CAMBRIDGE VOICES
directed by Ian Moore

Shirley Rumsey voice, Renaissance lute and guitar

Matthew Locke – the Masque of Orpheus
Henry Purcell – Chacony in G minor, Saul and the Witch of Endor, Dido and Aeneas
OPERA RESTOR’D
directed by Jack Edwards (stage)
Robin Linklater (design)
and Peter Holman (music)

Giovanni Battista Draghi – From harmony, from heav’nly harmony
Henry Purcell – Hail, bright Cecilia

This programme brings together popular works such as ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway’ (the Bell Anthem) and ‘They that go down to the sea in ships’ (featuring Adrian Peacock as Charles II’s ‘stupendious’ bass John Gostling) with some lesser-known masterpieces. The programme also includes two of Purcell finest dramatic sacred songs, ‘The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation’ and ‘Saul and the Witch of Endor’.

John Dowland virtually invented the English lute song, often achieving a perfect balance between the words and the music. This programme includes some of his greatest songs, including the melancholy masterpiece ‘In darkness let me dwell’, as well songs and lute pieces by his contemporaries and followers.

Opera Restor’d’s innovative new programme traces the ups and downs of love from youth to extreme old age. Songs and dialogues are woven into a fully-staged dramatic tableau that takes the two characters and the audience from first love and romantic passion to bleak despair, with plenty of irony and humour.

This programme brings together the popular Music for the Royal Fireworks, written for a firework display in Green Park in 1749, with two of the rarely-heard Concerti a due cori, scored for two antiphonal wind bands with strings. It will also include the brilliant overture to The Occasional Oratorio (1746), scored for three trumpets and timpani with orchestra, and the ‘Concerto for Trumpets and Horns’ a fascinating early version of the Fireworks Music.

A pre-concert talk by Bridget Crowley of the National Gallery.

This fascinating and acclaimed programme creates a ‘sound picture’ of one of Holbein’s greatest and most enigmatic paintings. Music by Henry VIII, William Cornysh, Antoine Busnois, Josquin des Pres and others.

This programme collects together many favourite ‘national songs’, in their rarely-heard original versions, including Purcell’s ‘Fairest isle’ and Thomas Arne’s ‘Rule Britannia’.

A pre-concert talk by Dr Shirley Thompson

Marc-Antoine Charpentier was the most original and profound French composer of the seventeenth century. This concert includes his intense six-part setting of the Miserere and the oratorio ‘Caecilia virgo et martyr’.

In the seventeenth century the bass viol was developed as a solo instrument rivalling the lute. This programme explores its unaccompanied repertoire, contrasting music by the French composers Marais, Sainte-Colombe and de Machy with the German August Kühnel and the Englishman William Young.

An illustrated talk by the Director of Opera Restor’d on Baroque opera and staging in France, Italy and England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

A concert performance of two delightful dramatic works inspired by French music and dance. Il ballo delle ingrate is an Italian version of the French balet de cour. Venus and Adonis, John Blow’s miniature opera written for the English court, is the model for Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

This programme contrasts chansons and motets by Machaut and Dufay, and also explores the role English composers of the period played in the development of French mediaeval music.

The Baroque flute was developed in the late seventeenth century in France and much of its best repertoire comes from that country.

This programme brings together two masterpieces of the theatre repertory, the extraordinary music Jean Féry Rebel wrote for the ballet Les élémens, depicting the creation of the world, and François Couperin’s great Concert dans le goût théatral. It also includes flute concertos by Leclair and Buffardin and Rameau’s overture to Pigmalion.

Johann Pachelbel is known today almost entirely for his Canon. However, he was one of the most important German composers of the seventeenth century, and was a great influence on his relative, the young Johann Sebastian Bach. This concert is an opportunity to explore more of his music, and two of Bach’s great works.

