Concert Reviews

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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Biber: Rosary Sonatas

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Biber: Rosary Sonatas
Daniel Pioro, violin, James McVinnie, organ, harpsichord
Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer & Purcell Room
Sunday 22 January 2023

Described as “a day-long deep dive into the world of Biber’s virtuosic Rosary Sonatas, with performances and talks stretching from sunrise to sunset”, this event divided the three sections of Biber’s Rosary (or Mystery) Sonatas into separate concerts, the first starting at 8 in the morning, one at midday, and then at 4 in the afternoon. The three concerts were interspersed with two pairs of “Deep Dive” talks – “deep dive” being the phrase of the moment as far as the Southbank is concerned, with more references in the January programme booklet, although it is a new one to me. This event seems to be part of the Southbank’s process of post-Covid rethinking, trying to rebuild audiences and attract younger people.

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Les Arts Florissants: Charpentier at Christmas

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Charpentier at Christmas
Les Arts Florissants, William Christie
The Barbican, 19 December 2022

Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Antiennes ‘O’ de l’Avent, H36–43 and Noëls pour les instruments, H531 and 534
Sur la Naissance de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, H482
In nativitatem Domini Canticum, H416

photo: Mark Allan / Barbican

A delightful alternative to the endless Messiahs and carol events in the lead-up to Christmas came with the visit of Les Arts Florissant to The Barbican for their concert, Charpentier at Christmas. Despite the decades of work by William Christie and the regular visits of his Les Arts Florissant to The Barbican, the French baroque repertoire is still not as well known as it deserves to be. This was a wonderful chance to absorb the distinctive sound of French music, singers, and orchestral colours.

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London International Festival of Early Music

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

London International Festival of Early Music
November 2022
Now available to view on Marquee TV

For those who, like me, were not able to get to this November’s London International Festival of Early Music (LIFEM), the five concerts from St Michael & All Angels Church, Blackheath can now be viewed on Marquee TV under the heading LIFEM 2020. The link is here. You can use the code LIFEM50 to sign up for a free seven-day trial, as well as 50% off an annual Marquee TV subscription. Concerts from the 2021 festival are also available to view.

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Bach and Friends: The Orgelbüchlein Project Completed

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Bach and Friends
The Orgelbüchlein Project Completed
A weekend of concerts featuring the complete Orgelbüchlein
24/25th September 2022


One of the most important musical innovations in recent years has been the Orgelbüchlein Project. Bach’s tiny Orgelbüchlein has the titles of 164 Lutheran chorales noted on individual pages, covering the whole of the church year. But, for reasons that are not entirely understood, he only completed 46 of them, most composed when he was organist to the Court in Weimar. The Orgelbüchlein Project was set up to commission 118 new pieces to complete the remaining chorales, the whole curated by William Whitehead. The project reached its conclusion over the weekend of 24/25 September with a complete performance of all of Bach’s Orgelbüchlein chorale preludes together with all the new commissions. The complete performance (promoted by the Royal College of Organists) took place in nine concerts in seven churches over two days with the music played by nine organists.

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BBC Proms: OAE – Bach Mass in B Minor

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

BBC Proms
Bach: Mass in B Minor
Orchestra & Choir of the Age of Enlightenment, John Butt
Royal Albert Hall, 29 March 2022

How should an atheist approach Bach? And, in particular, his Mass in B minor, arguably his finest work and one that, to him, seemed to sum up a lifetime of music dedicated to Soli Deo Gloria (Glory to God alone) – the meaning of the S.D.G that Bach appended to all his sacred works?

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BBC Proms: Nathan Laube, organ

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

BBC Proms
Nathan Laube, organ
Royal Albert Hall, 28 August 2022

Wagner: Grand March
Franck: Grande pièce symphonique
Alkan: Scherzando from 11 Grands préludes
Liszt: Piano Sonata in B minor

Yet again, the BBC Proms powers-that-be have chosen the most inappropriate time for an organ recital – a Sunday morning – when most organists are attempting to earn their keep. Although working organists can listen on catch-up, the sparse audience (sparse for the Royal Albert Hall that is, but sadly not for the average organ recital) reflected this strange programme planning. But there was also something about the programming of the concert itself which raised questions about the BBC’s approach to The Proms, which this year seems to be seen as a populist extension of Radio 2, rather than Radio 3.

