The Olivier Award-winning Peter Whelan is one of the most dynamic and versatile exponents of historically informed performance practice. Already he can look back on a remarkable career. He is the artistic director of the Irish Baroque Orchestra and works with the Norwegian Wind Ensemble as their curator for early music. He is also acclaimed as a solo artist and appears on numerous award-winning recordings as a bassoonist.
As a conductor, Peter Whelan is especially dedicated to exploring neglected repertory from the Baroque and Classical periods. He has recently worked with ensembles such as The English Concert, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Beethoven Orchester Bonn, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, the Sinfonia Lahti, the Oulu Sinfonia and the Orchestre de Chambre du Luxembourg.
Highlights of the 2023/24 season have included performances with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Royal Northern Sinfonia, the Dunedin Consort, la festa musicale, the Meiningen Court Orchestra and the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra. In May 2024 he returned to the Irish National Opera for Vivaldi’s L’Olimpiade.
In 2022 he conducted the Irish National Opera in Vivaldi’s seldom-performed opera Bajazet — a production which won the Olivier Award in the category ‘Outstanding Achievement in Opera’ — and also made his debut at the San Francisco Opera with Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. Other recent appearances as an opera conductor include Le nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte and Acis and Galatea with the Irish National Opera and Handel’s Radamisto with the English Touring Opera.
As the founder and artistic director of the Ensemble Marsyas, he has appeared at the Edinburgh Festival, the International Handel Festival in Göttingen, the Kilkenny Arts Festival, the Lammermuir, Tetbury and Bath Festivals and the Great Music in Irish Houses Festival. A residency at London’s Wigmore Hall in 2020 cemented the ensemble’s reputation as one of the best British early music groups. Its extensive discography has won several awards. The album Edinburgh 1742, featuring works by Francesco Barsanti and Handel, was named ‘Editor’s Choice’ in Gramophone Magazine in 2017 and was voted ‘Recording of the Year’ by MusicWeb International.