Philippa Hyde and Fred Jacobs return with a new programme of seventeenth-century music for voice and theorbo, focusing on the Italy of Monteverdi’s time. The programme includes songs and monodies by Monteverdi, as well as works by Landi, Rossi and Huygens, and recently discovered pieces for theorbo by Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger, the lutenist of German descent resident in Rome.

King Arthur is the second of the great semi-operas Purcell wrote for the London theatres in the 1690s, and contains some of his finest theatre music. John Dryden’s play tells the story of Arthur’s struggles against the Saxons, with plenty of emphasis on sorcery, magic and spectacular music. In this complete concert performance, Purcell’s music is linked by a specially written script conveying the essence of Dryden’s play.

Beethoven’s youthful Trio in B flat, Op. 11, is contrasted with a trio for the same instruments by his talented pupil and patron, Rudolf, Archduke of Austria. The programme also includes Beethoven’s early Sonata in F, Op. 5 No. 1, for cello and piano, and Weber’s Grand duo concertant, the greatest work for clarinet and piano from the early nineteenth century.

The bassoon has a long, colourful history stretching back to the Renaissance dulcian. In this informal lecture recital, Sally Holman plays works by Salaverde, Boismortier, Telemann, Mozart and others on historical bassoons and modern copies.

Apollo e Dafne is the greatest of the smaller dramatic works Handel wrote during his youthful years in Italy. It tells with great panache Ovid’s story of Apollo’s pursuit of the nymph Dafne, mixing virtuosic and heart-rending music. Handel’s vivid use of the orchestra was much-influenced by Corelli, who led orchestras for him in Rome.

Heinrich Biber and Georg Muffat, the greatest Austrian composers of the seventeenth century, were colleagues at the Salzburg court in the 1680s with sharply contrasted outlooks.

Beethoven’s youthful Op. 17 sonata is placed in the context of works by his contemporaries and followers: a solo by Antonin Reicha (1770 – 1836) and a sonata by the precocious, short- lived Nikolaus von Krufft (1779 -1818).

Boyce’s Peleus and Thetis, and Lampe’s Pyramus and Thisbe, are performed by Opera Restor’d.

A pre-concert talk by Professor Philip Wilby, University of Leeds

The mass is usually performed today as a torso, but Philip Wilby has reconstructed the entire work, using extra numbers Mozart added to Davidde penitente which may originally have been conceived for the uncompleted mass. Thus it is now possible to hear the mass for the first time in a complete form as the composer intended. In this performance we intersperse the movements of the mass with an Epistle sonata, an Offertory motet and a Communion motet, as in Salzburg practice of the period.

Bach’s unaccompanied suites are the greatest works written for the cello in the Baroque period, and the corner ones of the instrument’s modern repertory. In this informal recital Sebastian Comberti introduces complete performances of Suites Nos 1 and 2, bwv 1007 and 1008, and contrasts them with un-accompanied Italian Baroque cello music.

A century of Austrian concertos or concerto- like works, ranging from Biber’s Battaglia à 10 (1673) , an extraordinary evocation of seventeenth-century warfare scored for nine-part rings with solo violin, to Mozart’s virtuoso motet ‘Exsultate jubilate’, K. 165 (1773), a vocal concerto in all but name.

With composers such as William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons and Thomas Tomkins at the height of their powers, the reign of James I was a golden age for English music. This programme is a musical tour of Britain. A high point of the tour is Dering’s Country Cries, an evocation of rustic life that includes farmyard animals, a swarm of bees and a whistling carter.

Shakespeare’s sonnets, published in 1609, contain some of the most complex and beautiful explorations of life and love, all contained within the 14-line form. Their jewel-like quality is matched by contemporary lute music from the instrument’s golden age. John Dowland was England’s greatest lute composer, and was compared to Shakespeare at the time. Anthony Holborne was a gentleman courtier popular for his charming dances, while Philip Rosseter was a court lutenist and manager of one of the companies of child actors in Jacobean London.

