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Events Diary and Details for
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Date |
Time |
Venue |
Event |
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Saturday 20 August |
11.00 am |
Polstead Village Hall |
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Friday 26 August |
6.45pm |
Dining Hall, Guildhall, Hadleigh |
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8.00 pm |
St Mary's
Church, Hadleigh |
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Saturday 27 August |
12.00 midday |
St James's Church, Nayland |
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7.30 pm |
St Mary's Church, Stoke by Nayland |
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Sunday 28 August |
7.30 pm |
St Mary's Church, Stoke by Nayland |
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Monday 29 August |
12.00 midday |
St Mary's Church, Boxford |
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7.30 pm |
St Mary's Church, Hadleigh |
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For concert details click links or scroll down |
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Philippa
Hyde & Claire Tomlin (soprano) Psalmody In the
Greek myth as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses,
the hunter Actaeon accidentally discovers Diana
bathing with her attendants. In a fury the goddess transforms him into a
stag, ensuring that he will be torn apart by his own hounds. Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s miniature opera Actéon was probably written in
Paris in the spring of 1684, and with its intense, dramatic and poignant
music is the counterpart of Purcell’s Dido
and Aeneas, written a few years later. Charpentier
is traditionally said to have studied in Rome with Giacomo
Carissimi, so it is appropriate that we pair Actéon with Carissimi’s
great oratorio Jephte,
written around 1650, in which the Israelite hero rashly promises the Lord
that, in return for victory over the Ammonites, he will sacrifice the first
person to greet him on this return. The victim, his only daughter, sings a
moving lament, echoed by the famous final chorus. The concert also includes
two miniature masterpieces by Monteverdi, the ballet ‘Movete’,
probably written to celebrate the coronation of the Habsburg emperor
Ferdinand III in 1636, and the poignant ‘Lamento della Ninfa’, published in
1638. Philippa
Hyde and Claire Tomlin have been mainstays of the festival for many years,
while Daniel Auchincloss has also appeared a number of times, most recently
singing the role of the Evangelist in C.P.E. Bach’s St Matthew Passion to
great acclaim.
Pavlo
Beznosiuk (violin) Heinrich
Biber wrote his Rosary or Mystery Sonatas in
Salzburg in the 1670s, presumably for the traditional Rosary devotions in which
the faithful meditated on events in the life of Jesus and Mary, helped by a
cycle of paintings or sculptures and by performances of appropriate music.
The sonatas are famous for their beauty, for the fearsome virtuosity
required, and for their use of scordatura – the deliberate mistuning of the violin to
alter its sonority and to facilitate the playing of chords. In this concert
Pavlo Beznosiuk plays five of the sonatas, each using a different tuning and
representing respectively the Annunciation, the Nativity, the
Agony in the Garden, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The cycle, and the
concert, ends with Biber’s famous Passacaglia in G
minor for unaccompanied violin, dedicated to the Guardian Angel. The
Ukranian-Irish violinist Pavlo Beznosiuk is one of
the leading figures in the European early music scene, well known for his
work with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Academy of Ancient
Music, the New London Consort, and many other groups. His recording on the Avie label of Biber’s Rosary
Sonatas has been hailed by the critics: ‘performances that combine brilliant
virtuosity with a profound understanding of the music’s profound spiritual
significance, Daily Telegraph; ‘a
triumph’, Music Web International. Paula
Chauteauneuf is one of London’s leading lutenists, working with the New London Consort, the Gabrieli Consort and many other groups.
