recording of the has long held one of several prides of place on my Felix shelf. It's a gorgeous CD, limpid, poetic and mercurial, and I love it to pieces.
Recently I did a substantial interview with András, which has just been published in International Piano Magazine. Here's what he has to say about Mendelssohn.
'Five years ago the asked if I'd like to do a festival to mark the 200th anniversary of Haydn's death, so this will be at the end of May, with five concerts. We will also do Haydn with the Philharmonia and an all-Mendelssohn concert in June.
'Haydn and Mendelssohn need championing, to different degrees; both are underrated, and I think Haydn is one of the greatest composers ever. Especially in the German-speaking world they have not realised that he had a much better time in England during his lifetime! If some of that can be rethought and reevaluated, it could be a good thing. And Mendelssohn - again his successes were in this country. But now one has to do a lot of persuading.
'I adore Mendelssohn, but so often people say: "Oh, Mendelssohn, a little composer..." How can you say that? Mendelssohn was a colossal composer! I think his talent can only be compared to Mozart's as a teenager. Think of the Octet, or the Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream - I don't think Mozart wrote such great music when he was 16. Later came his fantastic achievements in choral music and chamber music. His string quartets opp. 12 and 13 are wonderful; and the last quartet in F minor is a towering masterpiece. And the piano trios! He was a musician with perfect knowledge and perfect taste, the only one in that generation who had Bachian counterpoint in his fingertips. The others had to fight for it - Schubert, Schumann, even Brahms had trouble with fugues and counterpoint. He was responsible for the Bach renaissance, the rediscovery of the St Matthew Passion, the first performance of - he was the first really great conductor and a towering public figure, so of course he did not have all his time for composing. Even so, what's wrong with the Mendelssohn violin concerto? It's out of this world - a perfect masterpiece. Tomorrow I'm playing the Variations Serieuses, which I only learned last year. It's fantastic. I hope that after a year of celebrations the world will think differently about Mendelssohn.'
Read the rest in the March/April edition of .
I have had a rummage through the dusty boxes in the music cupboard at . I thought I might find old scores marked up in 's hand. He, you may recall, had staged the first modern revival of it in 1911. No such luck. The copies are antique but not yet a hundred years old. The main thing is, there are three shelves dedicated to Purcell. The cupboard is vast: I nearly couldn't find my way out.
The term ended early because Camillo, the Columbian singer-guitarist, has gone home for Easter. We finished with Purcell who may have looked somewhat out-of-place in a lecture series on early , but my thesis was that British music missed out on what the rest of 19th century Europe knew as the Romantic movement because it had already experienced its distinguishing features 150 years earlier.
After all, we had our own 'French Revolution' when we beheaded and became the first Republic of the modern world. Admittedly, is not what one now thinks of as a Romantic hero - the Irish have seen to that - but he did share with a certain youthful idealism, a subsequent transformation into a dictator and a love of thigh-high leather boots ...
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This week it's Haydn's friends, colleagues and relations who share in the music featured on air. After the composer's Piano Trio in A at 3.41 am on Sunday morning, Lucy Skeaping explored the life & work of in the Early Music Show (1 pm). Soon after the youthful Haydn's treble voice broke, he was dumped by at in Vienna, and Porpora, who was both a renowned singing teacher and a composer, employed Haydn as a kind of general musical handyman, giving him a good grounding in Italian vocal techniques. It's worth catching this and the other broadcasts on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ iPlayer if you miss the original broadcast time, or if like most people you use the night hours for sleep! These blogs link to the broadcast information pages - there's always an iPlayer link for the seven day period when the broadcast is accessible.
