Saturday 21 August
2004
Polstead
Village Hall, 11.00 a.m.
Pre-festival talk
by
Peter Holman, Artistic Director
preceded
by coffee at 10.30 a. m.
Friday 27
August 2004
St
Mary’s Church, Stoke by Nayland, 8.15 p m.
(Please
note starting time)
Biber and Muffat
A
programme marking the 300th anniversary of the deaths of
Heinrich Biber (1644 -1704) & Georg Muffat (1653-1704)
Crispian
Steele-Perkins (trumpet)
The Parley of Instruments
directed by Peter Holman
Heinrich
Biber and Georg Muffat, the greatest Austrian composers
of the seventeenth century, were colleagues at the
Salzburg court in the 1680s with sharply contrasted out-looks.
Biber drew on his native central European tradition for
his colourful works, here including virtuoso sonatas for
trumpet and strings, a sonata imitating birds, & an
extraordinary suite for two scordatura (mistuned) violins.
The cosmopolitan Muffat studied in France and Italy, and
his synthesis of Lully’s graceful orchestral style
and Corelli’s power and passion can be heard in
sonatas from his Armonico tributo (1682), including the
monumental concluding passacaglia of No. 5. There will
also be a sonata imitating Polish bagpipes by Heinrich
Schmelzer and a trumpet sonata by Pavel Vejvanovsk, both
early influences on Biber.
The
Parley of Instruments, celebrating its twenty-fifth
anniversary in 2004, is one of Britain foremost Baroque
string consorts.
Saturday 28
August 2004
St
Mary Church, Boxford, 12.00 midday
The Classical Horn
Anneke
Scott (natural horn) & Kathryn Cok (fortepiano)
Anneke
Scott is rapidly emerging as one of the outstanding
younger exponents of the natural horn. Here Beethoven’s
youthful Op. 17 sonata is placed in the context of works
by his contemporaries and followers: a solo by Antonin
Reicha (1770 – 1836) and a sonata by the precocious,
short- lived Nikolaus von Krufft (1779 -1818). All use
the technique of hand stopping, which in the late
eighteenth century turned the Baroque hunting horn into a
fully chromatic instrument. The prize-winning pianist
Kathryn Cok plays a copy of a fortepiano by Nanette
Streicher, whose instruments were admired by Beethoven.
Stoke by Nayland Middle School, 7. 30 p.m.
Two Funerals and a Wedding
William
Boyce: Peleus and Thetis (c.1736)
John
Frederick Lampe: Pyramus and Thisbe (1745)
Opera
Restor’d
Jack
Edwards (artistic director). Peter Holman (musical
director)
Thetis;
Thisbe . . . . . . . . . . . Angela Henckel (soprano)
Peleus;
wall; moon . . . . . . . . . Tom Raskin (tenor)
Prometheus;
Pyramus. . Arwel Treharne Morgan (tenor)
Jupiter;
lion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adrian Powter (bass)
Opera
Restor’ Band
directed
by Steven Devine
Opera
Restor’d makes a welcome return to the Festival with
its new double bill of two fully staged eighteenth-century
English operas. Boyce’s youthful masterpiece Peleus
and Theist concerns Peleus’s forbidden love for the
nymph Thetis and Prometheus’s role in persuading the
jealous Jupiter to accept the situation. The Purcell- and
Handel- influenced setting is powerful, dramatic and
lyrical by turns. Pyramus and Thisbe, the play within
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was
turned into a satire on opera and singers, and set by
Lampe in 1745 following his Dragon of Wantley. His dead-pan
Handelian music is the perfect foil to the silliness on
age: a singing, walking wall, a singing lion - even the
moon on a scooter. Fun for all the family! Opera Restor’d
is renowned in Britain and abroad for its sumptuous
productions of rare Baroque operas, using the forgotten
techniques of eighteenth- century stagecraft.
Sunday 29
August 2004
St
Mary’s Church, Hadleigh, 6.15 p. m.
Mozart’s Unfinished
Pre-
concert talk by Professor Philip Wilby of the University
of Leeds
St Mary’s Church, Hadleigh, 7.30 p. m.
Mozart: Mass in C minor
K.
427 (1782-3) , in a new completion by Philip Wilby
Philippa
Hyde & Claire Tomlin (soprano)
Patrick
McCarthy (tenor) . Julian Perkins (bass)
Psalmody
. Essex Baroque Orchestra
directed
by Peter Holman
Mozart’s
Mass in C minor, the fruit of his profound en-counter
with the music of Bach and Handel in the early 1780s, is
arguably the greatest church work of the Classical period.
He began it in 1782, apparently in thanksgiving for his
forthcoming marriage. By October 1783, when part of it
was performed in Salzburg, he had completed the Kyrie,
Gloria, part of the Credo, the Sanctus & Benedictus.
He then abandoned it, later reusing most of the material
in the cantata Davidde penitente. The mass is usually
performed today as a torso, but Philip Wilby has
reconstructed the entire work, using extra numbers Mozart
added to Davidde penitente which may originally have been
conceived for the uncompleted mass. Thus it is now
possible to hear the mass for the first time in a
complete form as the composer intended. In this
performance we intersperse the movements of the mass with
an Epistle sonata, an Offertory motet and a Communion
motet, as in Salzburg practice of the period.
Monday 30
August 2004
St
Mary’s Church, Boxford, 12.00 midday
J. S. Bach: Cello Suites
Sebastian
Comberti (cello)
Bach’s
unaccompanied suites are the greatest works written for
the cello in the Baroque period, and the corner ones of
the instrument’s modern repertory. In this informal
recital Sebastian Comberti introduces complete
performances of Suites Nos 1 and 2, bwv 1007 and 1008,
and contrasts them with un-accompanied Italian Baroque
cello music. Sebastian Comberti is one of Britain’s
leading cellists with an interest in historically
informed performance, appearing with groups such as the
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Hanover
Band. He appeared at the 2003 Festival in a highly
successful programme of trios by Beethoven and his
contemporaries.
St Mary’s Church, Stoke by Nayland, 7.30 p.m.
From Muffat to Mozart
The
Concerto in Austria
Philippa
Hyde (soprano) . Sebastian Comberti (cello)
Anneke
Scott (natural horn) . Sally Holman (b soon)
Essex
Baroque Orchestra
directed
by Peter Holman
A
century of Austrian concertos or concerto- like works,
ranging from Biber’s Battaglia à 10 (1673)
, an extraordinary evocation of seventeenth- century
warfare scored for nine-part rings with solo violin, to
Mozart’s virtuoso motet ‘Exsultate jubilate’,
K. 165 (1773) , a vocal concerto in all but name. Muffat’s
Concerto No.12 in G (‘Propitia sydera’, 1701)
is a fascinating reworking of the G major Armonico
tributo sonata played in Friday’s concert, ending
with a revised and extended version of the passacaglia.
The second half of the programme consist of three
contrasted works by Joseph Haydn and his brother
Michael:Joseph’s Horn Concerto No. 2 in D major, Hob.
VIId: 3 (1762), Michael’s Concertino for bassoon in
B flat major, and Joseph’s C major Concerto, Hob.
VIIb: 1 (c.1762) , surely the greatest cello concerto of
the eighteenth century.
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