SATURDAY 16 AUGUST 2008
Polstead Village Hall, 11.00 a.m.
PRE-FESTIVAL
TALK
by Peter Holman, Artistic Director
preceded by coffee at 10.30 a.m.
FRIDAY 22 AUGUST 2008
St Mary's Church, Hadleigh, 6.45 p.m.
DIDO
& AENEAS AND THE RESTORATION THEATRE
Pre-concert talk by Dr Bryan White, Lecturer in Music,
University of Leeds
FRIDAY
22 AUGUST 2008
St Mary's Church, Hadleigh, 8.00 p.m.
(please note starting time)
PURCELL:
DIDO & AENEAS
CONCERT PERFORMANCE
with theatre music by Locke, Draghi & Blow
DIDO
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . Philippa Hyde (soprano)
BELINDA & FIRST WITCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. Claire Tomlin (soprano)
SECOND WOMAN & SECOND WITCH . . . . Emma
Bishton (soprano)
SAILOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . Patrick McCarthy (tenor)
AENEAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . Eamonn Dougan (baritone)
THE SORCERESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . Stephen Varcoe (bass)
Psalmody
The Parley of Instruments
directed by Peter Holman
It has
traditionally been said that Henry Purcell wrote Dido
& Aeneas for a girls’ school in Chelsea in
1689, though it now seems that it was first produced a
few years earlier at Whitehall. This performance aims to
recreate the work as it might have sounded at its first
court performance, shedding fascinating new light on
Purcell’s matchless opera. The Sorceress is played
by a man, the band consists just of a string quartet,
Baroque guitar and harpsichord, and a number of sections
have been restored that were cut out when the opera was
incorporated into Shakespeare’s Measure for
Measure in 1700, including Peter Holman’s new
reconstruction of the missing scene for the witches at
the end of Act II. The first half of the concert sets the
scene for Dido & Aeneas by bringing together
music written for the Restoration theatre, including
Matthew Locke’s passionate Masque of Orpheus,
performed in
Settle’s play The Empress of Morocco (1673),
and play songs by the Italian organist Giovanni Battista
Draghi and John Blow, Purcell’s teacher, friend and
colleague. Draghi and Blow were important influences on
the young Henry Purcell, and 2008 is the 300th
anniversary of their deaths.
SATURDAY 23 AUGUST 2008
St Mary’s Church, Stoke by Nayland, 12.00 midday
GUSTAV
LEONHARDT
Celebrity Recital of English Harpsichord Music
Gustav
Leonhardt is probably the most famous harpsichordist in
the world today. He has been a leader of the early music
movement for more than 50 years, and is particularly
associated with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He
played the composer in the 1968 film The Chronicle of
Anna Magdalena Bach and was one of the directors of
the pioneering complete recording of Bach’s cantatas,
produced by Teldec in the 1970s and 80s. He is also
renowned as a teacher. He has been Professor of
Harpsichord at the Amsterdam Conservatory since 1954, and
many of his former pupils are now prominent in the early
music field, including Ton Koopman, Christopher Hogwood,
Bob van Asperen, Colin Tilney, Alan Curtis and Davitt
Moroney. Gustav Leonhardt has been interested in the
great repertory of English keyboard music for many years,
and his recital includes music by William Byrd, John Bull,
Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Tomkins, Henry Purcell and
William Croft. He plays a copy by Malcolm Rose of the
earliest surviving English harpsichord, made by Lodewijk
Theeus in 1579.
SATURDAY 23 AUGUST 2008
St Mary’s Church, Boxford, 7.30 p.m.
THE
TRUMPET SHALL SOUND
Crispian
Steele-Perkins (trumpet)
David Wright (harpsichord)
Essex Baroque Orchestra
directed by Tassilo Erhardt (violin)
Crispian
Steele-Perkins makes a welcome return to the festival
with a programme of English music for trumpet and
orchestra. He plays Henry Purcell’s suite from the
play Bonduca, the trumpet overture from
Purcell’s Indian Queen, the overture to
Handel’s opera Atalanta, and a fine
trumpet concerto by the Coventry composer Capel Bond,
published in 1766. The programme also includes works from
Handel’s great set of concerti grossi op. 6, as well
as keyboard concertos by John Stanley and Thomas Arne,
played by David Wright on an original Kirckman
harpsichord of 1778.
Crispian
Steele-Perkins is one of the world’s most respected
virtuoso trumpeters, well known for concerto and solo
appearances all over the globe. He is equally at home on
the natural trumpet of the Baroque period as on the
modern instrument, he collects and restores historic
trumpets, and he writes about them as well as giving
lecture recitals and demonstrations. David Wright won the
prestigious Broadwood Harpsichord Competition in 2003 and
his recent recording of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations
has been warmly received. The concert is directed from
the violin by Tassilo Erhardt who performs regularly at
the Festival with the Essex Baroque Orchestra and the
award-winning chamber ensemble Apollo & Pan.
