2012 Festival Newsletter
Issue 4, December 2011
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Saturday 19 May, 4.30pm
St. Matthew's, Westminster
THE SPORTING LIFE
Alva
Vivien Ellis voice
Giles Lewin voice & fiddle
Voice-and-fiddle duo Vivien Ellis and Giles Lewin make a welcome return to the Lufthansa Festival for another specially researched programme of ballads and popular tunes. For 2012 they take up a sporting theme, searching through the vast legacy of printed verse and music compilations, or 'miscellanies', to find long-lost songs offering insights into 18th-century attitudes to such timeless diversions as wrestling, boxing, cricket and horseracing, as well as forgotten sports such as stoolball, cudgels and quarterstaff.
Saturday 19 May, 3.30pm
St. Matthew's, Westminster
PRE-CONCERT TALK - A VERY BRITISH EXERCISE
Dr. Abigail Williams, Lord White Fellow and Tutor in English at St. Peter's College, Oxford, and Principal Investigator for the Digital Miscellanies Project, explores the background to Alva's programme.
Sunday 20 May, 7.30pm
St. John's, Smith Square
LES NATIONS - COUPERIN THE INTERNATIONALIST
François Couperin: La Françoise (Les nations)
François Couperin: Douzième Concert (Les goûts-réünis)
Collin de Blamont: La toilette de Vénus
François Couperin: Le Parnasse, ou L'apothéose de Corelli
François Couperin: L'impériale (Les nations)
Musica ad Rhenum
Jed Wentz flute & director
Although usually seen as one of the great representatives of the French Baroque, Couperin had a lifelong interest in combining the two great national styles of the Baroque, the French and the Italian. His efforts found clearest expression in the exquisite trio sonatas of Les nations and Les goûts-réünis, some of which are heard here in colourfully realised performances by Jed Wentz's superb ensemble. There is also a rare chance to hear Collin de Blamont's sensual and playful cantata depicting Venus's conquest of Mars.
Wednesday 23 May, 7.30pm
St. John's, Smith Square
'FAR FROM THE TUMULT OF ARMS'
Muffat: Sonata No.2 in G minor (Armonico tributo)
Lully: Chaconne from Phaëton
Pasquini: Passacaglia in G major
Corelli: Sonata da camera a 3 in G major, Op.2 No.12
Schmelzer: Harmonia a 5 in B flat major
Bertali: Sonata a 5 'Tausend Gülden'
Muffat: Violin Sonata in D major
Muffat: Sonata No.5 in G major (Armonico tributo)
Harmonie Universelle
Florian Deuter violin & director
Florian Deuter's Cologne-based string ensemble explores the gentle charms of one of the great unifying figures in Baroque music, Georg Muffat, who took it as his life's work to encourage 'the harmony of many nations and an amiable peace' in music. As well as sonatas from one of his most important collections, we hear music from some of the French, Italian and Austrian composers whose works influenced him.
Sunday 20 May, 6.15pm
St. John's, Smith Square
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE - A CALL TO ARMS
The Lufthansa Lecture
Andrew Manze
Andrew Manze is known to many for his captivating and daring performances on the Baroque violin, even though today he is a conductor working primarily with modern orchestras. In the fourth annual Lufthansa Lecture he examines the state of Baroque performance at a time when more and more 'modern' musicians are aware of historical issues and ever higher performing standards are demanded of them, and explores the relationships between iconoclasm and tradition, knowledge and intuition.
Booking opens 1 February 2012
Full details of the Festival programme are now available on-line and in print. In the meantime you can look forward to regular newsletter updates.
We would like to wish everyone a very happy Christmas and a peaceful new year.
For your further interest...
Saturday 14 Jan 7.30pm, Barbican Hall
The Seasons
Haydn's oratorio is a hymn to the world around us. It took him two years to compose, in a state of frail health. Conductor Paul McCreesh (pictured) and his superb period ensemble the Gabrieli Consort and tenor Allan Clayton, are reunited here alongside Christopher Purves and Christiana Karg, to perform a work which draws on the lifelong experience of a composer of genius.
Tickets from £11
Book on-line now
Paul McCreesh's new recording of Berlioz Grande Messe des Morts is available now!
A daring new recording of Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts, recorded on McCreesh's new label, Winged Lion. This gargantuan oratorio features over 400 musicians from the Gabrieli Consort & Players, Wroclaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, and Chetham's School of Music.
"Certainly not for the faint-hearted either in terms of its enormous scale or its spectrum of powerful, visionary expression."
Gramophone Magazine
Aldeburgh Festival
8-24 June 2012
Since it was founded by Benjamin Britten in 1948, the Aldeburgh Festival features an impressive range of superb concerts, master-classes, films, lectures, walks, and free events in Snape, Aldeburgh - and even on the beach! The 2012 Festival is no exception, and with French musicien exceptionel, Pierre-Laurent Aimard as its Artistic Director, there are many highlights in Early and New Music coming to the Suffolk coast.
For more details, visit www.aldeburgh.co.uk