York Early Music Festival
3-11 July 2026

The 2026 York Early Music Festival celebrated its 50th birthday with a week of performances from Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers to Bruhn’s/Keiser’s St Mark Passion, including a commemoration of the 400th anniversary of John Dowland. I was there to review the closing event of the festival, the two days of informal concerts and the final of the biennial York Early Music International Young Artists Competition (reviewed here), but managed to take in a few of the festival events.

By far the most important of the festival concerts I attended was the final one, on 10 July in The Quire of York Minster, when Solomon’s Knot presented their version of a St Mark Passion. This was composed in Hamburg around 1700, copied out by Bach in the early 1710s, and revived ot exactly 400 years ago in Leipzig on Good Friday 1726. This is the version performed, although Bach also adapted it for a performance in the mid-1740s. Originally billed in the Festival as by Bruhns (not the earlier North German organist, but the music director at Hamburg Cathedral), but more usually referred to as by Kaiser, the far more likely composer. The link to the programme notes for this, and other festival concerts, can be found here. Whoever composed it, it is a remarkable piece, with fascinating insights into the Passion tradition in North Germany during Bach’s youth. It also raised interesting aspects of performance in a huge space like York Minster.

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