SUNDAY 24 AUGUST 2008
St Mary’s Church, Stoke by Nayland, 7.30 p.m.
THE
CALL OF THE PHOENIX
THE
ORLANDO CONSORT
Matthew Venner (countertenor)
Mark Dobell (tenor)
Angus Smith (tenor)
Donald Greig (baritone)
English
sacred music in the fifteenth century is as distinctive
and uplifting as the soaring Mediaeval churches for which
it was written. In this programme the Orlando Consort
explores music written during the reigns of Henry V,
Henry VI and Edward IV, focusing on John Dunstable and
his followers, including John Pyamour, Forest, Bittering,
Walter Lambe, and the ever-present Anon. At this period
English composers were developing a new style with an
emphasis on sweet melody and rich harmony that was
rapidly taken up abroad. It was perhaps the only time in
musical history before the 1960s and the Beatles when
English music was profoundly influential in European
terms.
The
award-winning Orlando Consort is one of Britain’s
leading vocal groups specialising in Mediaeval and
Renaissance music. Its recordings and performances and
recordings have won consistent critical acclaim. When the
CD of tonight’s programme was released in 2002
Fabrice Fitch wrote in The Gramophone that ‘their
ability to communicate something of a sense of discovery
is remarkable … and what glorious music it is! This
is simply one of the best recordings I have heard all
year’. More generally, The Times called their
performances ‘staggeringly beautiful’ and The
San Diego Chronicle wrote ‘No one ever goes away
from one of their concerts without a smile of happiness
at the artistic and human experience’.
MONDAY 25 AUGUST 2008
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, 10.00 a.m.
THOMAS
GAINSBOROUGH AND HIS WORLD
Illustrated talk by Dr Susan Sloman
Susan
Sloman is an authority on English eighteenth-century art
and is the author of Gainsborough in Bath,
published in 2002 by Yale University Press. There are a
limited number seats; early booking is recommended.
MONDAY 25 AUGUST 2008
St Mary’s Church, Boxford, 12.00 midday
THOMAS
GAINSBOROUGH AND HIS MUSICAL FRIENDS
Jack
Edwards (reader)
Mark Caudle (bass viol)
Lynda Sayce (lute)
Melanie Woodcock (violoncello)
Thomas Gainsborough was an accomplished
musician as well as an artist, and painted many of his
musical friends and acquaintances, including Charles
Frederick Abel, John Christian Bach, John Stanley and
members of the Linley family. He played the violin and
the harpsichord but had a particular affection for the
viola da gamba or bass viol and the lute, then both rare
instruments. In this entertainment Gainsborough’s
world is evoked though his vivid letters and the
anecdotes of his friends and acquaintances. The music
includes bass viol pieces by Abel, the greatest exponent
of the instrument of the time, and lute music by Rudolf
Straube, a pupil of J.S. Bach who settled in London. Some
of it was composed for Gainsborough or comes from
manuscripts once owned by him. Jack Edwards and Mark
Caudle are old friends of the SVF, and took part in a
programme about Gainsborough and music during the very
first festival, in 1988. Lynda Sayce is one of the
UK’s leading lutenists, and has made a particular
study of eighteenth-century lute music.
MONDAY 25 AUGUST 2008
St Mary’s Church, Hadleigh, 7.30 p.m.
CORONATION
ANTHEMS FROM JAMES II TO GEORGE III
PURCELL, BLOW, CROFT, HANDEL, BOYCE
Psalmody
and Friends
Linden Baroque Orchestra
Essex Baroque Orchestra
directed by Peter Holman
The coronations of English monarchs
between James II and George III were large-scale musical
events, featuring specially written orchestral anthems by
the leading composers of the day. This programme uses
enlarged versions of our resident choir and orchestra to
recreate the grand musical effects created in Westminster
Abbey during the coronation service, which used most of
the professional singers and instrumentalists in London.
It includes ‘God spake sometime in visions’ and
‘My heart is inditing’, the great eight-part
anthems written by John Blow and Henry Purcell for James
II’s coronation in 1685, a fine setting of ‘The
lord is a sun and shield’ written by William Croft
for George I’s coronation in 1714, Handel’s
great setting of ‘Zadok the priest’ and
‘Let thy hand be strengthened’ written for
George II in 1727, and one of the anthems composed by
William Boyce for George III in 1761. This promises to be
a memorable event; early booking is recommended!
|