Peter Hanson, Festival Concertmaster

Peter has been Concertmaster of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique since 1992, when they recorded their first complete set of Beethoven symphonies. He appeared as its Concertmaster soloist for European and U.S. tours of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, a 2017 BBC Proms performance of Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust, and in 2018, major European and U.S. tours of Berlioz. In 2020, they performed all the Beethoven symphonies in Barcelona and U.S. including sold-out concerts at the Carnegie Hall, New York.

Peter formed The Eroica Quartet in 1993 with colleagues from the world of period instrument performance. The group immediately attracted attention with their vision of a revived Romantic approach to the string quartet literature, from Beethoven to Debussy. The Eroica quickly became established, and toured extensively in the United Kingdom as well as making visits to France and the U.S. Their American debut was in Washington, D.C. and the New York debut was in February 2001, at the Frick Collection.

Peter is a concertmaster of the Carmel Bach Festival in California. His role includes chamber music performances, directing the string orchestra and appearing as Concertmaster for most of the Festival Orchestra concerts.

Peter also appears as Director elsewhere; recent engagements include projects with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Kymi Sinfonia from Finland and Orquesta da Camera in Spain. He was recently Guest Concertmaster with the Luxembourg Philharmonic, the Stockholm Radio Symphony Orchestra, and in 2017 was Guest Concertmaster for a Beethoven and Gade project with Concerto Copenhagen in 2019. He returned to Singapore for a new project in 2021.

Karina Schmitz, Principal Viola

Violist, Karina Schmitz, recently settled in Sydney and is thrilled to find herself immersed in the rich and vibrant musical scene in Australia. She is principal violist of the Australian Haydn Ensemble, Pinchgut Opera/Orchestra of the Antipodes, nineteenth-century period trio Notturno, and has performed with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra, Van Diemen’s Band, Salut! Baroque, and Ensemble Galante. In the United States, Karina was principal violist of Handel & Haydn Society in Boston, Apollo’s Fire in Cleveland, the Carmel Bach Festival in California, and founding violinist/violist with New York based 17th century ensemble ACRONYM.

Karina holds viola performance degrees from New England Conservatory of Music (Boston) and the Cleveland Institute of Music. Her early music studies began as an undergraduate at Oberlin Conservatory with Marilyn McDonald, David Breitman, and Miho Hashizume, and she continued her training in the Apollo’s Fire Apprentice Program. A dedicated practitioner of Historically Informed Performance Practice, Karina finds a way to geek out over the expressive possibilities in every period of music she plays, and she is exceedingly grateful for the opportunities in which HIPP has greatly influenced and shaped her career.

Karina plays on a Hiroshi Iizuka viola made in 1984.