Concert Reviews

The Mozartists

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Mozart in 1774
The Mozartists
Ian Page, Samantha Clarke, Jane Gower
Wigmore Hall. 2 May 2024

Mozart: Symphony No. 28 in C, K.200
Paisiello: Povera prence… Deh, non varcar (from Andromeda)
Mozart: Bassoon Concerto, K.191
Epistle Sonata in D major, K.144
Crudeli, fermate… Ah, dal pianto (from La finta giardiniera)
Symphony No. 30 in D, K.202

Following the opening concert on the 10th anniversary of their monumental MOZART 250 project, which gave a retrospective view of the wider context of music in 1774 (reviewed here), Ian Page’s The Mozartists focussed on Mozart himself in a concert that could be said to reflect the first true masterpieces of the still very young composer. The relatively little-known Mozart pieces were composed in Salzburg at a time when a new archbishop restricted the pan-European travels that his predecessor had allowed Mozart and his father. Only for the last three weeks of the year was he able to travel to Munich for the premiere of his opera La finta giardiniera, commissioned by the Elector Maximillian III for the Munich carnival.

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~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Lully & Blow – La naissance de Vènus & Venus and Adonis
Istante Collective, The Queenes Chappell
Baroquestock Festival 2024 @ Heath Street Baptist Church. 3 May 2024


Jean-Baptiste Lully – Le Ballet royal de la naissance de Vénus (LWV 27)
John Blow – Venus and Adonis


Under the title of Illusions, the ever-enterprising Baroquestock presented their Baroquestock Festival 2024 at their accommodating home base of Heath Street Baptist Church in Hampstead. The festival included 8 events spread over two weeks, one of the highlights being two semi-staged performances of Lully’s and Blow’s takes on the story of Venus. A fascinating pairing that covered the birth of Venus and Blow’s French-inspired version of the later story of Venus and Adonis.

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HGO: Purcell – The Fairy Queen

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Purcell, The Fairy Queen
HGO, HGOAntiqua Orchestra, Seb Gillot, Eloise Lally
Jacksons Lane Arts Centre, Highgate, 27 April 2024


Purcell’s ‘semi-opera’ is a complicated piece to perform and/or stage. Originally composed for a version of Shakespeare’s MIdsummer’s Nights Dream it includes incidental instrumental pieces (First and Second Music as the audience gathered, Act Tunes between acts, short symphonies at the start of each act and various dances) together with five staged masques at the end of each act. The whole thing lasts about 5 hours. I watched the bemused audience at Glyndebourne in 2009 as they sat through around 45 minutes of spoken text before the first masque. The music and text of the masques only bear a metaphorical relationship to the Shakespear tale. This impressive production by HGO (formally known as Hampstead Garden Opera) added an additional layer of interpretation by setting the whole thing as “a variety of incarnations by a magical tale-spinner, a photographer studying love through her camera lens”.  They promised to take us “through the gamut of human emotions … as we are taken into the photographer’s dream space where anything is possible. In a brief spoken introduction, we were told that “mischiefs are at play”. Indeed they were.

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The Dragon of Wantley

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Frederick Lampe: The Dragon of Wantley
New Sussex Opera, Bellot Ensemble, Toby Purser
Theatre Royal, Winchester. 28 April 2024


As part of a short tour of south-east England, the New Sussex Opera brought their production of Frederick Lampe’s 1737 opera The Dragon of Wantley (1737) to the splendid surroundings of the Theatre Royal, Winchester. It is a fascinating piece, full of political and musical allusions that would probably have been obvious to the London audience of the time but may evade the average 21st-century audience. It is based on a dragon-slaying legend at Wharncliffe Crags (aka Wantley), north-west of Sheffield. It was the subject of a 1685 broadside ballad and Lampe’s 1737 popular opera to a text by Henry Carey. The dragon causes havoc to the local community until the local squire, Moore of Moore Hall is persuaded to deal with it,. He demands a night (and more) from the 16-year-old Margery. The jealousy of his mistress Mauxalinda provides much of the plot. Eventually, a fatal kick to the dragon’s most vulnerable spot (pictured above) solves the dragon problem, if not the girlfriend issue.

