Proms: Purcell’s The Fairy Queen

08/08/202411/08/2024 ~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

BBC Proms: Purcell’s The Fairy Queen
Les Arts Florissants, Le Jardin des Voix, Compagnie KÄFIG
Paul Agnew, conductor, Mourad Merzouki, choreographer/stage director
Royal Albert Hall, 6 August 2024

There are many ways to perform Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, but this must rank as one of the most inventive and entertaining. I have seen many versions of this musical extravaganza, including a bottom-numbingly-long version that attempted to recreate the original 1692 production when Purcell’s five masques were interspersed between sections of the spoken play, which was an appallingly turgid adaptation of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Composed to celebrate the anniversary of William and Mary’s wedding, Purcell’s five masques bear a marginal and rather metaphysical and academic relationship (explained here) to Shakespeare’s play, the revised version concentrating on the dream-like world of the fairies. The five masques are all introduced by Titania or Oberon, who may well have been played by eight or nine-year-old children, seemingly joined by a wider cast of young children.

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A Baroque Odyssey: Les Arts Florissants @ 40

14/12/2019 ~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

A Baroque Odyssey
40 Years of Les Arts Florissants
William Christie, Paul Agnew
The Barbican, 8 December 2019

Eavesdropping on a birthday party can be fun, even if you sometimes wish it wouldn’t go on for quite so long. This one did, apparently finishing around 10.30, although I had to leave before 10 to catch my last train home. In celebration of their proud 40-year history, Les Arts Florissants are touring a mixed programme of Handel, Purcell and the French composers Charpentier, d’Ambruis, Lully and Rameau. Under their founding Director William Christie and Associate Musical Director Paul Agnew, five soloists, a large orchestra and 23-strong choir demonstrated just why they have been so important over the past 40 years. Like any good party, it is perhaps best to leave what happened in the room, in the room, so I will not attempt a critical review – which is probably just as well because I am not sure that I could think of anything critical to say. Continue reading →

Festival d’Ambronay

16/10/201725/10/2017 ~ Andrew Benson-Wilson ~ 2 Comments

Festival d’Ambronay
28 September to 1 October 2017

Since 1980, when it was founded, the Ambronay Festival has been a key part of the early music world. In recent years, the activities of the Ambronay Cultural Encounter Centre (based in the former Abbey buildings adjoining the magnificent Romanesque Abbey church) have expanded, and now includes impressive provision for young musicians. For the past couple of years, Ambronay has been part of the European Union supported eeemerging project (Emerging European Ensembles), an EU-wide cooperation project dedicated to the selection, training and promotion of young early music ensembles. The last of the four long weekends of the annual Ambronay Festival (which runs annually from mid-September to early October) is devoted to these eeemerging ensembles, but several of them also performed in the previous three weekends of the Festival. The theme for this year’s Festival was ‘Vibrations: Souffle’, roughly translating as Vibrations: Breathing, part of a triptych of festivals under the same Vibrations theme.

I attended the penultimate weekend of the Festival, from Thursday 28 September to Sunday 1 October 2017. The first two day’s concerts took place in Lyon, about 60km south-west of Ambronay.
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