The group was founded in 1995 by
Susan Hamilton and
Ben Parry. In 2003, the group chose
John Butt as its conductor. Butt shared the title of co-artistic director of the Dunedin Consort until August 2012, when his title was changed to music director.[2]
The consort has made 15 recordings on Linn Records. Other labels have included Delphian for …in Chains of Gold and The People’s Mass, Tob Records for Silhouettes and Crimson Productions for A Celtic Christmas.
1997: A Celtic Christmas: with William Jackson and the Scottish Orchestra of Music. Mairi MacInnes and Mae McKenna also contributed tracks
2003: The People’s Mass: a composite of texts from the
Order of Mass and from English language poetry set to music by Malcolm Lindsey, Christine McCombe, Tommy Fowler, John Gormley, Anthea Haddow and Rebecca Rowe, as well as
Gregorian chant; the Consort is accompanied by harp. The Consort commissioned the work and performed it in communities around Scotland.[3]
2004: "Silhouettes" - a work composed for the consort by Corrina Hewat in 2003 based on poetry of
E. E. Cummings and Judith Jardine; released on Tob Records.
2006: Handel's The Messiah. This was the first recording of a reconstruction of the work in its first performance, which took place in Dublin in 1742. The recording won the 2007
Gramophone Award for Best Baroque Vocal Recording and a 2008
Midem Award. This was the first Dunedin recording led by John Butt, who has conducted all the group’s subsequent recordings except The Wode Collection, which is performed without conductor.
2008: J.S. Bach's St Matthew Passion. This was the first recording of Bach’s final performing version of the work, also dated 1742. It was the second commercial recording of the work to use the one-voice-per-part vocal scoring proposed by
Joshua Rifkin.
2010: J.S. Bach's Mass in B Minor. This is the first recording to use the 2006 critical edition by
Joshua Rifkin, which follows Bach's final version of the score from 1748-50 exclusively from beginning to end. (Other editions have included elements from Bach’s 1733 version of the "Kyrie" and "Gloria", and some edits made after his death by his son,
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach). The performance uses one or two singers per vocal part in the choruses.
2011: The Wode Collection: a collaboration with the
viola da gamba consort
Fretwork, performed without conductor, featuring 16th-century music collected by the contemporaneous Scottish monk Thomas Wode.
2012: Handel's Esther in the first reconstructable version, from 1720.
2013: J.S. Bach's St. John Passion, in a liturgical reconstruction based on Good Friday Vespers services in Leipzig.[4] In March, 2013, the disc was named "Record of the Month" by Gramophone and "Recording of the Month" by BBC Music magazine.
September, 2013: J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos with the Dunedin Consort. It was a Gramophone's "Choice" in October 2013.[5] and was a finalist in the Baroque Instrumental category for the 2014
Gramophone Awards; it was also nominated for the
International Classical Music Awards in the Baroque Instrumental category.[6] In this recording, the ensemble used the pitch standard of A=392 or "tief-Cammerton", a whole tone below the modern standard pitch and associated with the French royal court at the time; John Butt notes that many German-speaking courts, including that at
Cöthen where Bach wrote these concertos, "attempted to emulate French practice". He also mentions instruments from the time and place pitched to this standard. Still, he notes, "While Cöthen court pitch was likely to have been somewhere near this, it is unlikely that pitch was ever standardized as precisely as we might often assume or wish."[7]
March, 2014
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem. This is the first recording of David Black's new critical edition, published in 2012,[8] of the
Franz Xaver Süssmayr completion of the Requiem. The recording seeks to re-create the forces used at the first complete performance in January 1793; it also includes a performance of Black's reconstruction of a December 1791 performance of the "Introit" and "Kyrie" sections.[9] Also performed is Mozart's Misericordias Domini, K. 222. In May 2014, the disc was named "Recording of the Month" by Gramophone.[10] and in August, 2014, it won the
Gramophone Award for 2014 for Best Choral recording.[11] In November, 2014, it was listed among the nominees in the choral category for the 2015
International Classical Music Awards.[12] In December 2014, it was listed as one of the five nominees for "Best Choral Performance" in the
Grammy Awards.[13]