Events Diary and Details for
Winter Concert Series 2006 - 2007

Assembly Rooms, Dedham

6.00 pm

St James's Church, Nayland

J.S. Bach: Christmas Music

6.00 pm

For concert details click links or scroll down

SUNDAY 29 OCTOBER 2006, 6. 00 p.m.

Assembly Rooms, Dedham

 Fundraising Supper and Concert

Claire Tomlin (soprano), members of Essex Baroque Orchestra, directed by Peter Holman

This new venture gives our friends and supporters on opportunity to support the Festival by enjoying an excellent three-course meal with wine in the historic eighteenth-century Assembly Rooms at Dedham. Following eighteenth-century precedent there will be music between the courses, provided by some of the Festival's leading performers. Claire Tomlin sings Telemann's tongue-in-cheek 'Cantata or Funeral Music for an Artistically Trained Canary, whose Death Brought the Greatest Sorrow to his Master', TWV20:37, and, by contrast, J.S. Bach's delightful Italian secular cantata 'Non sa che sia dolore', BWV209, probably written in Leipzig in 1729 to mark the departure of his colleague Johann Matthias Gesner to take up a post in Ansbach. The programme also includes two instrumental pieces by Telemann: his humorous 'Overture Burlesque de Quixotte', TWV55:G10, illustrating famous scenes from Don Quixote by Cervantes, and his Flute Concerto in B minor TWV51:H1, recently published for the first time.

SUNDAY 10 DECEMBER 2006, 6.00 p.m.

St James’s Church, Nayland

J.S. Bach: Christmas Music

Claire Tomlin (soprano), Janet Bullard (alto), Patrick McCarthy (tenor), Andrew Kidd (bass)

Psalmody

Members of Essex Baroque Orchestra

directed by Peter Holman

For this year's Christmas concert we bring together three contrasted seasonal vocal works written by, or attributed to, J.S. Bach. He probably wrote his short Mass in A major, BWV234, for a Christmas service at Leipzig in the 1740s, making it suitable for the season by using flutes to represent the Shepherds and a recurring rocking motif to protray the rocking of the crib. 'Ehre sei dir, Gott', BWV248/5, is the fifth of the six cantatas that make up Bach's Christmas Oratorio, written for performance during the 1734-5 Christmas season. It deals with the Wise Men's visit to Bethlehem and begins with one fo Bach's most joyful choruses.

'Uns ist ein Kind geboren' used to be attributed to Bach (as his Cantata BWV142) but clearly written by an older contemporary such as Johann Kuhnau, his predecessor at Leipzig. It is a charming work, evoking the scene at the manger using pairs of recorders and oboes to represent the Shepherds and the Wise Men. Recorders and oboes are also the solo instruments in our fourth work, Telemann's fine Concerto in B flat, TWV54:B2. It too might have been written for the Christmas season.

SUNDAY 4 MARCH 2007, 6.00 p.m.

St James’s Church, Nayland

The Corelli Legacy

Virtuoso Music from Eighteenth-century Italy

Elizabeth Wallfisch (violin), Natasha Kraemer (violoncello), Andrew Arthur(harpsichord)

Over the last decade Elizabeth Wallfisch has become a leading advocate of the eighteenth-century Italian violin repertory through a series of ground-breaking recordings of music by Corelli, Vivadi, Veracini, Locatelli, Tartini and others on the Hyperion label. She makes a welcome return to the Suffolk Villages Festival with two young colleagues in a programme that ranges from Corelli's famous 'La Folia' variations, his op.5, no.12 of 1700, to Thomas Linley junior's virtuosic A major sonata, written while he was studying in Florence with Pietro Nardini in the late 1760s.

The programme also includes Pietro Locatelli's extravagant op.6 no.6 sonata of 1737, Francesco Veracini's extraordinary op.2, no.12 of 1744, a set of variations on two seventeenth-century Italian ground basses, and Tartini's famous 'Devil's Trill' sonata, supposedly inspired by a dream in which the composer witnessed the Devil playing the violin at the end of his bed! There will also be harpsichord music by the Scarlattis, father and son: variations on 'La Folia' by Alessandro and sonatas by Domenico.

MONDAY 28 MAY 2007, 6.00 p. m.

St Mary’s Church, Hadleigh

Handel: Alexander's Feast

Philippa Hyde (soprano), Patrick McCarthy (tenor), Eamonn Dougan (bass)

Psalmody

Essex Baroque Orchestra

directed by Peter Holman

Alexander's Feast, or The Power of Music, Handel's fourth English oratorio, was written in 1736. Like a number of other music theatre works of the period, it used an old text: John Dryden's Ode on St Cecilia's Day for 1697, originally set by Jeremiah Clarke. However, Handel's setting is much more than an ode in praise of music in the Purcellian tradition. Set during a banquet in the palace of Persepolis to celebrated Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia, it focuses on the musician Timotheus and his ability to influence Alexander's emotions by his singing to the lyre - thus demonstrating the power of music. Handel responded to the varied moods and situations with some of his finest and most colourful music. This rare performance of the original 1736 version uses vocal and instrumental forces similar in size to Handel's and follows his practice of introducing concertos at stategic points during the oratorio.