Sunday 20 August
Polstead
Village Hall, 11.00 a.m.
Pre-festival talk
by
Peter Holman, Artistic Director
preceded
by coffee at 10.30 a. m.
Friday 25
August
St
Mary’s Church, Stoke by Nayland, 8.00 p m.
(Please
note starting time)
A Bach Family Wedding
Jack
Edwards (reader)
Claire Tomlin (soprano)
Janet Bullard (alto)
Patrick McCarthy (tenor)
Eamonn Dougan (bass)
Psalmody
Members of Essex Baroque Orchestra
directed by Peter Holman
The Bach family
played a leading role in the musical life of central
Germany during the Baroque period, supplying more than
fifty town musicians and church organists between middle
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. According to
J. N. Forkel, J. S. Bach’s first biographer, members
of the family were accustomed to meet once a year to
perform a mixture of sacred and secular music for their
own amusement. This programme evokes one of these
meetings, during which there is a family wedding. It
includes music by two cousins of Johann Sebastian, a
Missa Brevis by Johann Nicolaus Bach (1669-1753) and a
suite for solo violin and strings by Johann Bernhard Bach
(1678-1749) – the model for one of Johann Sebastian’s
own suites. The wedding cantatas are Johann Sebastian’s
youthful ‘Der Herr denket an uns’ BWV196 and
‘Mein freundin du bist schön’ by his uncle
Johann Christoph Bach (1642-1703), a colourful and witty
setting of words from the Song of Songs with a spoken
commentary. The programme also marks the 300th
anniversary of the death of Johann Pachelbel with the
famous Kanon and Gigue – back by popular demand!
Saturday 26
August
St
James’s Church, Nayland, 12.00 midday
Bach, Böhm &
Pachelbel
Carole Cerasi (harpsichord)
Carole
Cerasi is one of the most exciting harpsichordists of the
younger generation. She burst on the scene in 1999 with
her first CD, which won a Gramophone Award. Each of her
subsequent recordings has won a French Diapason d’Or,
and her 2002 recording of J. S. Bach and his predecessors
was also runner-up for a Gramophone Award. She has given
recitals all over the world, and appears regularly at
many European festivals.
Her
programme, based partly on her 2002 recording, contrasts
two works by the young J. S. Bach with music by two of
his most important older contemporaries, who influenced
his early keyboard music. Georg Böhm (1661-1733),
organist at Lüneburg and a family friend of the Bachs,
is represented by the brilliant Capriccio in D major and
an expressive suite. Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) taught
Johann Christoph Bach, Johann Sebastian’s elder
brother and first teacher, and was one of the finest
keyboard composers of his time; Carole Cerasi plays two
of his imposing chaconnes. The two Bach works are the
magnificent Toccata in D major BWV912, one of his
greatest early keyboard works, and the charming and
amusing ‘Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved
Brother’ BWV992, traditionally thought to have been
written as a farewell to Johann Jakob Bach, who entered
the Swedish army in 1704.
‘A player of
taste and superb technique’ The Gramophone.
‘Cerasi is a young keyboard player of great flair
and musical imagination’ The Guardian.
‘Sheer delight’ The Independent on Sunday.
_______________________
St Mary’s Church, Stoke by Nayland, 7. 30 p.m.
Mozart: Il
rè pastore
AMINTA. .
. . . . . . Philippa Hyde (soprano)
ELISA... . . . . . Rebecca Bottone (soprano)
TAMIRI.. . . . . . . . Anna Leese (soprano)
ALESSANDRO.. . . . . . . Nicholas Hurndall Smith (tenor)
AGENORE.. . . . . . . . Tom Raskin (tenor)
Essex Baroque Orchestra
directed by Steven Devine
Il rè pastore
is the last and greatest of Mozart’s youthful
operas. It was written for a visit of the Archduke
Maximilian Franz to Salzburg in March 1775, and is a
shortened setting of a famous libretto by the Viennese
court poet Pietro Metastasio, also set by Hasse, Gluck,
Jommelli and others. It concerns the shepherd Aminta,
unwillingly placed on the throne of Sidon by Alexander
the Great. Aminta has eyes only for his beloved Elisa,
though misunderstandings and intrigues involving
Aegenore, a nobleman of Sidon, and Tamiri, a refugee
princess, keep them apart. Eventually all is resolved
with a double wedding. Mozart’s lively and brilliant
setting was written as a serenata, to be performed
with a minimum of action and scenery, and relies a good
deal on virtuoso singing and colourful orchestration. Il
rè pastore is rarely performed today, though it
contains a good deal of beautiful music, and it was
evidently highly thought of by its composer, who sent a
copy of the score to his friend Joseph Myslivecek in 1777
and converted the overture into a symphony the following
year.