John Stanley (1712-1786) is mainly known today for his instrumental music, but he also wrote some fine large-scale vocal works, including the opera Teraminta, to a libretto by Henry Carey, the author of ‘Sally in our alley’. Stanley seems to have written it in the early 1750s, but there is no record of a stage production in the eighteenth century, and the only revival seems to have been a BBC broadcast in the 1950s, so we believe that this may be the first ever live concert performance.

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

In this new programme, specially devised by Philip Thorby, Musica Antiqua play the main types of instrument popular at Henry’s court, including viols, recorders, shawms, bagpipes, cornett, lutes and the virginals. They are joined for the vocal items by Jennie Cassidy, a leading early music singer and regular performer at the Suffolk Villages Festival.

J. S. Bach’s great Concerto in C major BWV1061 is normally played today with string accompaniment, though the original version seems to have been for harpsichords alone. In this programme it is contrasted with Handel’s Suite in C minor HWV446, probably written in Hamburg in about 1705, and the Suite in G minor by Handel’s friend Johann Mattheson, written at about the same time.

Henry Purcell’s Fairy Queen is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and contains some of his best-loved music. It is the third of the series of extravagant semi-operas or musical plays he wrote for the Dorset Garden theatre in London in the early 1690s.

This programme evokes a meeting of the Bach family, during which there is a wedding. It includes music by several members of the family. The programme also marks the 300th anniversary of the death of Johann Pachelbel with his Kanon and Gigue.

The programme contrasts two works by the young J S Bach with music by two of his most important older contemporaries, who influenced his early keyboard music.

Il rè pastore is the last and greatest of Mozart’s youthful operas. It is rarely performed today, though it contains a good deal of beautiful music, and it was highly thought of by its composer.

When Mozart wrote his Quintet in E flat, K452, he considered it the best thing he had written in his life. Beethoven wrote a companion work, op. 16, and performed the two pieces together. These masterpieces are contrasted with Haydn’s great E flat piano sonata Hob. XVI/52, and an arrangement by A F Wustrow of Beethoven’s wind sextet op. 71.

As well as playing and talking about his instruments, Ian Harrison explores the history of English popular music from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries.

The Requiem was Mozart’s last work. Unfortunately, Mozart left it unfinished, and his widow asked the minor composer Franz Xaver Süssmayr to complete it. Süssmayr’s is the version that is most often heard today, though in this radical version Richard Maunder has tried to produce a version closer to Mozart’s late style. The result provides a fascinating new insight into a familiar masterpiece.

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.

Pre-concert talk by Dr Bryan White
Lecturer in Music, University of Leeds

This performance aims to recreate the work as it might have sounded at its first court performance, shedding fascinating new light on Purcell’s matchless opera.

Gustav Leonhardt is probably the most famous harpsichordist in the world today. He has been interested in the great repertory of English keyboard music for many years, and his recital includes music by William Byrd, John Bull, Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Tomkins, Henry Purcell and William Croft. He plays a copy by Malcolm Rose of the earliest surviving English harpsichord, made by Lodewijk Theeus in 1579.

Crispian Steele-Perkins makes a welcome return to the festival with a programme of English music for trumpet and orchestra. He plays Henry Purcell’s suite from the play Bonduca, the trumpet overture from Purcell’s Indian Queen, the overture to Handel’s opera Atalanta, and a fine trumpet concerto by the Coventry composer Capel Bond, published in 1766. The programme also includes works from Handel’s great set of concerti grossi op. 6, as well as keyboard concertos by John Stanley and Thomas Arne, played by David Wright on an original Kirckman harpsichord of 1778.

English sacred music in the fifteenth century is as distinctive and uplifting as the soaring Mediaeval churches for which it was written. In this programme the Orlando Consort explores music written during the reigns of Henry V, Henry VI and Edward IV, focusing on John Dunstable and his followers, including John Pyamour, Forest, Bittering, Walter Lambe, and the ever-present Anon.