Mhairi Lawson (soprano) We are
extremely grateful to Mhairi Lawson for stepping in
at short notice to replace Rebecca Bottone, who is
ill. In this
concert we bring together eighteenth-century works telling the tragic stories
of three betrayed women of Classical history and legend. Handel’s dramatic
cantata ‘Armida abbandonata’
HWV105 (1707) tells the story, derived from Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberate, of the Saracen sorceress, abandoned by her Christian
lover Rinaldo. Handel’s ‘Agrippina condotta a morire’ HWV110 (c. 1708) explores in considerable
psychological depth the predicament of Julia Agrippina moments before her
assassination in AD 59 at the orders of her son, the emperor Nero. Haydn’s
cantata Arianna auf Naxos tells the
story of the goddess Ariadne, abandoned on the
Greek island of Naxos by her lover Theseus. It was
originally written with keyboard accompaniment in 1789 or 1790, though this
performance uses a contemporary version with string orchestra. The concert is
completed by three related instrumental works: the overtures to Handel’s
operas Agrippina (1709) and Rinaldo (1711), and the poignant concerto Il pianto d’Arianna op. 7, no. 6, published by Pietro Antonio Locatelli in
1741. Steven
Devine is one of the busiest keyboard players and directors in the British
early music scene. In addition to many
appearances at SVF he is co-principal keyboard player of the Orchestra of the
Age of Enlightenment, and a member of London Baroque and a number of other
chamber groups.
LONDON
BAROQUE London
Baroque, founded in 1978, is one of the most experienced and renowned chamber
groups in the world, with appearances all over the world and more than 30 CD
recordings to its credit on the Harmonia Mundi and
BIS labels. This programme brings together some of the masterpieces of
Baroque chamber music, including trio sonatas by Corelli, J.S. Bach and
Handel. Our festival theme is reflected in a rare complete performance of
François Couperin’s great Apothéose de Lully,
an extended programmatic chamber work that explores and dramatizes the
differences between the Italian style of Corelli and the French style of
Lully; the work ends with a sonade portraying the two composers playing together on
Mount Parnassus. There will also be two character pieces by the virtuoso
French viol player Antoine Forqueray and Johann Kuhnau’s dramatic harpsichord sonata portraying the
combat between David and Goliath. ‘the performances were immaculately controlled,
at all times a delight to the ear – supple, flexible playing which touched
the heights of virtuosity and the depths of emotion’, Financial Times ‘sympathetic and alert ... with some finely
poetic playing; these performances seem to me model’, Gramophone
JOGLARESA Joglaresa
is one of the foremost groups specializing in Mediaeval music, with an
international following for its innovative concert programmes and recordings.
In this programme it explores the world of the twelfth- and
thirteenth-century trouvères,
the poet-musicians who developed and popularised the concept of courtly love
in northern France. There will also be songs by Guillaume de Machaut (d. 1377) and from the Roman de Fauvel, the fourteenth-century
allegorical poem that satirizes and castigates the corruption of the church
and contemporary society. ‘Joglaresa
are at the forefront of singers and instrumentalists whose study of
improvisation and ethnomusicology informs and shapes their imaginative
re-creation of Medieval music-making’, The
Times ‘Joglaresa’s
imaginative use of improvisation creates an exciting air of authenticity ...
compulsive rhythmic energy ... luxuriantly ornamental solos’, Daily Telegraph
soloists
to include Psalmody The
Choice of Hercules, in which the legendary hero has to choose between
Pleasure and Virtue, has served since Classical times as a popular allegory
of the moral choices faced by the individual. In the eighteenth century it
also acted as a reminder to absolutist monarchs of their responsibilities to
their subjects, as shown in two little-known masterpieces by J.S. Bach and
Handel. Bach wrote Hercules auf dem Scheidewege (Hercules at the Crossroads) BWV213 for the birthday of the Crown
Prince Friedrich Christian of Saxony, and performed it in the garden of
Zimmerman’s coffee house in Leipzig during the afternoon of 5 September 1733.
Much of the music will be familiar because it was later reused in the
Christmas Oratorio, though there are some intriguing differences between the
two versions. Handel wrote The Choice
of Hercules HWV69 for a performance at the Covent Garden theatre in
London on 1 March 1751. He had written some of the music, including
Hercules’s beautiful air ‘Yet, can I hear that dulcet lay’, the previous year
as part of incidental music for Tobias Smollett’s unperformed play Alceste, though
it works equally well in the new setting, and there are some sparkling new
movements, including a lively air with horns for Pleasure and a dramatic trio
for the three main protagonists. Tom
Williams sings with a number of leading vocal ensembles including Polyphony,
the Choir of the Enlightenment and Exaudi. He has recently sung solo in Paris and in
Mozart’s Requiem in Leicester. |