L’Orfeo turns student project into international baroque success

L’Orfeo Baroque Orchestra is marking its 30th anniversary after developing from a student project into an internationally recognised ensemble, ORF reported. Concert tours, more than 50 recordings and awards including the Opus and Echo have underscored its success.

The orchestra was originally founded as a project for young musicians, with little expectation of lasting success. It went on to establish a platform for performing on historical instruments, some of them several hundred years old. These instruments require specialised techniques and knowledge of repertoire that had largely been forgotten.

In the 1990s, this approach to music was considered exotic and rebellious. “It was not easy to do something different at that time. Many aspects played a role,” said founding member Carin van Heerden. She said the challenges were particularly significant for women in the classical music industry.

Many musicians from the orchestra’s early years have remained with L’Orfeo. “There is a very stable core. Extremely stable. There are people sitting here now who were already in the photos from 1993 and 1996. That makes me very happy,” van Heerden said.

She attributed the orchestra’s continuity and cohesion partly to its appreciative, grassroots-democratic structure. “Our spirit is based on the fact that we really enjoy playing together. There is no real boss,” she said.

Over three decades, L’Orfeo has performed internationally, including at Vienna’s Musikverein and as the first orchestra to perform in the Sistine Chapel. Its early years were marked by intensive work on playing techniques and repertoire that have since become standard practice.