Dr Susan Sloman is an authority on English eighteenth-century art and is the author of Gainsborough in Bath, published in 2002 by Yale University Press. There are a limited number seats; early booking is recommended.

In this entertainment Gainsborough’s world is evoked though his vivid letters and the anecdotes of his friends and acquaintances. The music includes bass viol pieces by Abel, the greatest exponent of the instrument of the time, and lute music by Rudolf Straube, a pupil of J.S. Bach who settled in London. Some of it was composed for Gainsborough or comes from manuscripts once owned by him.

This programme uses enlarged versions of our resident choir and orchestra to recreate the grand musical effects created in Westminster Abbey during the coronation service, which used most of the professional singers and instrumentalists in London.

Pre-concert talk by Dr Bryan White

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. It includes some of Purcell’s finest and most mature theatre music.

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.

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.

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. 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.

This exploration of the thoughts and dreams of German Mediaeval poet-composers includes songs from Carmina Burana and works by Gottfried von Straßbourg, 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.

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, ‘As Pants the Hart’ and ‘Blessed Are They That Considereth the Poor’.

This concert brings together four great vocal concertos or cantatas written during 1714, the momentous year when Bach was made Konzertmeister. The concert also includes the lively short motet ‘Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden’, possibly written by Bach at this period.

In this concert serious songs and instrumental pieces by the Austrian court composer Heinrich Isaac (d. 1517) and his pupil Ludwig Senfi (c. 1486-1542/3) are contrasted with settings of popular music, including haunting folksongs. Also included is Isaac’s famous song ‘Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen’, the melody of which became a Lutheran chorale and was set by many composers, including Bach and Brahms.

Baroque Dresden was famous for its architecture and the visual arts, but it was also important for music. Court composers such as Johann David Heinichen, Johann Dismass Zelenka and Johann Georg Pisendel looked to Italy for their musical style, and in particular to Antonio Vivaldi, who wrote a number of works for Dresden.

A pre-concert talk by Professor Anthony King, University of Essex

This concert is an evocation in words and music of the rich cultural life at Sanssouci, the summer palace of Frederick the Great of Prussia. It features music by Frederick himself, his accompanist C.P.E.Bach, and other Berlin court composers.

The songs in this concert are chosen from those by Schubert, Weber and Louis Spohr published around 1800 with guitar parts, presumably with the composers’ approval. David Miller also plays guitar solos by Johann Kaspar Mertz (1806-1856), a Hungarian guitar virtuoso active in Vienna.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), J.S. Bach’s second son, composed twenty-one settings of the Passion for performance during Lent in Hamburg. Nearly all of them were believed to have been destroyed during World War II until the manuscripts were rediscovered in Kiev in 1999. The 1769 St Matthew Passion is the first and most elaborate of the series. We believe that this fine work has never been performed in Britain, so this concert should be a notable occasion, not to be missed.

A pre-Festival talk by Peter Holman, Artistic Director

A pre-concert talk by Hugh Belsey

Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s miniature opera Actéon, with its intense, dramatic and poignant music, was probably written in Paris in the spring of 1684. 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. The concert also includes two miniature masterpieces by Monteverdi, the ballet ‘Movete’, and the poignant ‘Lamento della Ninfa’.

Heinrich Biber wrote his Rosary or Mystery Sonatas in Salzburg in the 1670s. 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 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’, his ‘Agrippina condotta a morire’, and Haydn’s cantata Arianna auf Naxos. The concert is completed by three related instrumental works: the overtures to Handel’s operas Agrippina and Rinaldo, and the poignant concerto Il pianto d’Arianna op. 7, no. 6 by Pietro Antonio Locatelli.

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.

In this programme we explore the world of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century trouvères, the poet-musicians who developed and popularised the concept of courtly love in northern France.

