Kinga Ujszászi

London Festival of Baroque Music

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

“Immortal Harmony”
London Festival of Baroque Music
Arcangelo, Spiritato, Les Demoiselles Couperin,
Choir of New College Oxford, Ensemble Marguerite Louse Versailes,
Smith Square Hall, 1, 7 & 8 November 2025

The London Festival of Baroque Music was founded in 1984 as the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music by conductor Ivor Bolton and musicologist Tess Knighton, its Artistic Director until 1997. Kate Bolton was Artistic Director from 1997 to 2007, succeeded by Lindsay Kemp. The first concerts took place at St James’s, Piccadilly, before settling into the fine Baroque church of St John’s, Smith Square, now renamed variously as Smith Square Hall or Sinfonia Smith Square. This year’s festival was given the overall title of “Immortal Harmony”. I attended the first and final three concerts, featuring Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, Bach’s Leipzig legacy, vocal music by Couperin, and ceremonial music by Purcell, Lalande, and Charpentier.

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Repicco: Assassini, Assassinati

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson ~ Leave a comment

Assassini, Assassinati
Repicco
Ambronay Editions, AMY308. 60’43

Assassini, assassinati - Repicco

Works by Albertini, Marini, Castaldi, Pandolfi Mealli, Stradella,

I have written before of the excellent work that eeemerging and the Cultural Centre Ambronay do to support young musicians. One such is the arrangement by which the top two ensembles in each of the eeemerging rounds are offered a recording through the Collection Jeunes Ensembles of Ambronay Editions. A recent example is this CD, Assassins, Assassinations, the debut recording of the two-person ensemble Repicco, (violinist Kinga Ujszàszi and Jadran Duncumb, theorbo). The rather grizzly link between the Italian Baroque composers represented in the recording is that they were all either murdered or murderers. This is a genre of recording that, I trust, has a limited range, particularly when it comes to present days composers. It certainly says something about political and social life in Italy during the period known as the ‘Iron century’, a time dominated by powerful families and warring cities.  Continue reading →

Spiritato! Guts and Glory

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson ~ Leave a comment

Guts and Glory
Spiritato!
St John’s Smith Square. 15 April 2016
The young period instrument group Spiritato! is one of the most exciting arrivals on the UK early music scene. Their most recent and most ambitious project is Guts and Glory, exploring the relatively little-known repertoire of military and art music for natural trumpets, which they contrasted with more reflective (or, at least, quieter) works by the same composers for strings and continuo. A key feature of this Spritiato 2_crop.jpgperformance was that the trumpets were not only valveless, but also had no finger holes to assist in the tuning of notes.  These finger holes (or ‘venting’ or ‘nodal’ holes) are in any case a relatively recent innovation, and may not have been used in early natural trumpets, at least not for the purpose to which they are now used; to make the tuning of the higher harmonic notes easier. Indeed, it seems that the original holes found in some instruments were actually place at the anti-node, rather than the node, and were therefore intended to silence the tricky notes altogether, rather than to try to bring them into tune.

Not surprisingly, it was the distinctive tuning that results from valveless trumpets was a major feature of the evening. When played in their lower Continue reading →