Van Diemen’s Band

The Baroque era was fertile ground for musical experimentation and instrumental virtuosity. Composers such as Albinoni, Biber, Erlebach and Muffat exploited techniques and compositional structures from Italy, Germany and France, and invented their own unique rhetorical voices.

Sonatas a l'ancienne sees Van Diemen's Band bring to life this vibrant era, highlighting the humour, joy and hope that European musicians clearly brought to their practice in the mid to late 17th Century, despite the pain and suffering inflicted by the brutal Thirty Years’ War which had ravaged the region. Music was and still is, the universal tool to unite and to heal.