Bach wrote Hercules auf dem Scheidewege (Hercules at the Crossroads) for the birthday of the Crown Prince Friedrich Christian of Saxony. He reused much of the music 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 1751. He had written some of the music, including Hercules’s beautiful air ‘Yet, can I hear that dulcet lay’, the previous year as incidental music for Tobias Smollett’s unperformed play Alceste.

A pre-festival talk by Peter Holman, Artistic Director

The Goldberg Variations is Bach’s largest and greatest work in variation form, imitated by later composers. It is also a matchless compendium of virtuoso keyboard writing, exploiting the two-manual harpsichord to the full.

In this new venture young keyboard players are given the opportunity to be coached by Steven Devine in music by J. S. Bach. Listeners are guaranteed fascinating insights into Bach’s music, the challenges of performing it on different keyboard instruments and the art of performance in general.

Pre-concert talk by Dr Stephen Rose, Senior Lecturer in Music, Royal Holloway, University of London.

This performance revives the rarely heard 1725 version of Bach’s St John Passion, performed at the Festival in 2000.

This light-hearted programme explores the perennial battle to please the senses in which good food and good music go hand in hand. These fascinating glimpses of eating and drinking habits build up a vivid picture of daily life in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

The first half of the programme consists of a complete concert performance of John Blow’s miniature masque-like opera Venus & Adonis. There will be some light-hearted items by Purcell, Dibdin, and Leopold Mozart, contrasted with works by Stanley, Handel and Arne.

The festive and dramatic Coronation Mass is the greatest of a series of church works written by the young Mozart for the Salzburg court. We perform it as it would have been heard in Salzburg Cathedral. The Mass is contrasted with other works Mozart wrote for the court orchestra.

This programme is a selection of the sort of music English aristocrats on the Grand Tour would have heard, in Louis XIV’s private apartments at Versailles, in the great Italian court and churches, and back home in London.

J.S. Bach’s sonatas for viola da gamba or bass viol with harpsichord are among the greatest works for the instrument. Steven Devine also plays two complementary but contrasted solos: the Italian Concerto BWV971 and Overture in the French Style BWV831 for harpsichord.

In this masterclass recorder players are given the opportunity to be coached by Pamela Thorby in solo or ensemble music. Listeners are guaranteed fascinating insights into the recorder and its music, the challenges of performing Renaissance and Baroque music, and the art of performance in general.

Henry Purcell’s score for The Prophetess, or The History of Dioclesian was a landmark in English musical history. In this complete performance of Purcell’s music, the various musical scenes are linked by a witty verse narrative, written and performed by Andrew Pinnock, Purcell scholar and Head of Music at the University of Southampton.

We present Handel’s great masterpiece in an unfamiliar guise, recreating the work as heard in its original performance, with a small choir and period-instrument orchestra.

This popular programme brings together some of the finest chamber music from the early eighteenth century, written at a time when Italian, French and German composers were relishing and exploiting their diverse national styles. Works by Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi, Marais, Rebel and Leclair are featured.

This fascinating programme presents a vivid glimpse of domestic music-making in Shakespeare’s England. The programme includes ingenious rounds by Thomas Ravenscroft, the first folksong collector, lute songs by Thomas Campion, Nicholas Lanier and others, and instrumental solos or duos based on popular tunes, including some used by Shakespeare.

An afternoon of talks and a visit to the exhibition ‘Rembrandt the Printmaker’.

The concert is effectively a portrait of the composer, equivalent to Rembrandt’s profound series of self-portraits. The concert brings together pieces featuring passionate, virtuoso music for solo voices, those exploiting spatially separated groups, and those with unusual combinations of voices and instruments.

We present a rich cross-section of the music by Claudio Monteverdi, ranging from his early years at the Mantuan court to his old age as the maestro of St Mark’s in Venice and taking in opulent sacred works, richly scored concerted madrigals, dramatic scenes and virtuoso solo songs.