Haydn's brother Michael appeared at 3.42am in Through the Night this morning with a charming Divertimento in A, and around the same time tonight we can hear Joseph's , the last of his big C major symphonies featuring trumpets and timpani. A nice gesture of friendship is the ' solo' for violin in the trio of the Minuet for his impresario colleague who brought him to England in 1791.
and the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Philharmonic are carrying on Radio 3's chronological symphonic marathon this week by featuring on D minor (Lamentation) on Wednesday at 10.24 and on Friday at 11.45 in G, both in Classical Collection. The collaboration between the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳PO and Kraemer has been interesting: symphony orchestras players understandably tend to get out of the habit of playing this repertoire, but so far the Manchester musicians have produced some enjoyable performances. Long may they continue!
A quick 'heads up' for a conference that's on this weekend here in Oxford, about all four of our composers! Purcell, Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn: Anniversary Reflections, is at New College, Oxford, till lunchtime Sunday, with an array of papers on all manner of responses to the composers through the last few hundred years. The programme is on the website: , for anyone interested. I'll be chairing rather than speaking, and will no doubt have thoughts to share afterwards...
Floridante is this week's Handel opera on Thursday afternoon. It may be difficult for us to comprehend today, but when it was premiered in 1721 it occasioned a political controversy. Put briefly, the opera was interpreted by some in the audience as an allegory on the very tense relationship between and his son, .
William Stratford explained to Lord Harley in a letter of 19 December: 'Some things have happened at a new opera which have given great offence. It is called Floridante. There happens to be a right heir in it, that is imprisoned. At last the right heir is delivered and the chains put upon the oppressor. At this last circumstance, there happened to be a very great and unseasonable clapping, in the presence of great ones.' In fact, Stratford (and other members of the audience) rather garbled the plot: the character 'imprisoned', Floridante, is not a 'rightful heir' at all.
What Stratford's misinterpretation serves to illustrate is not (or not simply) London audiences' inattention to niceties of the plot - they were famous for talking through recitatives, and the London librettists were infamous for cutting their recitative to a bare minimum, accordingly. It also shows the audiences' willingness to twist a fictional narrative in order to 'apply' it to contemporary political life. There was a long tradition of doing this with English opera (including Purcell's operas), and the audiences no doubt felt they could follow the same practice with Italian opera.
Perhaps this interpretation was partly encouraged by the librettist's decision to dedicate Floridante to the Prince of Wales, as perfectly expressing Floridante's qualities as 'the Heroic Lover and the loving Hero'. But the structure of the drama also emphasises the despotic villainy of Oronte, Floridante's rival in love for Elmira (who has been raised as Oronte's daughter!): it shows Oronte repeatedly testing & breaking the lovers in a series of carefully managed scenas. For those disaffected with George I's rule, it would have been an excellent means to vilify the monarch.
Of course, neither Handel nor Rolli (the librettist) would have intended such application, especially as the opera company depended greatly on the monarch's patronage. It must have caused some consternation for the company management.
As we move towards Easter, we move also towards 'Handel Week', the next Handel extravaganza in the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s schedule, from 12 to19 April. I'm greatly looking forward to this - especially all the live or recently recorded music the week holds in store. For instance, recent recording of 'The Eight Great Keyboard Suites' will be featured, with Lawrence himself talking about it on the Early Music Show on Easter Sunday...
There'll also be a nice look backwards, though, with Classical Collection featuring a week of 'Historical Handel on Record'. Given that the resurgence of interest in Handel (outside the perennially popular oratorio) dates back to the first decades of the twentieth century, there will certainly be some interesting early recordings to discuss. Indeed, the ornamental antics of opera singers to the present day could provide amusement (I suggested the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ might run a competition to find the modern singer Handel would be most likely to drop out the window (his threat to the prima donna, in 1723), but for some reason they weren't keen...).
But of course, there are two reasons for choosing 12-19 April for 'Handel week'. In the eighteenth century, was always performed at this time of year, its association with Passiontide far stronger than with Christmas; and this week also marks the 250th anniversary of the composer's death. It's entirely fitting that on that date, 14th April, Messiah will be broadcast live from Westminster Abbey on Performance on 3. I, for one, will be glued to my radio. ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳1 will also be showing a documentary on Messiah on Good Friday (the 10th), in which I appear (if I make it through the cutting room).
