Handel Prize laureate 2025

In 2025, the Halle Handel Festival Orchestra will receive the Handel Prize of the City of Halle, awarded by the Handel House Foundation. The Board of Trustees of the Handel House Foundation thus honours decades of passionate interpretation of Handel's music on original instruments.

The Händelfestspielorchester Halle has been making music on historical instruments since 1993. Its affiliation with a concert and opera orchestra playing on modern instruments – the Staatskapelle Halle – is unique in the German music scene. In its capacity as a special ensemble for early music, the Händelfestspielorchester is continuing the decades long tradition of nurturing Handel in Halle.

In recent years, the orchestra has appeared a. o. at the Stuttgart Musikfest, the Handel Festivals in Halle and Göttingen, the Bach Festival Leipzig, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Dresden Semperoper as well as in several European countries and in South Korea. At the Handel Festival Halle, the ensemble is involved in the annual new staging of a Handel opera.

From the time that the English Conductor Howard Arman laid the foundation for the growing international reputation of the ensemble, the Händelfestspielorchester Halle has worked time and again with acknowledged international experts such as Paul McCreesh, Marcus Creed, Michael Schneider, Fabio Biondi, Wolfgang Katschner, Sergio Azzolini, Michael Hofstetter and Enrico Onofri. Bernhard Forck has been closely linked with the orchestra as Artistic Director from 2007 until 2019. Since 2021/2022 Attilio Cremonesi is the new Artistic Director of the Händelfestspielorchester.

Multiple CD and DVD recordings are available, a. o. the CD Vol. I of the series haendeliana hallensis featuring Benno Schachtner, released by querstand label in 2017 as well as Vol. IV with the Stadtsingechor zu Halle and Clemens Flämig (2020). Also in 2020, the Orfeo label released the CD »Care pupille« with excerpts from works by Handel and Christoph Willibald Gluck with the Venezuelan soprano Samuel Mariño conducted by Michael Hofstetter.

The Festival will kick off on 5 June at 7.30 pm in Halle Cathedral. After the performance of Il convito d'Alessandro, the Handel Festival Orchestra will be presented with the Handel Prize of the City of Halle, awarded by the Handel House Foundation. Axel Köhler will give the laudatory speech for the Handel Festival Orchestra.

Further information and pictures at: 

https://www.buehnen-halle.de/de/staatskapelle/haendelfestspielorchester