A feast for Bach lovers! The fifth Brandenburg Concerto is one of his most popular works. Similarly, ‘Jauchzet Gott’ is one of Bach’s most popular cantatas. The other two works are equally fine but less known: the fourth orchestral suite in D major and ‘O angeheme Melodei’.

Crispian Steele-Perkins makes a welcome return to the Festival with his famous light-hearted lecture recital. Drawing on his large collection of historic instruments, he traces the history of the trumpet from Tutankhamen’s tomb to the present.

An afternoon of talks and the Great Art in Suffolk Museums exhibition.

King Arthur contains some of Purcell’s most memorable theatre music. In this complete concert performance, we present a new version of the work that aims to reconstruct the music as originally heard. The musical scenes are linked by a specially written script.

The Gran Partita is one of Mozart’s greatest works, written in 1781 at the height of his powers. It is laid out on the largest scale, with the richest harmonie scoring…

A pre-concert talk by Professor Richard Andrews of the University of Leeds

We begin The Monteverdi Project, our extended cycle of performances of Monteverdi’s major works, with his last masterpiece, written and performed in the final year of his life…

A pre-concert talk by Michael Lowe, master luthier

The theorbo is the largest and most sonorous member of the lute family, with an extended neck, two sets of strings and two peg-boxes. In this solo recital, Fred Jacobs pairs Kapsberger and de Visée, two of the greatest seventeenth-century composers for the theorbo.

This entertaining lecture recital on double-reed instruments brings the sound world of the courts and cities of Mediaeval, Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe vividly alive. Music by Landini, Machaut, Josquin, Praetorius, Purcell, Telemann and others

A pre-concert talk by Richard Maunder

The first half of the concert is a contribution to the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, exploring music written for his plays by Arne, Linley, Storace, Bishop and Mendelssohn. In the second half, we hear Mozart’s unfinished Requiem, reconstructed by Richard Maunder in Mozart’s late style. The result is a fascinating new insight into a familiar masterpiece.

We continue our Monteverdi project with the ever-popular 1610 Vespers – but with a difference. Peter Holman’s new version replaces three of the psalms with unfamiliar but superb settings of the same texts, making the whole work more suitable for a chamber choir accompanied by a period-instrument ensemble.

A workshop with Sam Goble and Philip Dale – members of the cornett & sackbut group QuintEssential – exploring brass music written around 1600.

A pre concert talk by Professor Peter Holman, Artistic Director

Thomas Arne’s Alfred is universally known today for just one number, ‘Rule! Britannia’, performed every year at the Last Night of the Proms. However, the complete score contains some of Arne’s finest music and was one of his favourite works.

A pre concert talk by Professor Julian Rushton, University of Leeds

In this compelling programme, ground-breaking quartets by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven are linked by their creative use of Baroque fugal techniques. The Revolutionary Drawing Room is internationally renowned for its historically informed performances of music around 1800, with a sound founded on the beautiful sonority of gut strings.

In this entertaining lecture demonstration, Ricardo Barros is joined by violinist Nicolette Moonen and dancer Barbara Segal to explore how choreography interacted with music, and how dance was an expression of the Baroque court culture.

An afternoon of talks and the exhibition Silk.

A fascinating programme exploring the influence of French music and dance in England. The main work is Handel’s rarely-performed Terpsicore, an unique fusion of French ballet and Italian opera.

Our Monteverdi Project continues with four superb works marrying musical drama and courtly dance; the main work is ll ballo delle ingrate, written for Mantua in 1608 and revised for Vienna in 1636.

A pre-concert talk by Peter Holman

Four of J.S. Bach’s greatest orchestral works – but two of them in unfamiliar guises. The famous ‘double violin concerto’ is played in the composer’s fascinating elaboration for two harpsichords and strings, while Tassilo Erhardt plays his reconstruction of the lost original version of the popular Suite in B minor, for solo violin rather than flute.

Tassilo Erhardt talks about Nicholas Lanier and his contemporaries.

