The Choir of Westminster Abbey	James O’Donnell

This year’s Festival ends where it began, with music written to celebrate the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. While Paris was listening to Rameau, the highlight of London’s festivities was the grand fireworks display for which Handel’s superb orchestral suite was written. Thirty-six years earlier he had also been on hand when music was needed to mark the Treaty of Utrecht and the end of another war; his grand Te Deum & Jubilate was heard at a thanksgiving service in St. Paul’s Cathedral. The Lufthansa Festival’s annual visit to Westminster Abbey also observes the 300th anniversary of the death of one of the building’s greatest organists, John Blow, with successor James O’Donnell conducting the Abbey Choir in imposing anthems written for three state occasions: the opening of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Treaty of Ryswick, and the coronation of James II.

‘The choir of Westminster Abbey is currently in superbly virile and integrated form under O’Donnell … ’ The Independent

Tickets £30*, £24, £18, £12, £5 (no view)
*(very limited availability)