Austrian Baroque Company

The Austrian Baroque Company is known for vigorous performances of 17th and 18th century repertory, often including the virtuoso recorder music that is the specialty of its founder and director, Michael Oman. The group attracts top-flight instrumental and vocal collaborators when it ventures beyond the chamber repertory within reach of its core members. Oman founded the Austrian Baroque Company in 2001. The group uses the English name even in German-language contexts. It has also been known as ABC, but at first, the Oman Consort after its founder, Michael Oman, a professor of recorder, chamber music, and historical performance at the University of Linz who assumed the post at age 26, making him one of the youngest professors in the German-speaking world. Oman's goal was to assemble a group of young players who had graduated from leading European conservatories with a specialty in historically oriented performance. The Austrian Baroque Company has developed a group of programs exploring specific aspects of the Baroque repertory (one, for example, includes recorder concertos by Vivaldi, Telemann, Sammartini, and others); several of these programs have resulted in the making of recordings. The group has an ongoing association with Austria's ORF radio network. The Austrian Baroque Company has toured internationally and has been a guest at various major summer festivals. Since signing with the Deutsche Harmonia Mundi label in 2009, the Austrian Baroque Company has released several recordings. It won the Orphée d’Or from the Académie du Disque Lyrique Paris, one of the most prestigious awards bestowed by the European recording industry. The ensemble's Nine German Arias album featured soprano Nuria Rial. In 2020, the Austrian Baroque Company moved to the Fra Bernardo label for London Calling, an album, originally recorded in 2005, that explored the interchange between concert music and popular dance traditions in the English Baroque period.
© James Manheim /TiVo