Sunday 27
August
St
Mary’s Church, Boxford, 7.30 p. m.
Mozart & Beethoven
Piano and Wind Quintets
THE
ETESIAN ENSEMBLE
Molly
Marsh (oboe)
Katherine Spencer (clarinet)
Anneke Scott (horn)
Wouter Verschuren (bassoon)
Kathryn Cok (fortepiano)
Mozart
wrote his Quintet in E flat, K452 for piano, oboe,
clarinet, horn and bassoon for a concert in Vienna on 1
April 1784, and wrote to his father: ‘I consider it
the best thing I have ever written in his life’.
Indeed, it is one of his finest chamber works, and it
created a new and exotic genre for piano with wind
instruments. In 1796 Beethoven wrote a companion work, op.
16, in the same key and for the same combination of
instruments; he performed it with the Mozart in a concert
in Vienna the following year. In this programme these two
masterpieces are contrasted with Haydn’s great E
flat piano sonata Hob. XVI/52, written in London in 1794,
and an arrangement for clarinet, bassoon and piano of
Beethoven’s wind sextet op. 71, made by A. F.
Wustrow in 1812.
The
Etesian Ensemble specialises in performing wind music of
the Classical period on period instruments, and brings
together five of the most accomplished and prominent
young musicians in the field. The horn player Anneke
Scott has played for us many times, and gave a very
successful recital with Kathryn Cok in the 2004 Festival.
‘The
Etesian Ensemble have an admirable rapport and unanimity
of intention and articulation, their enthusiasm matched
by technical poise and finesse … highly enjoyable
recital by this talented young ensemble’ Music
& Vision.
Monday 28
August
St
Mary’s Church, Boxford, 12.00 midday
Ian Harrison
A lecture recital on Mediaeval and
Renaissance wind instruments
Ian
Harrison (cornett, shawm and bagpipe)
with Steven Devine (keyboard)
Ian
Harrison is one of Europe’s foremost exponents on
three of the most important wind instruments of the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the shawm, the
predecessor of the oboe, the curved wooden cornett and
the bagpipe. His virtuosity and improvisatory flair on
them has led to him being dubbed ‘the Miles Davis of
the early music scene’. His playing delighted the
audience at Musica Antiqua’s concert in the 2005
Festival, and he makes a welcome return for this informal
lecture recital. As well as playing and talking about his
instruments, he will explore the history of English
popular music from the twelfth to the eighteenth
centuries, in the process throwing unexpected light on
such things as the history of ‘Greensleeves’
and how Mediaeval forms are preserved in the eighteenth-century
bagpipe repertory.
‘Ian
Harrison’s shawm playing reached ecstatic heights of
virtuosity’ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
‘Ian Harrison reached some otherworldly sounds on
the cornett … breathtaking’ Beirut Daily
Star.
____________________
St Mary’s Church, Hadleigh, 7.30 p.m.
Mozart: Requiem
in D minor, K626, reconstructed
by Richard Maunder
Music for Thamos, König in
Ägypten, K345
Jack
Edwards (reader)
Claire Tomlin & Philippa Hyde(soprano)
Janet Bullard(alto)
Patrick McCarthy (tenor)
Eamonn Dougan (bass)
Psalmody
Essex Baroque Orchestra
directed by Peter Holman
The Requiem was
Mozart’s last work. It was commissioned in the
autumn of 1791 by Count Franz von Walsegg, who wished to
pass it off as a composition of his own written in memory
of his wife. Unfortunately, Mozart left it unfinished
when he died on 5 December, and soon after his widow
asked the minor composer Franz Xaver Süssmayr to
complete it. Süssmayr’s is the version that is most
often heard today, though in this radical version Richard
Maunder has tried to produce a version closer to Mozart’s
late style, rejecting Süssmayr’s inadequate
additions and reorchestrating it using Die Zauberflöte
and La Clemenza di Tito as models. The result
provides a fascinating new insight into a familiar
masterpiece.
Mozart’s music
for Thamos, König in Ägypten is one of his most
rarely performed theatre works. In 1773 he wrote
chorusses for Gebler’s neo-Egyptian play, adding
orchestral interludes in 1776-7 and providing a grand new
setting of the final chorus in 1779-80, just before
writing Idomeneo. With its solemn ceremonial music
for priests and its sonorous orchestration with
trombones, Thamos foreshadows the world of Die
Zauberflöte, and thus makes a suitable companion for
the Requiem. In this performance the musical scenes are
linked by a specially-devised script, conveying the
essence of the play. The programme also includes a rare
performance of the original choral version of Mozart’s
Masonic Funeral Music K477, written for a Masonic
ceremony in Vienna in 1785.
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