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Haydn: The Creation (with dance)

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Haydn: The Creation (with dance)
Scherzo Ensemble, Orpheus Sinfonia
Matthew O’Keeffe, conductor
Winchester College New Hall, 6th April 2024


Under their artistic director and conductor Matthew O’Keeffe and producer and general manager Stephanie Waldron, the Scherzo Ensemble (a charity since 2021) and their associated Longhope Opera provide training and development opportunities for emerging singers, including (commendably, paid) performances. One such was this imaginative realisation of Haydn’s oratorio, The Creation, in Winchester College’s New Hall (repeated the following day in St John’s, Smith Square). It was promoted as “a unique classical experience . . . where music seamlessly intertwines with dance, costume, and lighting, breathing new life into this timeless masterpiece . . . engaging the singers and instrumentalists in a captivating synergy of movement and sound alongside the dancers”. The performance showcased the emerging artists as soloists, choir, and dancers, together with the Orpheus Sinfonia chamber orchestra.

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Academy of Ancient Music. St Matthew Passion

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

St Matthew Passion
Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings
The Barbican, 29 March 2024


The Academy of Ancient Music (an Associate Ensemble at the Barbican Centre) is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its foundation by Christopher Hogwood. At a time when practically everybody else was concentrating on the St John Passion, in its anniversary year, they promoted a special performance of the Matthew Passion in the Barbican Hall, directed by their Music Director, Laurence Cummings. What was special about it was that they took the music back to its Leipzig roots, with a small orchestra (or, to be exact, two small orchestras) and a choir of just 8 (4+4) singers, all of whom contributed solos (of various importance), including, in Choir 1, the key roles of the Evangelist and Christus and the multi-character bass in Choir 2.

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Royal Festival Hall organ @ 70

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

The Royal Festival Hall organ @ 70
Saturday 23 March 2024


I have played organs dating back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, so the 70th birthday of an organ might not appear to be that big a deal. But the organ in London’s Royal Festival Hall made an important, if controversial, contribution to the post-war British organ world. Designed by Ralph Downes, it was based on the Organ Reform Movement (Orgelbewegung) which started in Germany in the 1920s (with the enthusiastic support of Albert Schweitzer) and sought to reflect the style and construction techniques of pre-19th century organs, notably, in the early days, with a focus on the more historically informed performance of Bach. A detailed history of the RFH organ can be found here. Below is a photo of Ralph Downes inside the RFH organ with one of the tuners from the organ builders Harrison & Harrison of Durham, from his book Baroque Tricks.

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Renaissance Singers: Voices from the Shadows

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Voices from the Shadows: Lux Aeterna
A Requiem from Puebla Cathedral
Lamentations and motets from Spain and the New World
The Renaissance Singers, David Allinson
St Pancras New Church. 10 February 2024

I have reviewed The Rensaissance Singers many times over the years, and they always impress. But this concert was really something special. Not only was the performance outstanding, but the choice of music, much of it being heard for the first time in the UK, was a brilliant choice by their inspirational musical director and conductor David Allinson. Their programme was based on the music of Spain and the New World in the build-up to Easter and the traditional Day of the Dead celebrations, with a musical focus on two principal churches, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Pueblo de los Angeles.

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The Telling: Into the Melting Pot

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Into the Melting Pot
The Telling
Anvil Arts – The Haymarket, Basingstoke. 6 February 2024

Into the Melting Pot is described as a “concert-play”. It involved an actor (Clara Perez) presenting the story (written by Clare Norburn) of a Jewish woman (Blanca) living in Spain in 1492 on the eve of the expulsion of the Jews. Bianca’s story is interspersed with music, performed by The Telling, which combined traditional Sephardic, Andalusian and Arabic songs with music from manuscripts from a couple of centuries earlier. It made for a fascinating evening combining history and music.

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Strozzi: Il primo libro de madrigali 1644

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Songs from a Beautiful Mouth
Barbara Strozzi: Il primo libro de madrigali (1644)
Solomon’s Knot
Wigmore Hall, 4 Fenruary 2024

Solomon’s Knot has built an impressive reputation for its innovative approach to performing early music. Singing from memory, they incorporate subtle and very personal theatrical elements into their performances, whether bringing to life the individual characters in a Bach Passion or, as in this performance, stringing together a sequence of 17th-century madrigals into a believable storyline. The focus of this concert was the 1664 Il primo libro de madrigali the first publication by the extraordinary Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677), a Venetian composer who had been a teenage pupil of Cavalli. The madrigals, in a variety of styles, set texts by her father, the poet Giulio Strozzi. He had nurtured her musical career from an early age, helped by the elevated social and cultural circles in which her family moved.

