Hampstead Baroque Festival: Bratwurst, Beer & Bach
L’Istante, Pawel Siwczak
Heath Street Baptist Church, Hampstead, 3 April 2016.

Bach: Orchestral Suite 1, Brandenburg Concerto 4, Concerto for violin and oboe, Cantata 42 ‘Am Abend aber desselbigen Sabbaths’.

A number of churches are accepting the inevitable reduction in congregations and opening their buildings to wider community use. Heath Street Baptist Church, prominently positioned in the middle of Hampstead, is one such, reducing their services to Sunday mornings, but enabling a wide variety of activities during the rest of the week, including frequent lunchtime and evening concerts and, on this occasion, a complete weekend devoted to the ‘Hampstead Baroque Festival’. After four earlier events of English, Italian and French music, all accompanied by food, the weekend concluded with a Sunday evening concert devoted to ‘Bratwurst, Beer & Bach’, given by the newly-formed group L’Istante (not, incidentally, the only early music group to adopt that name *and now renamed as Isante) directed by harpsichordist/conductor Pawel Siwzak.

Their ambitious programme of Bach opened with a stirring account of Bach’s first Orchestral Suite, strong on rhythmic pulse and Continue reading →