London International Festival of Early Music
Double Book Launch, Dorothee Oberlinger & Peter Kofler
Blackheath Halls. 13 November 2025

What is now the London International Festival of Early Music has been through several incarnations since its inception in 1973. Originally housed at the Royal College of Music, it moved to the Royal Horticultural Halls and then to the sumpuous surroundings of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich as the Royal Greenwich International Early Music, which then moved to Blackheath Halls, eventually changing to the current name. Run by the Early Music Shop, the main focus is on the three-day exhibition of instrument makers, retailers, publishers, record companies, early music forums, the National Early Music Association and other related societies, which combine with concerts of various types. Every other year, it hosts a solo recorder competition.

My one-day visit started with a Double Book Launch with German musicologist and Artistic Director of the Leipzig Bachfest Michael Maul, presenting the English edition of his acclaimed monograph, Johann Sebastian Bach: ‘Marvellous are thy works’, and broadcaster and writer Hannah French with her book The Rolling Year: Listening to the Seasons with Vivaldi. They were joined by LIFEM’s Artistic Director Erik Bosgraaf and Festival Director Chris Butler. Reviews of both books will appear here in due course.

Michael Maul explained the background to his original book, which aims to make Bach’s cantatas more accessible. His book comes with a Spotify playlist, the tracks of which are referenced throughout the book. He also revealled several aspects of his work at the Bach Acrhive and BachFest, including the last virtual reality technology which creating an avatar of Bach. He alerted us to the announcement the following Monday of the new recognition of two Bach pieces, hitherto assumed to by another composer, but now given their own BWV number. He mentioned the difficulty of searching for original Bach scores, recalling that an autograph version of the Chromatic Fantasia was found on the walls of a golf club in Illinois! Hannah French explained how her book was written over a year, in each of the four seasons represented by Vivaldi. She suggested that the fact that Summer is all in the same key is mirroring the relentlessly consistent heat of an Italian summer. She showed pictures of the Hall of the Months in Mantua, where the Four Seasons was composed.

The evening concert, in St. Michael & All Angels, Blackheath, was given by the distinguished recorder player Dorothee Oberlinger, together with Peter Kofler, playing harpsichord. Under the title of Les Nations: Baroque sound cultures in dialogue, the pair presented a wide-ranging pan-European programme of music with compositions dating from the 17th century to last year. Starting with Bach, she moved to Handel as arranged by William Babell, via 1730 Dublin to late 20th century Munich with Harald Feller’s energetically virtuosic Toccata for solo harpsichord. I was not surprised that Peter Kofler took his jacket off just for this piece! The first half ended with unarranged Handel (HWV 369) and Nicola Matteis’ Diverse bizzarie sopra la vecchia Sarabanda o pur Ciaccona.

The second half was divided into German and French sections, the former with JS and CPE Bach, Quantz and Telemann, the latter with Louis and François Couperin, sandwiching Drouart de Bousset, the whole rounded off with Corelli’s Sonata in F (Op5/10) with examples of ornamentation by William Babell, Pietro Castrucci and Michel Blavet. The playing by both with spectacular, the frequently highly ornamented and virtuosic music always imparted with musical sensitivity and elegance.