Southbank Sinfonia at St John’s Smith Square presents a showcase of the world’s finest Baroque talent with the London Festival of Baroque Music 2024: Overtures – a love letter to Baroque chamber music. London’s leading festival of early music (Financial Times) returns from 14th to 18th May, and features artists including The Gesualdo Six, Early Opera Company with Iestyn Davies and Mary Bevan, Spanish ensemble Forma Antiqva, and St John’s Smith Square’s Organist in Residence Roger Sayer, for a captivating programme of chamber, choral, and solo works.
Roger Sayer, St John’s Smith Square’s Organist in Residence, opens this year’s London Festival of Baroque Music with a Lunchtime Concert including a fanfare of organ works by J.S. Bach, Vivaldi, and Felix Mendelssohn. From a single theme springs ravishing beauty and complexity, with Bach a conduit of past and future musical invention.
The Festival continues with Hear O Heavens: The English Verse Anthem from The Gesualdo Six. In the English Reformation, new and vibrant forms of vernacular music-making emerged, including the verse anthem. Unlike the traditional ‘full’ anthem, where the choir maintains a continuous presence, this new form introduced an interplay between solo voices and the full consort, providing rich opportunity for narrative expression and musical development. This concert celebrates composers who specialised in this form of music making. Highlights include the Star Anthem by John Bull, a quintessential Jacobean verse anthem celebrated across contemporary sources. The best-known in the 21st century is This is the Record of John, written by Orlando Gibbons for a visit of Archbishop Laud to his alma mater St John’s College Oxford.
Forma Antiqva, one of the most important and influential classical music groups in Spain, present Farándula Castiza, inviting the audience to step into the vibrant streets of 18th century Madrid, where every street corner tells a story and every overheard note ignites passion; once a humble town, it now stands as a cultural epicenter, a bustling hub of traditions and emotions. Forma Antiqva soundtrack this city and this time – from the familiar tunes of Fandango to the dramatic crescendos of Overtures. The symphonies of Nebra, Conforto, and Corselli sweep listeners away, alongside unexpected surprises from rising talents like Baset, Castel, and Mele.
The Festival’s series of Lunchtime Concerts continues with Southbank Sinfonia Alumni, cellist Erlend Vestby and violinist Flora Fontanelli, who join forces with baroque oboist Andrés Gabriel Villalobos-Lépiz and harpsichordist Petra Hajduchová to explore a variety of trio sonatas, one of the most popular chamber music formats of the baroque period. Along with Vivaldi, Telemann and Quantz, they are proud to present also a lesser-known wonderful trio sonata by Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, a celebrated composer and harpsichordist of her day who worked in the court of Louis XIV. The trio sonatas are interspersed with solo works for oboe, cello and harpsichord, creating a varied and balanced lunchtime concert not to be missed.
That evening, The Brook Street Band takes a musical journey originating in Lutheran Germany and ending in cosmopolitan London, telling stories of Popes and Cardinals in Rome, bustling business and gambling debts in Hamburg, and city life in Leipzig. JS Bach, Handel and Telemann are the three greatest German baroque composers, yet each led radically different lives, both personal and professional. The Power of Three celebrates the trio sonata, one of the greatest forms of baroque chamber music, and shows just how exciting and creative a vehicle it is.
Friday night will see Former BBC New Generation Artists mezzo soprano Helen Charlston joined by Consone Quartet for On the Wings of a Song; an evening of storytelling, celebrating chamber music making in all its glory. The audience will be taken on a journey through the intimate world of song, letting Robert Schumann’s beguiling Frauenliebe und -leben, Clara Schumann’s evocative Op.13 and songs by Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn whisk them into a world of romanticism. Presented in new arrangements for period string quartet and voice, the intimacy and directness of chamber music is the centre of this story, transporting listeners all to a new world of life and love.
The Festival culminates with Streams of Pleasure presented by Early Opera Company, with Iestyn Davies and Mary Bevan. Throughout his career as a composer of opera and latterly oratorio, Handel turned to vocal duets to sum up moments of great narrative pathos and drama. In this concert Early Opera Company explores some of the finest of these duets for Soprano and Countertenor ranging from Caro! Bella! the sparkling finale to his opera, Giulio Cesare, to the delicious Welcome as the Dawn of Day from the oratorio Solomon. The programme will also include solo arias from Theodora, Esther, Solomon and Susanna.
Under the theme of Overtures, this year’s Festival is a love letter to Baroque chamber music, celebrating the passion of small ensembles and their wide-ranging repertoire. Explore Baroque music up close this May at St John’s Smith Square and experience its shifting forms, new beginnings, and romance.
London Festival of Baroque Music 2024 is sponsored by Smith Square Partners.
