MONDAY 27 AUGUST, 7.30 p.m. - St Mary’s Church, Stoke by Nayland

Fairest Isle

A New National Songbook

Philippa Hyde & Claire Tomlin (soprano), Timothy Kenworthy-Brown (countertenor)

Patrick McCarthy (tenor), Adrian Peacock (bass)

Psalmody

Essex Baroque Orchestra directed by Peter Holman

The ‘national songs’ we learned at school were not by and large folksongs, as is often assumed, but composed art-songs, many of them written for London’s theatres in the century after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. This programme collects together many of the favourites, but in their rarely-heard original versions, including Purcell’s ‘Fairest isle’, Thomas Arne’s ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘The Miller of Dee’, Charles Dibdin’s ‘Tom Bowling’ and several of John Christian Bach’s exquisite settings of Scots songs.