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The Mozartists. 1774 – A Retrospective

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

MOZART 250
1774 – A Retrospective
The Mozartists, Ian Page
18 January 2014

Zimmermann: Symphony in E minor
Gluck: “Par un père cruel” and “Jupiter, lance la foudre” from Iphigénie en Aulide
Anfossi: “Care pupile belle” from La finta giardiniera (UK première)
Salieri: “Sperar il caro porto” from La calamita de’ cuori (UK première)
Mozart: “Ergo interest… Quaere superna” K. 143
Mysliveček: “Pace e calma in questo segno” from Artaserse (UK première)
Mozart: Symphony No. 29 in A, K. 201
Gluck: Scene from Act 3 of Orphée et Euridice

The Mozartists‘ monumental MOZART 250 project has now reached its 10th year with an exploration of the year 1774 and the opening programme of their 2014 season. Continuing the pioneering work of Ian Page’s Classical Opera (which I first reviewed in 1998), the renamed Mozartists started MOZART 250 in 2015, the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s childhood visit to London. The project will follow his musical journey up to the year 2041, the 250th anniversary of his death.

As usual, the opening programme of the annual series places Mozart’s music in its wider musical context. Their programme “1774 – A Retrospective” gives an overview of the musical world 250 years ago when Mozart turned 18. Alongside two pieces by the young Mozart (“Ergo interest… Quaere superna” K143 and Symphony No. 29 in A, K201) were an extended scene from the Paris version of Gluck’s setting of the Orpheus legend and three UK premieres. The inclusion of premier performances is a subplot of the MOZART 250 series. Ian Page plans to include at least 100 such compositions during the project and after the first ten years, is already approaching 50.

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Bath Festival Orchestra

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Louise Farrenc, Berlioz, Poulenc
Bath Festival Orchestra
Peter Manning conductor, Dana Zemtsov viola
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 14 January 2024

Louise Farrenc: Overture No.1 in E minor
Berlioz: Harold en Italie
Poulenc: Sinfonietta

My usual reviewing is in early music, so it was a surprise to be invited to review a concert of Louise Ferrenc, Berlioz and Poulenc by the Bath Festival Orchestra. The orchestra and some of the music were not familiar to me, so it was a chance to broaden my knowledge of the repertoire and our regional orchestras. And I’m glad I did. It was a well-planned and performed all-French programme contrasting two compositions from the same year of 1834 with a later contribution from 1947.

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Laus Polyphoniae 2023, Antwerp

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Laus Polyphoniae 2023
Antwerp. Townscape – Soundscape
Antwerp
18 – 22 August 2023

As the name implies, Antwerp’s annual Laus Polyphoniae festival is devoted to the music of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a time when polyphony was paramount. Under the title of Antwerp: Townscape – Soundscape this year’s festival asked the question: “What did Antwerp sound like in the 15th and 16th centuries”? Alongside the shouting in the streets and markets and the dockland sounds, what music sounded in the churches and city palaces during Antwerp’s heyday?

Antwerp experienced an unprecedented economic and cultural boom in the late 15th and 16th centuries. The city was an international metropolis. Goods from all over the world were traded by merchant families who amassed large fortunes. Music was played in many places in the bustling city, from grand churches to private homes. The best singing masters were recruited to compose music for the liturgy. Publishers printed music for those who made music at home. Antwerp was also a centre of printing. Printers such as Phalesius and Plantin were renowned for the high quality of their music publications and surviving prints mean that music can still be performed. Several concerts during the festival were dedicated to these Antwerp music prints. 

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Laus Polyphoniae: International Young Artists Presentation, Antwerp

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

International Young Artists Presentation
Laus Polyphoniae 2023
AMUZ Antwerp, 19 August 2023

The International Young Artists Presentation (IYAP) is an annual coaching programme run by the Musica Impulscentrum (Musica Impulse Centre) and AMUZ (Flanders Festival Antwerp), during the Laus Polyphoniae festival (reviewed here). On the first Saturday of Laus Polyphoniae, after three days of coaching by Peter Van Heyghen and Raquel Andueza, six selected young vocal and instrumental early music ensembles present themselves to a public audience in the AMUZ concert hall, which includes potentially useful members of the wider music industry, including concert promoters – and reviewers. The focus of the coaching is on presentation, the story the ensembles want to tell, the structure of their programme and their interaction with the audience. The six ensembles chosen this year were Vestigium Ensemble, Contre le Temps, Liane Sadler & Elias Conrad, Duo Yamane, Rubens Rosa, and Apollo’s Cabinet.

