Thank you to Marj Binns for this fascinating article.

Sometimes it is in fact who you know rather than what you know.  I was delighted and privileged to attend a performance recently of the Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra.  Nicole van Bruggen, one of the founders of this orchestra, a clarinetist, is a niece of one of my long -time friends.

I confess I have been invited to hear Nicole previously but have never quite managed to make it – my loss.  On this occasion she was soloist in the Mozart clarinet quintet playing her very unusual basset clarinet.  This instrument goes back to Mozart and his freemason friends, virtuoso clarinetist Anton Stadler and clarinet builder Theodor Lotz who worked together to create a new clarinet with a larger range than the usual clarinet by adding four low notes.  The original instrument with its bulbous bottom joint was lost and, struggling with descriptions from early performances, some strange instruments were built.  It was as recently as the early 90s when a musicologist researching in Riga, Latvia came across a hand drawn illustration of the instrument on an original concert program, and a builder in Paris, Agnes Gueroult, was able to craft this instrument with the strange bulb on its end, almost touching the floor when played, specially for Nicole.  She only uses it for performing the Mozart Quintet K.581 or the Mozart Clarinet Concerto K.622 as no other works have been written using its particular range of low notes.

Nicole has studied and lived in the Netherlands for 17 years, returning permanently to Australia in 2012.  She, with violinist Rachel Beesley, was co-founder of the Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra in 2013 under the artistic direction of Richard Gill.  The performers in this orchestra have wide international experience and specialize in performing on historical instruments.  Peter McCallum reporting the recent concert in the Sydney Morning Herald wrote “This was a gem of a concert for its caressing sweetness of sound and pristine tonal beauty.” 

These artists are enthusiastic in their love of Historically Informed Performance and are advertising a 2018 series of three concerts in Sydney and Melbourne.  I can wholeheartedly recommend an exceptional, beautiful experience.