Baroque Oboe

Marcel Ponseele studied oboe and chamber music at the conservatories of Bruges, Ghent and Brussels. He then enthusiastically embraced the baroque oboe and was a laureate of the Musica Antiqua competition in Bruges in 1981. Since that time he has played in many renowned baroque ensembles, including La Petite Bande, The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and La Chapelle Royale. He and conductor Philippe Herreweghe laid the basis for the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées; Ponseele himself led the Harmonie des Champs-Elysées. He founded Il Gardellino together with Jan de Winne and Shalev Ad-El in 1988 and is the ensemble’s artistic director. Marcel Ponseele enjoys an international reputation as a baroque specialist and has been invited by many conductors to appear as soloist both in concert and for recordings on various labels. He has performed and recorded every work for oboe by Bach, Vivaldi and Mozart as well as many others. Together with his brother Francis, he makes meticulous copies of old instruments that are regarded as references worldwide. Marcel Ponseele has taught historic oboe at Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel since 2014; he also gives master classes throughout the world.

Born in Montréal, oboist Christopher Palameta performs with many of Europe’s finest period ensembles. With these orchestras, he has toured on five continents and recorded over eighty discs for the Erato, Sony BMG, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Ramée, Pentatone, CPO, BIS, Alpha, Naxos, ATMA Classique, and Analekta  labels. An ardent defender of unexplored repertoire for the oboe, Palameta founded Notturna in 2006 as a platform to excavate forgotten chamber music for his instrument. His solo discography includes suites by Marin Marais (nominated in
2015 for the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik or German Record Critics’ Award); sonatas by Handel, Abel, J. C. Bach, Janitsch, Krause and Graun with Notturna for the ATMA Classique and Sony labels; solo concertos by Molter with Die Kölner Akademie for the ARS label; and a recital of early French Romantic works for oboe and piano on Ramée entitled Berlioz’s Lost Oboe. 

A recipient of several research grants from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts, he has been invited to speak at conferences on nineteenth-century historical performance practice in Oxford, Vienna, Lausanne and Lyon. Christopher took his graduate degree from McGill University and his PhD in Musicology from the Royal Academy of Music in London, where his doctoral research on the oboe under Berlioz was supported by the Maple Leaf Trust (Canadian Centennial Fund). He teaches historical oboes at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel (KCB) and at the Sibelius Academy (Helsinki University of the Arts)