2012 Festival Newsletter

Tuesday 22 May, 7.30pm
St. John's, Smith Square
THE CONTEST OF PHOEBUS AND PAN
Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No.3
Bach: Cantata No.207 'Vereinigte Zwietracht der wechselnden Saiten'
Bach: Cantata No.201 'Geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde' (The Contest of Phoebus and Pan)

Susan Hamilton soprano
Clare Wilkinson mezzo-soprano
Thomas Hobbs tenor
Nicholas Mulroy tenor
Robert Davies baritone
Matthew Brook bass-baritone
Dunedin Consort & Players
John Butt director

John Butt's award-winning vocal-and-instrumental ensemble from Scotland - specialists in fresh performances of Bach's music on an intimate scale - bring two of Bach's vivacious but rarely heard secular dramatic cantatas to the Lufthansa Festival. BWV201 explores the clash of new and old aesthetics represented by the Ovidian figures of Phoebus and Pan, while in BWV207, which features familiar music from the Brandenburg Concertos, the figures of Industry, Honour and Happiness, no less, celebrate the installation of a Leipzig professor.

Saturday 26 May, 7.30pm
St. John's, Smith Square
HANDEL AND THE RIVAL QUEENS

Rosemary Joshua soprano
Mhairi Lawson soprano
Early Opera Company
Christian Curnyn harpsichord & conductor

Two feisty modern-day sopranos, aided by one of the rising-star conductors in the Baroque opera world, take on the roles of the great rival divas of Handel's London operas of the 1720s, Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni. So notorious was their competition that a play was written about them, and even Handel's best attempts to provide them with precisely equal parts could not prevent their animosity boiling over into a fight on stage! This programme includes readings from contemporary sources.

Friday 25 May, 7.00pm
St. John's, Smith Square
LE GRAND CONCOURS
Uccellini: Sonata ottava in D minor
Louis Couperin: Prélude non mésuré in A minor
Stradella: Sinfonia No.23 in B flat major
François Couperin: Quatrième Concert in E minor (Concerts royaux)
Geminiani: Cello Sonata in A minor, Op.5 No.6
Leclair: Violin Sonata in B flat major, Op.5 No.4
Locatelli: Violin Sonata in D major, Op.6 No.12 'La prova del Intonazione'

Elizabeth Wallfisch violin
Jaap ter Linden cello & viola da gamba
Albert-Jan Roelofs harpsichord

It is said that when the two great violinists Jean-Marie Leclair the Elder and Pietro Antonio Locatelli played on the same bill at a concert in Kassel in 1728, the former played 'like an angel' and the latter 'like a devil'. The occasion was also seen as a 'battle' between their respective national styles, however, and here Elizabeth Wallfisch and distinguished friends take the idea further in a celebration of cutting-edge chamber music from both sides of the Alps.

Friday 25 May, 9.30pm
St John's, Smith Square
ZEFIRO TORNA - MINIATURE OPERAS IN 17TH-CENTURY VENICE

ensemble savādi
Kristīne Jaunalksne soprano
Ulrike Hofbauer soprano
Marie Bournisien harp

Since winning the Early Music Network International Young Artists' Competition in York in 2003, ensemble savādi have captivated audiences throughout Europe with their performances of 17th-century vocal music, to which their imaginative presentation style has brought new intensity. For their Lufthansa Festival debut they weave duets and arias by Monteverdi, Rovetta, Strozzi and others into an intimate miniature operatic world where emotions from lust to furious rage are distilled to their scorching essence. 

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.

www.lufthansafestival.org.uk

Siren Serenissima: Visions of Venice on the Operatic Stage
In aid of Venice in Peril
Jonathan Keates
Wednesday 23 November, 6.30pm
The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House,
Strand, London, WC2R 0RN

Admired musical biographer and writer on Venice Jonathan Keates surveys the irrepressible, sometimes dangerous, often crazy fascination, for composers from Donizetti, Verdi and Offenbach to Johann Strauss, Arthur Sullivan and Benjamin Britten, of the 'Siren Serenissima'.

Tickets can be bought through http://www.veniceinperil.com/


Following the lecture, there will be a reception

picture: Candida Hofer

Spitalfields Music Winter Festival
10-20 December 2011

Head on down to Spitalfields this winter for a feast of musical treats, with a heady mix of ancient carols, market songs, storytellers, extraordinary new music, baroque masterpieces and much more. Don?'t miss the European Union Baroque Orchestra taking a musical tour from Bach to Mozart; medieval mavericks Joglaresa with unusual carolling; and the fantastic I Fagiolini celebrating their 25th birthday. 

Tickets from £5
www.spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk
020 7377 1362

Sumi Jo sings Mozart
Academy of Ancient Music
Friday 25 November, 7.30pm
Cadogan Hall

Superstar Korean soprano Sumi Jo comes to London for one night only in an all-Mozart programme with the Academy of Ancient Music. Recently praised for her 'high-flying pyrotechnic display' by the Washington National Post, Sumi has dazzled the opera world since being spotted by Herbert von Karajan on her European debut.

More information

A Breath of Enlightenment

The renowned European Union Baroque Orchestra will be performing under the direction of French flute and recorder player Alexis Kossenko (pictured) and with Bulgarian violinist Zefira Valova in an alluring programme entitled 'A Breath of Enlightenment' featuring music by Sammartini, Locatelli, Telemann, Graupner and J S Bach's Orchestral Suite No 2.

Spitalfields Christmas Festival in Shoreditch Church on Saturday 17 December at 7pm
More information 

St John the Evangelist, Iffley Road, Oxford on Sunday 18 December at 6pm. Tickets include mulled wine and mince pies at the interval!
More information