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AAM: ‘Tis Nature’s Voice

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

‘Tis Nature’s Voice
Academy of Ancient Music
Bojan Čičić, Laurence Cummings
Barbican Hall, 30 June 2023


Mendelssohn: Hebrides Overture Op.26;
Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64
Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 ‘Pastoral’

The Academy of Ancient Music concluded its 2022/3 season, ‘Tis Nature’s Voice, with a venture into the early Romantic era, a suitable continuation of the theme of their opening concert, Hadyn’s The Seasons. They promised “thunderstorms, sea spray, nightingales and country dances and other beauties of nature as interpreted romantic style”. For those not used to music of the romantic era played on period instruments, this must have been a revelation. Indeed, it might also have been a revelation for some in the AAM as most of their repertoire stops before Mendelssohn and Beethoven.

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Tallis Scholars: Spem in alium

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

“Spem in alium”
The Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips
Cadogan Hall, 20 June 2023

Sheppard: Media vita
White: Regina caeli; Domine quis habitabit III
Byrd: Ad Dominum cum tribularer
Taverner: Magnificat a 6
Tallis: Spem in alium

The last time I reviewed The Tallis Scholars at the Cadogan Hall was in June 2022 when they presented a programme with the title of Spem in alium. They have now returned to Cadogan Hall for a two-night sell-out concert with the title of … er … Spem in alium! In contrast to last year’s all-Tallis programme, this time said Spem in alium concluded a concert of large-scale English vocal pieces from Tallis’s time by Sheppard, White, Tavener and Byrd, whose 400th anniversary is this year.

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OAE: Mozart in Basingstoke

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

“Mozart in Basingstoke“
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Kati Debretzeni, Luise Buchberger
The Anvil, Basingstoke. 20 May 2023


CPE Bach Symphony in F
Mozart Symphony no 34
JC Bach Sinfonia concertante for violin and cello
CPE Bach Symphony in B minor
Mozart Music from Don Giovanni
Gluck Dance of the Furies

A short tour of related programmes saw the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment visit Birmingham Town Hall, London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, and Basingstoke’s Anvil. Alongside the Mozart Symphony No 34, the CPE Bach Symphony in F, and the JC Bach Sinfonia concertante for violin and cello, common to all three, the Basingstoke concert added CPE Bach’s Symphony in B minor, extracts from Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Gluck’s Dance of the Furies. Travel was the key to the choice of composers – they all left their hometowns to develop their own musical language. They also contributed in various ways to the musical developments during the extended transition into the classical era.

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La Grande Chapelle

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

London Festival of Baroque Music
‘Music for the Planet King’
La Grande Chapelle
St John’s, Smith Square, 12 May 2023


The London Festival of Baroque Music has been an annual fixture at St John’s, Smith Square for several decades, including its earlier time as the Lufthansa Festival. It is good that it has survived the Covid years and the changes at that venue, not least the takeover by the Southbank Sinfonia. Rather than the independent management team that has been behind the festival in the past, it now seems as though it is being run by the new team at St John’s, Smith Square itself. Perhaps inevitably, given the changes and the current situation in UK arts, there was a reduction in the events on offer for this year’s offering, but the programme did include some of the international contributions that have been a feature of the festival over the years.

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Academy of Ancient Music: Il Trionfo del Tempo

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

’Tis Nature’s Voice
Handel: Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (HWV46a)
Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings 
Milton Court, 11 May 2023


Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno was Handel’s first oratorio. It was composed a year after his 1707 arrival in Italy after three years in Hamburg where he exchanged his early career as a cathedral organist (in Halle) to that of a fledgling opera composer. He quickly fell in with an influential group of patrons in Rome, including Cardinal Pamphili who provided the libretto for Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno. Usually translated as The Triumph of Time and Disillusion, the alternative option of Time and Enlightenment was used for this excellent performance from the Academy of Ancient Music.

