2012 Festival Newsletter
Issue 1, September 2011
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A visit by one of the world's great names in early music, the Catalan bass viol virtuoso Jordi Savall (pictured), will be one of the main attractions at the 2012 Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music. Together with his superb orchestra Le Concert des Nations, hand-picked from leading players all over Europe, he will be kick-starting our festival theme of international harmony and friendly rivalry with a celebration of the cross-fertilisation of national styles embodied in the music of composers such as Lully, Handel, Corelli, Avison and Telemann.
The 2012 Lufthansa Festival takes place over 9 days at St John's, Smith Square, and Westminster Abbey. In addition to Jordi Savall's concert, which opens the Festival on 18 May, it also includes:
- The UK concert premiere of Vivaldi's brilliant opera, L'Olimpiade, given by the award-winning orchestra La Serenissima with an exciting cast conducted by Adrian Chandler (19 May).
- Bach's rarely-heard dramatic cantata The Contest of Phoebus and Pan performed by another award-winning ensemble, the Dunedin Consort, directed by John Butt (22 May).
- Handel in the Abbey. The Choir of Westminster Abbey and St James's Baroque, conducted by James O'Donnell, are joined by soprano Sophie Daneman and tenor Thomas Hobbs in the colourful Ode for St Cecilia's Day and the elegant Latin motet Silete venti. (24 May)
- More Handel as sopranos Rosemary Joshua and Mhairi Lawson vie for supremacy in a celebration of the two 'Rival Queens' of Handel's London opera performances, Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni. (26 May)
- Visits by two highly acclaimed chamber ensembles - Musica ad Rhenum from Holland (20 May) and L'Harmonie Universelle from Germany (23 May) - who explore the music of two great unifying figures in European Baroque music: François Couperin and Georg Muffat.
- And more!
Booking opens 1 February 2012
Full details of the Festival programme will be available on-line and in print in January. In the meantime you can look forward to regular newsletter updates.
For your further interest...
The English Concert and celebrated tenor Ian Bostridge (pictured) begin the new season together at Wigmore Hall on September 26 & 28. Scarlatti's cantata 'Dall'oscura magion dell'arse Dite' and Handel's motet 'Silete venti' provide brilliant vocal foils to Vivaldi's oboe concerto in D minor with Katharina Spreckelsen, a sonata by Venturini, and Scarlatti's Sinfonia to 'Clori, Dorino e Amore', all directed from the harpsichord by Harry Bicket. For full details click here.
Brighton Early Music Festival
"intriguingly unconventional" The Telegraph
21 Oct-6 Nov 2011
Dance: 800 years; 24 events: The Sixteen (pictured), Joglaresa, The Carnival Band, Eclipse, the music of Hildegard von Bingen, Alison Bury with the BREMF Players in Bach's 3rd Orchestral Suite & Wedding Cantata with Julia Doyle, Purcell's The Fairy Queen (soloists include Elin Manahan Thomas, Anna Devin and Nicholas Mulroy)
Free performances in the all-night cultural festival White Night