In this absorbing tour of seventeenth century song, we travel from the Italy of Monteverdi and Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger to Restoration England, via the French court and the beautiful airs of Michel Lambert.

An hour of Welsh traditional music as a prelude to Kannig’s lecture recital on Monday morning.

In this entertaining lecture recital Kannig introduce us to the fascinating history of Wales’s music, from ancient three-part carols in the Montgomeryshire Plygain tradition to airs and variations by Edward Jones and John Thomas, harpists to the Prince Regent and Queen Victoria.

An afternoon of talks and the permanent collection at Gainsborough’s House.

Two great court odes celebrating English female monarchs: Purcell wrote ‘Come, ye sons of arts’ for Queen Mary in 1694 and Handel wrote ‘Eternal source of light devine’ for Queen Anne in 1713. Purcell’s grand orchestral setting of the Te Deum and Jubilate was regularly performed in St Paul’s for state occasions.

Classical gods (and classical unities?) in Il Ritorno D’Ulisse

Monteverdi clothes this epic Homeric tale of virtue and constancy rewarded with music of extraordinary eloquence, tender, heroic and passionate by turns.

William Boyce and his musical world – a talk by Peter Holman, Artistic Director

William Boyce’s melodious score for ‘Solomon’ was lastingly popular in the eighteenth century. We complement it with two of Handel’s famous coronation anthems.

A superb programme of music for clarinet and piano from around 1800, played on period instruments.

In this entertaining and informative lecture recital Terence Charlston, one of Britain’s leading early keyboard exponents, explores music by Byrd, Froberger, J.S. Bach and C.P.E. Bach on two contrasted clavichords. He is joined by Julian Perkins for the finale, Beethoven’s four-hand Sonata in D major, op. 6 (1797).

This afternoon of events is the latest instalment of our fruitful collaboration with Gainsborough’s House.

We celebrate Thomas Linley with a cross section of his finest music. Mozart, his friend and exact contemporary, thought him a ‘true genius’.

SOLD OUT

A repeat performance!

SOLD OUT

SOLD OUT

A repeat performance!

SOLD OUT

A repeat performance!

SOLD OUT

Was the Composer the Dramatist? Striggio and Monteverdi

‘Then break our pipes’: Memorials to Henry Purcell

Schütz and the Thirty Years’ War

Charles Daniels (tenor), Psalmody and the John Jenkins Consort, directed by Peter Holman

Ashley Solomon (flute), Gail Hennessy (oboe), Tassilo Erhardt (violin), Steven Devine (harpsichord) and members of Essex Baroque Orchestra play Bach Suite no. 2, harpsichord concerto no. 8, Oboe d’amore concerto & the Concerto in A minor for flute, violin & harpsichord

Stephen Varcoe in conversation with members of The Revolutionary Drawing Room Quartet

Mozart ‘Dissonance’ quartet, Haydn op. 76/6 and Beethoven Grosse Fuge

Elizabethan and Jacobean virginal music

Purcell’s Theatre World

Philippa Hyde & Faye Newton (soprano), Daniel Auchincloss (tenor), Psalmody, Essex Baroque Orchestra, directed by Peter Holman

Performing Spanish Baroque church music

Music by Francisco Valls, José de Torres, José Lidon and José de Nebra

CPE Bach’s concerto for harpsichord and fortepiano with music by JS, WF and JC Bach.

Stephen Varcoe in conversation with Owain Park and members of The Gesualdo Six

Masterpieces from the golden age of English polyphony.

Music by Quantz, Hotteterre, CPE Bach, Couperin and JS Bach played by Noemi Gyori (Baroque flute) and Paul Nicholson (harpsichord)

Purcell’s Singers for The Indian Queen

performed by Philippa Hyde (soprano), Charles Daniels (tenor), Stuart O’Hara (bass), Psalmody, Essex Baroque Orchestra and directed by Peter Holman