankara Festival. Simon Murphy was a guest of Turkish State Radio. The tour was supported by the Embassy and Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, at the invitation of the Istanbul Music Festival.

Video and audio links "Bach and his Dutch Contemporaries" 

Istanbul Music Festival Website
Murphy and NDA Live in Concert, Video
Murphy and NDA Live in Concert, Audio
Programme Background
43rd Istanbul Music Festival Media Info


NDA Line-up, Turkey Tour 2015

Simon Murphy, musical director and Baroque viola
Gudrun Sidonie Otto, soprano
Elisabeth Champollion, recorders
Rachael Beesley and Paula Perez, Baroque violin
Aleksandra Renska, Baroque cello
Karl Nyhlin, Baroque guitar and theorbo