The New Dutch Academy Orchestra“fantastic flair ... energising performances … daring and full of character” (Haagsche Courant)
The international award winning orchestra of the New Dutch Academy (The Hague) stands under the leadership of the founder of the New Dutch Academy (NDA), the Australian/Dutch conductor and viola player Simon Murphy. The New Dutch Academy Orchestra is known for its engaging approach to the performance and presentation of 18th century music. Its unique performance style combines dynamism and vibrancy with integrity, authenticity and originality. The NDA is highly appreciated for its innovative programming which brings newly discovered 18th century repertoire on to the contemporary concert platform and offers modern audiences fresh perspectives on 18th century music and culture. The NDA's member musicians, variously from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, France, Spain, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the US., are the new generation of leading international early music specialist performers. The NDA performs exclusively on authentic instruments. The orchestra is based in The Hague, the Netherlands, and is part of the city’s official cultural infrastructure.
Since its establishment in 2002 the orchestra has attracted much interest from audiences and the international press for its exciting performance style and fresh approach to early music. In particular, the NDA has won praise for shedding new light on the richness of the 18th century music culture, for example with its work investigating and profiling the Mannheim and Dutch 18th century symphonic schools – and through the NDA’s multidisciplinary projects which connect music with other 18th century art forms. The orchestra's repertoire ranges from large scale Baroque works such as Corelli's Concerti Grossi and Handel's Water Music to works of the mid 18th century symphonic schools of Mannheim and the Netherlands through to the large scale symphonic works of later 18th century/early 19th century masters such as Haydn, Mozart, Cimarosa, Pleyel, Beethoven, Wranitzky and their contemporaries. The orchestra also performs many works newly discovered by the NDA's own research department The NDA “Research Lab”.
Recent concert tours have seen the NDA orchestra perform throughout mainland Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, Canada, the U.S., Asia and Australia. Through its own concert series and its annual multidisciplinary NDA festival the NDA also maintains a busy schedule of performances at home in the Netherlands. The NDA has performed at all of the leading halls in the Netherlands, from the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam) to De Doelen (Rotterdam) and Vredenburg (Utrecht). Internationally, the NDA has performed at the leading international festivals, including the Holland Festival of Early Music Utrecht, the Festival of Flanders, the Roma Europa Festival (Italy), Potsdam Festspiele, the Mitte Europa Festival (Germany and Czech Republic), the Brezice Festival (Slovenia) and the Sacharov Festival (Russia), the Händel Festspiele in Halle, the Thüringer Bachwoche in Weimar and at the Nothern Lights Festival in Norway. Recently the NDA was involved in a series of lectures and performances at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, U.S.A.
NDA concerts have been broadcast across the world by the EBU and the NDA has worked further with, amongst others, Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep, AVRO, NPS, Deutschland Funk, Hessischer Rundfunk, RAI, Klara and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to achieve special radio concert broadcasts and documentary programmes with new 18th century repertoire. The NDA works closely with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a cultural ambassador on projects that celebrate historical cultural relationships and which foster international cultural understanding and exchange. In 2004 the NDA performed rediscovered Dutch and Italian Baroque music in the Palazzo Quirinale in Rome for Her Majesty Queen Beatrix and the President of Italy during the Queen’s State Visit to Italy. In 2006 the NDA celebrated the 400 year relationship between the Netherlands and Australia, giving special concerts, broadcasts, master-classes and workshops in both countries. In 2009, at the invitation of the Foreign Ministry, the NDA opened the cultural olympiad in Vancouver, Canada with performances of specially selected 17th and 18th century Dutch repertoire. Also in 2009, the NDA was part of the celebrations of the 400th anniversary of the founding of New York by the Dutch with performances of 18th century Dutch court music in the U.S.A. at the invitation of the city of The Hague. The New Dutch Academy have made five Super Audio CD recordings to date. These include discs looking at the earliest symphonies from the Mannheimer Schule through to new, groundbreaking recordings of Corelli's Concerti Grossi through to world premiere presentations of important, newly re-discovered Dutch symphonic repertoire with works by "The Dutch Haydn" Joseph Schmitt. The most recent recording of the NDA documents the symphonic tradition of the 18th century Court of Orange in The Hague presenting symphonic works by a selection of important composers active at the court, including Francesco Zappa, Schwindl, Graaf and Carl Stamitz. This world premiere recording follows seven years of research by the NDA’s research lab and is the first ever disc to offer a view of the 18th century Dutch court’s symphonic tradition. The recording includes the first performance of the major recent musicological discovery – the “Adagio for Cello and Orchestra” by Zappa. See also Concert Programmes and Complete Repertoire Listen to the Orchestra Live in Concert on the NDA's Web Radio
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