A pre-concert talk by Richard Andrews, Emeritus Professor of Italian in the University of Leeds

Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo, written at Mantua for the court carnival celebrations of 1607, was not the first opera, but it is generally considered to be the first in the modern sense because it uses a large ensemble to add elaborate choruses and arias to the monody or recitative that carries forward the story.

The programme is drawn from the rich repertory of Italian sacred music written in the first half of the seventeenth century. It brings together narrative motets that praise particular saints and recount their exploits for the edification of the faithful. The composers include Sigismondo D’India, Barbara Strozzi, Giovanni Rovetta and Giacomo Carissimi.

This concert brings together three concertos written for the famous Dresden court orchestra, richly scored with recorders, oboes, bassoon, string soloists and orchestra, with concertos probably written for girls in Vivaldi’s own group at the Pietà, the famous Venetian orphanage.

A pre-concert talk by Peter Holman, Artistic Director of the Suffolk Villages Festival

The programme explores virtuoso pieces for soprano with varied combinations of cornetts, sackbut and keyboard by Monteverdi and his Venetian and Roman contemporaries, including Alessandro Grandi, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Giovanni Battista Riccio and Giovanni Picchi. An intriguing link between the old and new are the madrigals and motets by the sixteenth-century masters de Rore and Palestrina updated with the addition of virtuoso passagi or florid ornaments for voice or solo instrument.

Alison Stephens and Steven Devine contrast sonatinas by Beethoven and Hummel’s Grand Sonata in C major with the Concerto, op. 113, by the Neopolitan Raffaele Calace (1863-1934), the most prominent late nineteenth-century exponent of the mandolin.

This popular programme is based around two of the greatest religious works from eighteenth-century Italy. The psalm ‘Dixit Dominus’ was written by Handel in Rome for a vespers service in the summer of 1707, and is thus 300 years old this year. With its powerful choruses, virtuoso solos and brilliant orchestral writing, it was Handel’s first masterpiece and was to remain one of his finest church works.