City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney
January 17, 2016

It’s 400 years this year since Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog dropped anchor in Western Australia’s Shark Bay and nailed a pewter plate to a post before thinking better of it all and deciding to try his luck further north. It’s entirely appropriate then that Balmain-born Simon Murphy, one of Australia’s finest exports, should ‘sail’ south for this year’s Sydney Festival at the helm of The New Dutch Academy, an ensemble from The Hague, specialising in performing early music on authentic instruments. For some years now the violist and early music maestro has led this award-winning orchestra, which to date has produced five enlightening CDs on the Pentatone label celebrating the music of the 18th-century Dutch court, and very fine they are too.

In addition to being a skilled violist, one of Murphy’s super powers is programming. He’s also a dab hand at presenting, laying out his concert’s aims in entertaining detail and proving himself able to pronounce Dirk Hartog (sort of like Deerk Hartoch) into the bargain. Taking their cue from the place occupied by The Netherlands in European history and geography from 1650-1800 (and the part played by Dutch printers in preserving...