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The Chevalier

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

The Chevalier
The life and music of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Concert Threatre Works
St Martin-in-the-Fields. 21 March 2023


The composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799) has been having a well-deserved resurgence in recent years with several performances of his music, generally from period instrument orchestras. This “unique piece of concert theatre” from Bill Barclay’s Concert Theatre Works at St Martin-in-the-Fields contrasted episodes from Bologne’s eventful life with extracts from his music from the London Philharmonic Orchestra, directed by Matthew Kofi Waldren, with Braimah Kanneh-Mason as the violin soloist. The very sparse programme note was nothing more than an advertising flyer (view here) and gave precious little information. It did bill it as a “concert version”, although it looked pretty well staged to me. I gather it was a reduced version of a show that was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, premiered and toured in the USA and was first performed in the UK at the Snape Maltings on 19 March.

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OAE: Bach B Minor Mass

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Bach in Excelsis
Bach B Minor Mass
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Václav Luks
Royal Festival Hall, 19 March 2023


Making his debut with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Royal Festival Hall, Czech harpsichordist Vaclav Luks presented what was advertised as a “chamber interpretation” of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, “based on his study of the performance practices of recent decades”. Vaclav Luks is best known for his orchestra and vocal consort Collegium 1704 and his championing of the Czech composer Zelenka. I have only heard him conduct his orchestra once before, in Leipzig in 2015 when Collegium 1704 was the orchestra in residence (whole festival review here). His excitement at this RFH booking was evident, not least bringing his own score onto the podium several minutes before the start (a ritual usually undertaken by an underling), peeping out from the stage entrance and snapping a mobile phone photo of the audience. Of course, a conductor only sees the audience as he walks on and at the end, so I can fully understand his wanting a preliminary peep.

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This is my Body – Membra Jesu Nostri

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

This is my body
Buxtehude Membra Jesu Nostri
Figure Ensemble, Frederick Waxman
The Swiss Church, Covent Garden. 15th March 2023


The “forward-thinking historical performance ensemble” Figure gave their impressive thought-provoking interpretation of Dieterich Buxtehude’s 1680 sequence of seven cantata meditations on the body of Christ, Membra Jesu Nostri. They described this as “an immersive, surround-sound performance” which allows the audience to “experience every emotion up close and stand within the Passion scene – in the body of the sound”. The sparse white-washed of the acoustically lively Swiss Church provided the perfect venue. Apart from a few chairs around the edge of the empty space, the audience stood in a space surrounded by four stages and a central platform. The seven instrumentalists were in the apse at the business end of the church. The five singers moved around the space, singing from the five platforms in various groupings. On one side wall was a projection of the texts in English while the other showed evolving drawings based on a statue that survives from Buxtehude’s time in Lübeck’s Marienkirche.

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Hail! Bright Cecilia

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

‘Tis Nature’s Voice
Hail! Bright Cecilia
Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings
Milton Court. 9 March 2023

Matthew Locke etc. Suite from The Tempest
including Pelham Humfrey’s Masque of Neptune
Henry Purcell. Ode to Saint Cecilia: Hail! Bright Cecilia Z.328

Under the banner of the Academy of Ancient Music’s current concert series, ‘Tis nature’s voice! Laurence Cummings led them in a tour of English mid to late-17th-century music with a comparison between the music written by several composers for a 1674 production of The Tempest and the largest of Purcell’s Odes to Saint Cecilia, composed for the 1692 Saint Cecilia’s Day celebrations in Stationers’ Hall, a venue that still exists.

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Angela Hicks: channelling Francesca Cuzzoni

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Channelling Francesca Cuzzoni
Angela Hicks, Opera Settecento
London Handel Festival
The Charterhouse, 9 March 2023


The first of the London Handel Festival’s ‘Lunchtime in the City’ concerts featured soprano Angela Hicks and Opera Settecento in a concert following the career of the famous 18th-century soprano Francesca Cuzzoni (1696-1778), one of Handel’s most famous singers. She was born in northern Italy and, after her debut in 1714, spent eight years performing in Florence, Milan, Bologna, Turin), Padua and Venice before her first visit to London in 1722. These early Italian years were represented by the opening showpiece aria Fra catene ognor penando from Vivaldi’s Scanderbeg (RV 732) and gentler Lasciatemi in pace from Orlandini’s 1721 Nerone.

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Bach: Six Motets

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Bach : Six Motets
BBC Singers, Academy of Ancient Music, Peter Dijkstra
Milton Court Concert Hall, 3 March 2023

This BBC Singers’ Milton Court performance of the traditional grouping of Bach’s Six Motets (BWV 225–230) was imaginative and thoughtful, notably in two specific aspects. With one exception, they were sung in reverse order of BWV numbers, that exception being Komm, Jesu, komm (BWV 229) which was sung in the middle of the cantata Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl. The concert will be broadcast on Wednesday 22 March on BBC Radio 3.