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Laus Polyphoniae – Polyphony of life

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Laus Polyphoniae – Polyphony of life
Antwerp
19-23 August 2022

After a three-year Covid-induced hiatus when Laus Polyphoniae ran a much-reduced series of live and online events, the 2022 Festival restored the postponed 2020 edition, under the title Polyphony of life. As usual, the festival was run by AMUZ (Flanders Festival Antwerp) in conjunction with the Alamire Foundation, the study centre for music in the Low Countries and part of KU (Katholieke Universiteit) Leuven. As the name implies, Laus Polyphoniae is devoted to the music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance when polyphony was paramount.

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International Young Artists Presentation (IYAP)

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

International Young Artists Presentation
Laus Polyphoniae 2022
AMUZ, Amtwerp. 20 August 2022

The International Young Artist’s Presentation (IYAP) is an annual coaching and presentation scheme promoted by Musica and AMUZ (Flanders Festival Antwerp). It is intended for young ensembles playing historical instruments. They are invited to present innovative and original programmes and to experiment with aspects of presentation and performance. The selected groups are given three days of coaching (on this occasion, led this year by Raquel Andueza and Robert Hollingworth, which is followed by a day of public concerts at the start of the Laus Polyphoniae festival, reviewed here.

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Ensemble Molière: Good Soup

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Good Soup
Molière 400th anniversary project
Ensemble Molière
Sands Music Room 29 July 2022
Available online until 4 August 2022

“I live on good soup, not on fine words”
Les Femmes Savants

Ensemble Molière describes Good Soup (which celebrates the 400th anniversary of Molière’s birth) as “an exploration of Molière’s world, both through his words and the music of his time … It investigates Molière’s form of bourgeois comedy and asks what these narrative structures still have to offer”. The show brings together “baroque music, absurdist theatre, slapstick and puppetry” and “takes a critical look at our own relationship with catastrophe and the desire to escape into spectacle and happiness”. It was performed in the magical Sands Music Room in Rotherhithe, a tiny theatre original built as a film set for Sands Films. but retained for use as a delightfully quirky and intimate performance space.

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Anna Lapwood: organ recital

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Anna Lapwood, organ recital
Salisbury Cathedral. 23 July 2022

Anna Lapwood is not just a breath of fresh air in the rather stuffy male-dominated world of organ music, but a mighty rushing wind, challenging the orthodoxies of the organ world and fighting, in particular, to support girls and young women in music. Unusually, she only started playing the organ aged 16 (and then rather reluctantly), but by the time she was 21 had completed an Organ Scholarship in Magdelen College, Oxford (the first female to hold that post in the history of the College), and had been appointed as the youngest ever Director of Music at an Oxbridge College. She has a prolific and well-promoted social-media presence, and an enormous range of achievements to date, as evidenced by the lengthy introduction to her recital in Salisbury Cathedral. This was the first time I had heard her play live.

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York Early Music International Young Artists Competition 2022

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

York Early Music International Young Artists Competition
National Centre for Early Music
St. Margaret’s Church, Walmgate, York. 16 July 2022

After a Covid-induced hiatus in 2021, the biennial York Early Music International Young Artists Competition returned to the impressively restored medieval church of St. Margaret’s, Walmgate, York, now the National Centre for Early Music. The detailed rules and other information can be seen here, but briefly, competitors must perform in an ensemble with at least 3 members with an average age of up to 33 years and an individual age of 37 or less. These ages are one year higher than usual and only apply to the 2022 competition because of the cancelled 2021 competition. The repertory must be from the middle ages to the 19th century, and performers must use historically informed techniques, instruments and stylistic conventions.