One comment struck home over Purcell Weekend. It was the agreement between Jonathan Keates and Catherine Bott on The Early Music Show that 'Purcell is the greatest writer of art songs before '. Even with in the background, this must surely be true. There is nothing in , Haydn, or Handel to compare with Oh Solitude, which, in its ultra-slow version by , provoked the Keates / Bott congruence. The text makes the difference, of course, and Purcell was inspired by the poetry of 'the incomparable' , a Restoration hostess who loved the company and conversation of artists. Performances of 'If Music be the food of love', of which only the first nine words are 's, Fairest Isle and Music for a While, both with lyrics by , served merely to confirm the statement. The latter in fact was performed without words in David Rhys Williams' jazz version which was better than 's. It showed how Purcell's inspiration not only remained intact but also transferred brilliantly to a contemporary interpretation.
I agreed with the conclusion reached on CD Review that 's account of surpassed all others although I was very taken with and as Dido and her handmaid Belinda in the earliest of available recordings (1951). Fashion is circular. We get bored with a prevailing style and seek the new either in total originality, which is rare, or in renewal. Didn't flared trousers come back? .
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I've been amazed and delighted at the amount of music and comment the Purcell Weekend has produced. He really was a genius at word-setting and produced so much memorable music.
Haydn is consequently a bit squeezed out this week - excluding the night-owl listening on Through the Night we have a rare performance of by which begins Wednesday's Classical Collection at 10.00 am. This symphony has an unexpected concerto-like slow movement for flute and strings.
I definitely want to listen to Thursday's Performance on 3 at 7.00 pm, which features the and in performances of and 's G minor symphonies. There should be some lively music-making that evening.
Friday sees us at the quarter-century in the chronological sequence of Haydn's symphonic output with , played by the under at 10.14 am on Classical Collection.
I've a particularly soft spot for this work, having conducted it on tour around the desert cities of Iran in 1977 with the country's National Iranian Radio and Television Chamber Orchestra. Although this was in the last few months of the Shah's regime, and was an uneasy time politically, the impression this piece made on some of the young Iranians, who had never seen an orchestra before, was very rewarding. The kids particularly like the trio of the minuet, where the two horns play a question-and-answer game with the two oboes.
We enjoyed a rich and varied menu at the 's conference at the British Library last weekend. The sun shone, the speakers were stimulating and I conducted two of the late Notturni written for London with the Trinity Haydn Ensemble in the lunch-break. We performed in the vast entrance hall, which is a bit like a cathedral. What was really heartening was the way visitors to the Library stopped for a while on their way to the exhibition rooms and the cafe, obviously charmed by this marvellous divertimento-style music. I hope Haydn would have approved.
On air, yesterday was a big Haydn day, with Misha Donat's recommended recording from CD Review by the evergreen Beaux Arts Trio of the Piano Trio in C (Hob XV1 27) concluding Classical Collection. Radio 3 lunchtime concert was a live relay of Jean Efflam Bavouzet's enterprising recital from the Wigmore Hall, beginning with the D major Sonata (H XVI) and later including two Haydn homage pieces by Ravel and Debussy, both written for the 1909 Haydn centenary celebrations. These broadcasts are available on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ iPlayer, together with Mark Elder and the Halle with their evening concert including the brilliant Symphony No 48 (Maria Theresia).
I'm a bit surprised there's no Haydn in 's 75th birthday concert on Wednesday, and indeed Five Songs at 5.39 am in Through the Night are the only offering that day. Similarly the Little Organ Mass is the only item on Thursday - and that's at 6.42 am!
Friday is richer, with the Piano Sonata in G (Hob XVI 40) at Breakfast, and the B minor Sonata (Hob XVI 32) at lunchtime. Sandwiched between them is Symphony No 23 in G at 11.10 am in a recording by the and Adam Fisher.
