Haydn's Solar Poetics: Morning, Noon & Night

Australian Haydn Ensemble 
Erin Helyard, Guest Director & Soloist (Harpsichord)
Skye McIntosh, AHE Artistic Director, Lead Violin & Soloist

Artists & Instruments

Violin
Skye McIntosh, Tomaso Eberle, 1770, Naples
Simone Slattery, Claude Pierray, 1726, Paris 
Annie Gard, Klotz, c.1710, Mittenwald
Anna McMichael, Camilli Camillus, 1742, Mantua*
James Armstrong, Unknown late C17th English, baroque conversion by Simon Brown, Sydney 2001
Matthew Greco, David Christian Hopf, 1760, Quittenbach
Stephen Freeman, Unknown, 1730, England
Tim Willis, Hendrick Willems, ca.1680, Ghent
Myee Clohessy, Unknown, c.1770, Mittenwald

Viola
John Ma, Simon Brown 2000 Sydney, Australia
James Eccles, Unknown c. 1740 Tyrol Region

Cello
Danny Yeadon, William Forster II, 1781, London**
Anthony Albrecht, Peter Walmsley, c.1740, London

Violone
Laura Vaughan, D violone, John Pringle, USA, 2005, after G.P. Maggini, c.1610, Brescia

Oboe
Adam Masters, Bernhard Schermer, Stäfa Switzerland, 2002, after Grundmann, c. 1785, Dresden
Kirsten Barry, Marcel Ponseele, Damme, 2001, after Grundmann, 1770, Dresden

Flute
Melissa Farrow, R. Tutz, 2001, Innsbruck, after H. Grenser, c.1810, Dresden***
Mikaela Oberg, R. Tutz, 2007, Innsbruck, after H. Grenser, c.1810, Dresden

Bassoon
Simon Rickard, Matthew Dart, London, 1996, after JH Grundmann, 1792, Dresden

Horn
Carla Blackwood, Andreas Jungwirth, Vienna, 2010, after Johann Anton Lausmann, c.1790, Graslitz****
Cinzi Posega​, Daniel Kunst, Bremen, 2020, after Courtois, c. 1835, Paris

Harpsichord
Erin Helyard, original double-manual harpsichord by Jacob & Abraham Kirckman, 1775, London supplied and prepared by Carey Beebe Harpsichords*****

* Dr Anna McMichael appears courtesy of the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance, Monash University.
** Dr Daniel Yeadon appears courtesy of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music
*** Melissa Farrow appears courtesy of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra
**** Carla Blackwood appears courtesy of the University of Melbourne
***** Dr Erin Helyard appears courtesy of Pinchgut Opera

Image Helen White

Australian Haydn Ensemble is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.

Find out more about the artists under Additional Info below.

About the Australian Haydn Ensemble

The Australian Haydn Ensemble (AHE), under the direction of Artistic Director Skye McIntosh, is one of Australia’s leading historically informed orchestras and chamber music groups. The ensemble brings together world-class musicians who excel in both modern and period instrument performance and are highly committed to both historical research and performance. Their repertoire is principally music of the early classical era and the late baroque. The Ensemble's name pays tribute to the great 'Papa Haydn' who was a central figure of the late Eighteenth Century.

Formed in 2012, the group has burst onto the Australian Music Scene with passion and energy. They have performed all over Australia and in the USA and have enjoyed many invitations to Australian Festivals such as the Melbourne Festival (2016), Festival By the Sea (QLD 2016), the Tyalgum Festival (2018), the Mornington Peninsula Festival (2019), Organs of the Ballarat Goldfield’s Festival (2019) Canowindra Festivals.

AHE has built a reputation for its vivacious performances, which are faithful to the sound-worlds that would have been familiar to Haydn and his contemporaries.

They have received critical acclaim for their debut ABC Classics recording, The Haydn Album, which premiered at No. 1 on the Australian Classical Aria Charts. According to Gramophone, "this is a polished, style-conscious ensemble." AHE has collaborated with many leading international and Australian historical specialist performers including Midori Seiler (GER), Melvyn Tan (UK), Marc Destrubé (CAN), Catherine MackIntosh (UK), Charles Neidich (USA), Stefanie True (CAN), Erin Helyard (Australia), Neal Peres Da Costa (Australia), Sara Macliver (Australia), Helen Sherman (UK) and David Greco (Australia).

Their most recent CD release was made in collaboration with leading historical keyboardist Neal Peres Da Costa. Titled Beethoven Piano Concertos No 1 & 3, it has been applauded by leading historical expert Clive Brown who said: "this recording by the Australian Haydn Ensemble marks a new and exciting development in period-instrument performance of Beethoven’s music. It offers a highly persuasive combination of impressive musicianship and convincing historical research."

About Erin Helyard
Erin Helyard has been acclaimed as an inspiring conductor, a virtuosic and expressive performer of the harpsichord and fortepiano, and as a lucid scholar who is passionate about promoting discourse between musicology and performance. As Artistic Director and co-founder of the celebrated Pinchgut Opera and the Orchestra of the Antipodes (Sydney) he has forged new standards of excellence in historically-informed performance in Australia. He has received two Helpmann Awards for Best Musical Direction (2017, 2019) and an ARIA for Best Classical Album (2020). Erin is a Senior Lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and appears courtesy of Pinchgut Opera.