Jörg Halubek is a specialist in early music as conductor, harpsichordist and organist. In the coming season, he will take over the musical direction for the production of Haydn’s “Creation” at the Theater Basel with La Cetra Barockorchester. Other highlights include his engagements as soloist in Händel’s Organ Concerto in B-flat major HWV 295 “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale” with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, as well as serving as artistic director of the International Händel Academy Karlsruhe, like last year. He will also return to the Ansbach Bach Week with il Gusto Barocco, the ensemble he founded, with an orchestrated interpretation of Bach’s “Art of the Fugue”.
The Stuttgart music series initiated with his ensemble will continue in 2023. Jörg Halubek will carry on with a series of significant rediscoveries of Baroque operas that are completely unknown today.
In 2021 he conducted “Ombra e Luce”, a production of Monteverdi’s madrigals at the National Theatre Mannheim, which was continuing their Monteverdi cycle. He took over artistic direction of the Academy at the International Händel Academy Karlsruhe, and rediscovered Johann Sigismund Kusser’s opera “Adonis” with his ensemble and renowned singers at his Stuttgart Baroque Festival.
He has conducted in recent years at the Komische Oper Berlin, the National Theatre Mannheim, the State Theatre Kassel, the Händel Festival in Halle, the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music, the Wuppertal Opera House and at the Liederhalle in Stuttgart, among other appearances. He has worked at these venues with, among others, directors Harry Kupfer, Calixto Bieito, Lorenzo Fioroni, Markus Bothe, Stephan Müller and Jochen Biganzoli.
As conductor, Jörg Halubek is particularly interested in the dramatic timeliness of early works. Thus, he attaches importance to investing in collaboration with directors and brings along flexibility for dramatic concepts. Understanding works from the spirit of their composition creates the basis for him to tap into the freedoms of early music interpretatively for new readings – both musically and scenically.
In March he published “Suites & Concertos” as the second album in his Bach series with il Gusto Barocco at Berlin Classics; early in 2023 will follow the recording of “Cleofida”, an arrangement of Händel’s “Poro” by Georg Philipp Telemann (SWR 2/cpo). In recent years, recordings were released of Claudio Monteverdi’s “Marienvesper” (SWR 2/cpo, 2020), Johann David Heinichen’s “Flavio” (first recording SWR 2/cpo, 2019) and Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello’s “Tisbe” (SWR 2/cpo, 2015).
Besides working as a conductor, Jörg Halubek has been active as harpsichordist and organist both in Germany and abroad since winning the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig in 2004. His expertise in working with early music is documented by award-winning recordings of works for keyboard instruments and violin with the Baroque violinist Leila Schayegh: Johann Sebastian Bach’s in 2016 and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s in 2014.
In 2019 he started his multimedia project “Bach Organ Landscapes”, a complete recording of Bach’s organ works on original instruments with additional material accessible online. The fifth and sixth albums with Berlin Classics will be released on November 4, 2022; they focus on Bach’s examination of the northern German organ landscape.
The professor for historical keyboard instruments at Stuttgart’s State University of Music studied sacred music, organ and harpsichord in Stuttgart and Freiburg with Jon Laukvik and Robert Hill. He specialised in historical performance practice with Jesper Christensen and Andrea Marcon at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.