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Alexander’s Feast 

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Handel: Alexander’s Feast 
London Handel Orchestra & Singers, Laurence Cummings 
London Handel Festival
St George’s, Hanover Square. 23 February 2023


Handel’s birthday seemed a particularly appropriate day to open the 2023 London Handel Festival and to hear his ode for St Cecilia’s Day Alexander’s Feast. The libretto is based on John Dryden’s 1697 Alexander’s Feast, or the Power of Music, written to for Saint Cecilia’s Day. It recounts the story of a banquet held by Alexander the Great and his mistress, Thaïs, in the captured Persian city of Persepolis, during which the musician Timotheus sings and plays his lyre, arousing various moods in Alexander. The power of music takes a turn for the worse when Alexander is incited to destroy Persepolis in revenge for his dead Greek soldiers.   

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Alamire: Anne Boleyn’s Songbook

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Anne Boleyn’s Songbook
Alamire, David Skinner
St Martin-in-the-Fields, 17 February 2023


This was a welcome return of Alamire’s ‘Anne Boleyn’s Songbook’, following their 2015 recording and Wannamaker Playhouse performance. The songbook is a manuscript in the Royal College of Music that seems to have belonged to Anne Boleyn. It includes the inscription ‘Mistres ABolleyne nowe this’ the ‘Mistres’ suggesting that the songbook was started before she became Queen in 1533. ‘Nowe thus’ is her father’s motto.

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This programme combines pieces from the Songbook with readings from what I assume were the published love letters between Anne and Henry VIII which somehow or other ended up in the Vatican Library.

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La Serenissima: Vivaldi Double Concertos

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Vivaldi Double Concertos
La Serenissima, Adrian Chandler 
St Martin-in-the-Fields. 11 February 2023


In what was described as “a carnival of double concertos from 18th century Venice – music of fantasy, flamboyance and virtuosity to the power of two”, La Serenissima and its “charismatic founder” Adrian Chandler bought its “no-holds-barred flamboyance” to St Martin-in-the-Fields. It was a reminder of St Martin’s endless ‘Vivaldi by Candlelight’ tourist concerts, although their concert promotions are rather more elevated these days. As the publicity blurb enthused: “Baroque Venice was a city of doubles – of shimmering reflections and masked revellers. And since nothing succeeds like excess, when Vivaldi wrote concertos for two soloists, the results were spectacular: a carnival of colour, illusion and sparkling sonic conversation”.

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Secret Byrd: An Immersive Staged Mass

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Secret Byrd
An Immersive Staged Mass on the 400th anniversary of William Byrd
The Gesualdo Six with Fretwork
Bill Barclay, Concert Theatre Works
St Martin-in-the-Fields crypt, 27 January 2023


In celebration of the 400th anniversary of William Byrd, The Gesualdo Six combined with the viol consort Fretwork for a theatrical recreation of a secret Catholic Mass with Byrd’s Mass for 5 Voices performed, as he intended, for a secret act of private domestic worship. It was directed by Bill Barclay, produced by Concert Theatre Works, and supported by The Continuo Foundation. The premiere performances were held in the splendidly restored crypt of London’s St Martin in the Fields.

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OAE: Saint-Saëns

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Saint-Saëns: Sounds for the End of a Century
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Maxim Emelyanychev, conductor 
Steven Isserlis, cello, James McVinnie, organ 
Royal Festival Hall, 26 January 2023

Phaéton symphonic poem, Op.39
Cello Concerto No.1 in A minor, Op.33
Danse macabre
Symphony No.3 in C minor (‘Organ Symphony’)

The first stop on the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s 2023 ‘grand tour’ from London to Mongolia was the Paris of organist and composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921). Towards the end of the 19th century, French music looked to create its own style, breaking away from the German musical influence of the time. Saint-Saëns, although retaining the influence of Franz Liszt, was part of this but he also looked back into the past, notably the music of Rameau (1683–1764) as well as acknowledging the music of the much younger Ravel. This concert of compositions from the early 1870s to the mid-1880s paired the well-known Danse macabre and the 3rd (Organ) Symphony following the lesser-known (to me, at least) Cello Concerto and the symphonic poem Phaéton.

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