The Triumph of Peace

We live our lives in permanent flux: season follows season,
boom succeeds slump, and every war eventually ends in thankful
peace, however temporary. This year’s Lufthansa Festival
celebrates those precious moments in history when peace has
prevailed, when kings and commoners have put aside arms for
music and dancing, and when composers have found themselves
turning their talents to joyful operas, carefree cantatas and
euphoric Te Deums.

The grandest celebrations can be heard in our first and last
concerts: we open with The English Concert and soprano Carolyn
Sampson bringing us Rameau’s typically tuneful response to an
important European treaty, and end in Westminster Abbey for the
famous music Handel wrote to mark the same event.

Elsewhere, Ensemble Pierre Robert offers two French Baroque
rarities occasioned by pauses in Louis XIV’s many wars, Maria
Cristina Kiehr and Concerto Soave summon some biblical and
devotional meditations on peace and conflict, two redoubtable
musical soldiers are remembered in concerts by Labyrinto and
Musica ad Rhenum, and more troubled times are evoked in
warlike programmes by Concordia and The Wallfisch Band, a
brand-new ensemble in a brand-new Festival venue.

Also this year Philippe Herreweghe, one of the world’s most
distinguished Bach interpreters, makes his long-overdue Festival
debut in a programme of seasonal cantatas, and there is a rare
chance to hear one of Handel’s sparky early Italian operas in an
elegant semi-staging by another Festival debutant, Ensemble San
Felice. Last but not least, we are delighted to welcome for the first
time BBC Radio 3’s Discovering Music programme, for what is
sure to be a fascinating exploration of the physical and emotional
conflicts of Monteverdi’s extraordinary scena, Il Combattimento
di Tancredi e Clorinda.

I hope you will find plenty to enjoy in this year’s Festival; it has
been a huge pleasure putting together a mix that continues our
tradition of recognising the best in Baroque talent from home and
abroad. How better to celebrate the harmony of nations?

Lindsay Kemp, Artistic Director