New professor for historical oboe from September 2025: Antoine Torunczyk
Antoine Torunczyk will teach at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis from the autumn semester 2025/26, succeeding Katharina Arfken. We cordially welcome him as a member of our faculty!
Foto: Petar Pavlov
Fascinated by eighteenth century repertoire, Antoine Torunczyk soon specialised in early oboe performance practice, first in the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Lyon under guidance of Michel Henry, then in Amsterdam’s Sweelinck Conservatorium, with Alfredo Bernardini. He graduated in 2000, and in the same year obtained the First Prize in the baroque oboe competition in Halle (Germany).
Currently Principal Oboe in the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra as well as in Concerto Copenhagen, he frequently collaborates with many of the main period instruments orchestras in Europe.
Antoine is also a very active chamber musician, and co-founder of l’Assemblée des Honnestes Curieux, winner of the Premio Bomporti Early Music Competition in Rovereto (Italy), as well as the baroque ensemble D!ssonanti, together with musicians such as Sébastien Marq, Amandine Beyer, Javier Zafra, Tami Troman, Chiaopin Kuo.
He has been taking part in numerous recordings, as an orchestral player, as a chamber musician or as soloist: Pierre Philidor Suites for oboe & BC (Zig Zag Territoires), Handel’s sonatas of several parts (ZZT), Bach double concerto (with violin player Amandine Beyer) and concerto for oboe d’amore (Alpha), Bach’s Overtures, B minor mass, Brandenburg Concertos (Concerto Copenhagen, CPO). He has taken part in the ambitious project Vision.Bach – performing and recording Bach’s first year of cantatas in Leipzig, 300 years after their creation (he plays in BWV 12, 21, 24, 46, 76, 104, 105,167,147, 166, 185) under the direction of Hans Christoph Rademann. He loves to make daring transcriptions of Bach’s music - some of his transcriptions can be found in D!ssonanti’s lates album, Bach/D!ssonanti (Incises). In preparation, with Concerto Copenhagen, the New Brandenburg Concertos after Bach Organ Trio Sonatas, will be released by Berlin Classics.
For over 20 years Antoine Torunczyk has been very involved in pedagogy. He currently teaches historical oboe in the Early Music Department of the Paris Conservatoire (CNSMdP) and also teaches at the Vielklang summer courses in Tübingen every year. He is webmaster of the Hautboy Companion, a pedagogical website about early oboe.