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Biber: Mystery Sonatas

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Spitalfields Music
Biber: Mystery Sonatas
Aisha Orazbayeva, violin
Hoxton Hall, 8 July 2022


This concert, part of the Spitalfield Music summer festival, featured Biber’s extraordinary Mystery (or Rosary) Sonatas (c1676). Unusually, it was spread over two separately bookable concerts, which were both repeated two days later. Biber’s extraordinary Mystery (or Rosary) Sonatas is a set of 15 Sonatas of varied forms for violin and continuo and a concluding Passacaglia for solo violin. Each Sonata has a title linked to the Mysteries of the Rosary, reflecting a medieval processional practice of 15 meditational focus points in a church. It is thought that Biber’s music was intended for such a meditation. The 15 Sonatas are divided into three groups of five, under the headings of the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries.

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AAM. New Worlds: Genius – Mozart

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

New Worlds: Genius – Mozart
Academy of Ancient Music
Laurence Cummings
Ya-Fei Chuang, Robert Levin
Barbican, 1 July 2022


This concert saw the conclusion of the Academy of Ancient Music‘s New Worlds series, and the finale to Laurence Cummings’ first season as the AAM Music Director. Billed as “Grandeur, poetry and pure, unstoppable genius”, this imaginative programme contrasted Mozart’s Jupiter symphony with two little-known Mozart works, the Ballet sequence from Idomeneo (K367), and the Piano Concerto á3 (K242). The programme booklet for the concert can be accessed here.

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The Mathematical Genius of Bach

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Spitalfields Festival
The Mathematical Genius of Bach
Goldberg Variations
James Sparks, City of London Sinfonia, Alexandra Wood 
Christ Church Spitalfields, 30 June 2022


The opening concert of the Spitalfields Music Festival referred back to The Spitalfields Mathematical Society, a club that met from 1717 in taverns around Christ Church Spitalfields. Its aim was to give “the public at large an opportunity of increasing their knowledge, on terms so easy, as to be within the reach of every individual, who has a taste to cultivate, or curiosity to gratify.” It educated the working-class men of the district, who included “weavers, brewers, braziers, bakers, bricklayers”. It merged into the Royal Astronomical Society in the 1840s. The Festival continued the Society’s role of educating with a talk by James Sparks (University of Oxford) on the mathematical genius of Bach, illustrated with a performance of the Goldberg Variations, while the audience had access to interactive maths puzzles.

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Chineke! Voices: Vicente Lusitano

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

The music of Vicente Lusitano
Chineke! Voices, Joseph McHardy
St Martin-in-the-Fields, 18 June 2022

Vicente Lusitano (c1520-c1561)
Beati omnes qui timent Dominum; Hic est Michael Archangelus;
Emendemus; Ave Spes Nostra; O Beata Maria; Regina Coeli;
Quid Montes, Musae?; Salve Regina; Inviolata, integra et casta es

The latest incarnation of the Chineke! Foundation (whose aim is to champion change and celebrate diversity in classical music) is Chineke! Voices, a group of professional black and ethnically diverse singers whose debut concert at their base at St Martin-in-the-Fields was dedicated to the music of the 17th-century Portuguese composer Vicente Lusitano (c1520-c1561). Lusitano was probably the first European composer of African descent to be published in Europe (Liber primus epigramatum 1551). He was a key musical figure although, helped by a bit of fake news by another musician, Vicentino, who lost a feud with Lusitano over a complex argument on musical theory. he has largely been written out of musical history. Lusitano’s music has been researched and edited for this concert by the conductor Joseph McHardy.

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Music of Consolation: Bach, Schütz & Schein

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Music of Consolation
Bach, Schütz & Schein
Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner
St Martin-in-the-Fields, 16 June 2022

Two days before their St Martin-in-the-Fields concert, the culmination of a seven-concert European tour, the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists performed this programme in the Roman Odeon of Herodes Atticus on side of the Acropolis hill in Athens. The Romans in Britain buried at least one of their dead on the site of St Martin-in-the-Fields and, if they were around today, might recognize the Corinthian columns of the neo-Renaissance facade of James Gibb’s 1720s church, although they would be surprised at the neo-Gothic spire that he sat on top of it. The music, in contrast, was entirely Baroque from three composers born 100 years apart.

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