Events Diary and Details
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| Date | Time | Venue | Event |
| Saturday 22 August | 11.00 am | Polstead Village Hall |
Pre-festival talk by Peter Holman |
Friday 28 August |
8.00 pm |
St Mary's Church, Hadleigh |
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| Saturday 29 August | 12.00 midday | St James's Church, Nayland | The Noble Bass Viol |
7.30 pm |
St Mary's Church, Stoke by Nayland | Handel: Aci, Galatea e Polifemo | |
| Sunday 30 August | 7.30 pm | St Mary's Church, Stoke by Nayland | Mendelssohn Octet, Haydn and Spohr |
| Monday 31 August | 12.00 midday | St Mary's Church, Polstead | Duo Trobairitz: The Wheel of Fortune |
7.30 pm |
St Mary's Chuch, Hadleigh | Handel: Ode on St Cecilia's Day | |
For concert details click links or scroll down |
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FRIDAY
28 AUGUST 2009 soloists
to include: Psalmody The Indian Queen is the last of the series of semi-operas (elaborate musical plays) written by Henry Purcell in the 1690s; it was left unfinished at his death in November 1695 and was completed by his brother Daniel. Based on a play partly by John Dryden, it concerns love and conflict between the Incas and the Aztecs - requiring Peru to be next to Mexico! It includes some of Purcell's finest and most mature theatre music, including the Masque of Fame and Envy, the dramatic incantation scene 'Ye twice ten-hundred deities', and the lovely song 'I attempt from Love's sickness to fly'. As with our earlier performances of King Arthur and The Fairy Queen, the musical scenes are linked by a script, specially written by Andrew Pinnock.
Mark
Caudle & Susanne Heinrich (bass viol) In the seventeenth century England was thought to be the home of making, playing and composing for the viol. This programme explores the rich repertory of virtuosic music for two bass viols and chamber organ, including dances, fantasias and sonatas by John Ward, William Lawes, John Jenkins, William Young, Gottfried Finger and Henry Purcell. This programme brings together two of Britain's leading viol players. Mark Caudle has played the viol solo many times in the Festival, most recently in the Gainsborough programme in 2008. Susanne Heinrich has won high praise for her recording of solo gamba music by Charles Frederick Abel, and received a Gramophone award for it in 2008.
ACI........Philippa
Hyde (soprano) Essex
Baroque Orchestra Not Handel's English masque Acis and Galatea but an entirely different work on the same theme, a dramatic cantata or serenata written for a royal wedding in Naples in 1708. The anonymous Italian libretto, derived from a story in Ovid's Metamorphoses, concerns a love triangle between the shepherd Acis, the nymph Galatea, and the jealous Cyclops Polyphemus, said to be a personification of Mount Etna - or perhaps, in this case, Vesuvius, the volcano overlooking Naples. The giant kills Acis with a boulder, causing Galatea to use her devine powers to transform him into a flowing stream. Handel's music has a youthful fire, brilliance, and tragic intensity that makes it the equal of the much better-known Acis and Galatea. Philippa Hyde and Beth Mackay sang together in Pergolesi's Stabat Mater to great acclaim in the 2007 Festival. Giles Davies is one of London's busiest operatic baritones and appeared with Opera Restor'd at the 2001 Festival.
THE EROICA QUARTET & THE AISO QUARTET We mark the 200th anniversary of Mendelssohn's birth with one of his greatest works, the Octet in E flat major, op. 20, written in 1825 at the age of sixteen. It is remarkable for the richness of its scoring, using a double string quartet, and the freshness and assurance of its musical language. The light and ethereal scherzo, supposedly inspired by a section of Goethe's Faust, became famous in the nineteenth century, and was orchestrated by Mendelssohn for his first symphony. Spohr's fine double quartet no. 3, op. 87, was written in 1832-3 and uses the same instruments but in a different way, with the first quartet accompanied by the second in the manner of a concerto. Haydn's unfinished string quartet, op. 103, was his last instrumental work, composed in 1803. The Eroica Quartet makes a welcome return to the Festival after its very successful concert in 2004. It is renowned for its radical interpretations of some of the best-known music of the nineteenth-century, passionately believing that greater freedom of expression can be found in the use of the instruments and perfromance styles of the past. Its recordings of Mendelssohn's string quartets have received huge critical acclaim: 'performances of exhilarating freshness and verve', Daily Telegraph. Members of the Aiso Quartet belong to such distinguished ensembles as the London Haydn Quartet and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and teach at Birmingham Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Music. Most of the members of both quartets play in Sir John Eliot Gardiner's Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique.
DUO
TROBAIRITZ Carmina Burana, a thirteenth-century illuminated manuscript from the Bavarian monastery of Benediktbeuern, was made famous in the 1930s by Karl Orff's setting of a selection of its Latin lyrics. The title page of the manuscript illustrates the wheel of fortune, the starting point for this fascinating exploration of the thoughts and dreams of German Mediaeval poet-composers. It includes songs from Carmina Burana, and works by Gottfried von Straßbourg (a dramatic excerpt from the epic romance of Tristan and Isolde), Niedhart von Reuenthal, and Oswald von Wolkenstein, the last Minnesänger. Themes include the fickleness of fortune, moving declarations of love, solemn prayers, and earthy depictions of village life. Faye Newton and Hazel Brooks have delighted audiences across Europe with entertaining programmes that remain faithful to the historical roots of Mediaeval music. Their first CD, The Language of Love, has been universally praised: 'Duo Trobairitz recreate the sound world and the artistic idiom with sufficient authority that, were the original creators of this music to come back and hear these performances.... they would have stamped their feet in approval', International Record Review
Philippa
Hyde (soprano) Psalmody Our second concert marking the 250th anniversary of Handel's death contrasts one of his finest shorter works, the Ode on St Cecilia's Day (1739), with two rarely performed orchestral anthems. John Dryden's ode on the theme of the power of music is vividly illustrated by stirring choral writing and arias with lute, flute, violoncello and trumpet obbligato. The expressive anthem 'As pants the hart' was evidently a favourite of the composer since he wrote five versions of it. We have chosen the last and richest one, written for a concert in 1738. 'Blessed are they that considereth the poor' was Handel's last anthem, composed in 1749 for the Foundling Hospital in London. It is a fascinating work with a remarkable variety of music, ranging from an archaic setting of a German chorale to the 'Hallelujah' chorus, borrowed from Messiah. |