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Events Diary and Details for
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Date |
Time |
Venue |
Event |
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Sunday 27 November 2011 |
6.00 pm |
St James's Church, Nayland |
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Sunday 26 February 2012 |
6.00 pm |
St Mary’s Church, Boxford |
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Sunday 22 April 2012 |
6.00 pm |
St Mary’s Church, Boxford |
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Tuesday 5 June 2012 |
6.00 pm |
St Mary's Church, Hadleigh |
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For concert details click links or scroll down |
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St James’s Church, Nayland Handel and his Italian Friends Crispian Steele-Perkins (trumpet) Handel’s
set of twelve concerti grossi op. 6, published in
1740, is perhaps the greatest collection of Baroque orchestral music. Its scoring for two solo violins, violoncello, strings and
continuo places it in the tradition deriving from Corelli’s famous concertos,
though Handel draws on an astonishing range of musical idioms, ranging from
French dances and seventeenth-century German keyboard music to Vivaldi and Domenico Scarlatti. In this concert five of the finest
op. 6 concertos are contrasted with three works with solo trumpet by Italian
composers connected with Handel. He came into contract with Corelli and
Alessandro Scarlatti (Domenico’s father) while he
was in Rome in 1707 and 1708, and he made use of Stradella’s
music in his own works, notably in the oratorio Israel in Egypt. Crispian Steele-Perkins is a regular and
welcome visitor to the Festival. He has been described as ‘the world’s
leading player of the Baroque trumpet’, and continues to delight, amuse and
instruct audiences around the world.
SUNDAY 26 FEBRUARY 2012, 6.00 p.m. St Mary’s Church, Boxford Biblical Scenes Claire
Tomlin (soprano) Dramatic
scenes in the Old Testament and the Gospels inspired some of the greatest art
of the seventeenth century, in music as well as in the visual arts. This
concert brings together vivid settings of Biblical scenes by English
seventeenth-century composers and their great German contemporary Heinrich Schütz. It will include William Byrd’s Easter anthem
‘Christ rising again’ and his consort song ‘Susanna fair’, telling the story
of Susanna and the elders; two famous anthems by Orlando Gibbons, ‘This is
the record of John’ and ‘See, see the word is incarnate’; and Matthew Locke’s
anthem ‘When the son of man shall come in his glory’, a dramatic setting of
the parable of the sheep and the goats from St Matthew’s Gospel. The main
work by Schütz is his poignant short oratorio Die sieben Worte Christe am Kreuz (The Seven Last Words of Christ from the Cross)
SWV478, written in about 1645, though the programme also includes his
Annunciation Dialogue SWV333, published in 1639, and the beautiful motet that
ends the Musikalische Exequien (1636)
SWV281, in which the choir with viols and organ sings the German Nunc Dimittis while three solo
voices placed at a distance reply with words from Revelation, ‘Selig sind die Toten die in dem Herren sterben’
(‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord’). This
concert showcases the talents of Psalmody, now established as one of East
Anglia’s leading chamber choirs, and a group of viol players mostly drawn
from Essex Baroque Orchestra, the Festival’s other resident ensemble. The two
groups collaborated in a very successful concert of Jacobean music during the
2005 Festival. Claire Tomlin was a founder member of Psalmody while still a
student, and has gone on to appear as a soloist at every subsequent festival,
and in concert halls throughout Britain and abroad. SUNDAY 22 APRIL 2012, 6.00 p.m. St Mary’s Church, Boxford From Mendelssohn to Elgar David Owen Norris is one of Britain’s best-known
pianists, renowned for his pioneering work in the historically informed
performance on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pianos, often exploring
neglected English music. He appears frequently on Radio and TV, most recently
talking about ‘Jerusalem’ in the Prince of Wales’s documentary about Hubert
Parry. His recordings of Elgar, including the solo piano music and virtuoso
transcriptions of orchestral music, have received enthusiastic reviews, as in
The Gramophone (2009): ‘swaggering
conviction, glinting mischief … once again, Norris’s pianism is past praise
in its scrupulous poise, immaculate touch and attention to dynamic nuance.
What’s more, he also displays an acute intellectual and emotional
understanding … artistry of a very high order’. David
Owen Norris has devised this special programme to suit the historic late
nineteenth-century Broadwood piano at St Mary’s
Church in Boxford. It begins with the first book of Mendelssohn’s innovative Songs without Words op. 19, published
in 1830, followed by the Klavierstücke (Six
Piano Pieces) op. 118 by Brahms, completed in 1893 and including some of his
best-loved shorter piano pieces. After the interval he plays William Sterndale Bennett’s extraordinary ‘Maid of Orleans’
Sonata op. 46 of 1873, based on Schiller’s play about Joan of Arc. The
concert ends with the full original version of Elgar’s barnstorming Concert
Allegro op. 46, written in 1901 and the composer’s only major solo piano
work. TUESDAY 5 JUNE 2012, 6.00 p.m. St Mary’s Church, Hadleigh Vivaldi: Venetian Vespers Timothy
Travers-Brown (countertenor) Vivaldi
spent much of his career working at the Pietà, the
Venetian orphanage that trained girls as musicians and maintained a renowned
choir and orchestra in its chapel. For this concert we have assembled a
sequence of his music for Vespers of the Virgin Mary, consisting of a
sequence of psalms, the hymn Salve Regina, and the powerful G minor setting
of the Magnificat RV610. Some of the pieces,
including the introductory prayer ‘Domine ad adjuvandum’ RV593, are lavishly scored for two choirs,
two orchestras and two organs, while his great setting of the Nisi Dominus
RV608 is a showpiece for a virtuoso alto singer, accompanied just by strings
and continuo. The Salve Regina in C minor RV616, also for alto solo, is
richly scored for two recorders, flute and double string orchestra. The
concert includes a setting of the psalm Dixit Dominus for female voices and
strings by Nicola Porpora, who worked for the Pietà and another Venetian orphanage in the 1740s. The countertenor Timothy Travers-Brown has been singing at the Festival for many years, and most recently delighted audiences with his contribution to our Bach concert in May 2011. He has sung with many of the world’s leading early music ensembles, and has appeared in the complete series of Bach cantatas recorded by Masaaki Susuki and the Bach Collegium Japan; on that occasion The Gramophone praised his ‘attractive and polished warmth’. |