In this concert five of Handel’s finest op. 6 concertos are contrasted with three works, with solo trumpet, by Italian composers connected with Handel.

This concert brings together vivid settings of Biblical scenes by English seventeenth-century composers and their great German contemporary Heinrich Schütz.

David Owen Norris devised this programme to suit the historic Broadwood piano at St Mary’s Church in Boxford. It begins with Mendelssohn’s innovative Songs without Words op. 19, followed by the Klavierstücke op. 118 by Brahms. He then plays William Sterndale Bennett’s extraordinary ‘Maid of Orleans’ Sonata op. 46. The concert ends with the full original version of Elgar’s barnstorming Concert Allegro op. 46, the composer’s only major solo piano work.

For this concert we have assembled a sequence of Vivaldi’s 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.