{oh!} Orkiestra Historyczna was founded in 2012 in the city of Katowice by a group of passionate enthusiasts of early music focused around the concertmaster, Martyna Pastuszka, and the manager, Artur Malke.

In their dedication to historically informed performance, the members of the orchestra never forget about what is most important: making their music reach their audience as fully as possible. Working on every aspect of a work in order to emphasise the rhetorical dimension of music results in concerts whose aim is to achieve excellent communication not only among the performers, but, above all, between the musicians and the audience.

From the very first concert, this kind of connection has been noticed and appreciated by critics and guest soloists.

In 2017, {oh!} will mark its 5th anniversary. Thanks to maintaining strong bonds with the city of Katowice and its cultural institutions, which have been supporting the ensemble since its formation, {oh!} has acquired a reputation as one of the most important early music ensembles in Poland. In 2015, the ensemble made its phonographic debut: the Polish label DUX released an album entitled {oh!} Schreyfogel/Schaffrath/Visconti, which contains {oh!}'s renditions of violin and harpsichord concertos discovered in the library of the University of Dresden. A year later, the orchestra's second album was released by MUSICON: a collection of recordings of Father Amando Ivanschitz's works under the collective title Jasna Góra Early Music.

{oh!} Orkiestra Historyczna has also made contemporary stage premieres of two operas: Domenico Sarri's Didone Abbandonata and Johann Adolf Hasse's Arminio, in cooperation with Czech artists. The operas were performed in Prague, Ostrava and Brno as well as in Gliwice, Katowice and Warsaw.

Thanks to a cooperation with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, {oh!} gives regular concerts within the framework of NOSPR's Early Music series. During this series, the orchestra engages in the most ambitious of programs, performing with such outstanding artists as Andreas Staier, Lars Ulrik Mortensen and Julien Chauvin. {oh!} Orkiestra Historyczna is, above all, an ensemble of young passionate professional artists with strong bonds with Upper Silesia, whose aim is to take early music performance in the region to a new level, becoming its cultural trademark in Poland and abroad.

updated: 2018 (ac)