Founded in 1992, the Apollo Ensemble of Amsterdam has emerged as one of Europe’s leading Baroque chamber music groups. The group specializes in innovative concerts that highlight both the familiar and unknown chapters of Baroque music. Built around a fixed core of key players, the Ensemble expands as needed, even to orchestral size, while maintaining the focused intensity characteristic of a chamber group. They play on authentic period instruments to ensure a suitable sound for each work performed, but reserve space for experimentation with repertoire, sound-color, and instrumentation in order to keep the music fresh and alive for audiences today.
For a number of years now, violinist David Rabinovich has been conductor and artistic leader of the Apollo Ensemble. Under his direction, the Ensemble has organized each year’s concerts around a central theme. 2007 was dedicated to the Kaffee Zimmermann, the coffee house in Leipzig where J. S. Bach, free from church and state, programmed and performed numerous concerts according to his personal taste. In 2008, the Brandenburg Concertos formed the main part of a program built around the relationships between Bach, his musical precursors, contemporaries, and followers. In the 2009 season, Joseph Haydn is the central figure in several new programs. In addition, over the years the Apollo Ensemble has developed a unique specialty and outstanding reputation for its work in recovering and reinterpreting the music of Baroque Jewish composers.
Ms. Calloway is a member of Shir Ami, an ensemble dedicated to the preservation and performance of Entartete Musik, music condemned by the Nazi regime during the Second World War.
The Apollo Ensemble has produced nine critically-acclaimed CDs. These include Vivaldi versus Bach, Telemann: Suite Don Quixote, and Au Plaisir! French Cantatas & Sonatas. They have devoted two recordings to the music of the Jewish Baroque: Dio Clemenza e Rigore. Hoshana Rabbah in Casale Monferrato, 1733 (2008) and Jewish Baroque Cantatas (2001).