Purcell's successor as organist of Westminster Abbey is whom I met last week in his tiny office by the cloisters. He has a computer but no piano so he was not able to audition me for the choir's deputy list as I had hoped. I had even brought along a library copy of 1683 with a view to singing the alto solo Here the Deities Approve as an audition piece. 'Send in your CV,' said O'Donnell as we turned to the main point of our meeting: a discussion of the music for the Abbey choir's live broadcast of Choral Evensong on Wednesday 18 March, repeated the following Sunday. It falls in the middle of Radio 3's second big Purcell week of the year.
O'Donnell has put down The Bell Anthem, the Canticles in B flat, a composed setting of the first ten colourful verses of Psalm 103 ('Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things / Making thee young and lusty as an eagle') and, following a procession to Purcell's grave in the north aisle where the organ used to stand, the heartbreakingly simple version of Thou Knowest Lord the Secrets of our Hearts composed for Queen Mary's funeral in 1694 and sung at his own a year later though he was only 36.
'The choir feels that Purcell is one of us,' says O'Donnell. 'and that he is part of a line which we at the Abbey are continuing. For me he is the great genius, a highly individual composer, superior in imagination and execution, some of his music sublime.'
Much of that music is currently to be heard on Radio 3 - I am enjoying Fiona Talkington's nightly versions of the Dido aria When I am Laid in earth, especially 's on Tuesday - and from Monday will be more or less hogging the air-waves. Purcell's compositions, both sacred and secular, will appear on the daily Classical Collection (11am) while other aspects of his life and work will be subject of talks on The Essay (11pm). CD Review on Saturday 21 March compares recordings of , and the soprano / disc-jockey Emma Kirkby spins Purcell requests on her Sunday edition of Radio 3 Requests. On Sunday 22 March in The Choir (6.30pm), the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Singers perform a number of completions of the Purcell anthem Hear My Prayer, a work which more than any brings home the tragedy of the composer's early death. 'It's the first section of a larger anthem which was either incomplete or lost at his death,' says O'Donnell. 'You get to that first
cadence and expect something to follow and there's nothing. One is left only to wonder what might have been after such an amazing opening.'
Performances during the week include the Iranian-born keyboard star Mahan Esfahani playing Purcell in the Early Music Show on Saturday afternoon (21 March), playing contemporary responses to Purcell's music for viol consort in a recorded concert at 10.30pm the same evening, the concert having been recorded at LSO St Luke's, on Wednesday 18 March, a live transmission of 's Purcell tribute on Friday 20 March, and a late night rendition of his bawdy tavern catches (from midnight on Sat 21).
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Please welcome to Felixcitations the eminent Mendelssohn scholar R. Larry Todd, author of the definitive biography, Mendelssohn: A Life in Music. He is Arts and Sciences Professor of Music at , has devoted the majority of his academic career to the study of our Felix and is shortly to publish a biography of . In this exclusive interview, he talks to me about how he set about reconstructing , which is being performed in New York this weekend and has recently been published.
You can read the interview here.
The week before last I was in Vienna, at a conference on Handel's , which was organised by the to coincide with the opening of a new production of that opera. It being Vienna, the conference audience was hearteningly large, containing not just other academics, but Viennese music lovers too. Vienna's association with great music can take a rather debased form for the benefit of tourists (regular programmes of Mozart and Strauss performed by a bewigged orchestra are touted by men in costumes outside the opera house), but that's not the norm. The Viennese really take their music very seriously, with even Sunday-morning concerts at the Musikverein attracting capacity audiences, all dressed to the nines.
And Handel, effectively an Ausländer? Well, what was significant was not the Viennese interest in the composer (scarcely a surprise in such a cultured place), but the degree to which the conference presented him as fully European, not merely either German or British. Partenope, after all, was a Neapolitan story, which Handel knew in a Venetian version before creating his own for London in 1730, using singers collected on his latest foray to the Continent.
Seeing Handel as a composer who was at home in a variety of European contexts is vital to really understanding his work (perhaps particularly the operas). As this is not a bad week to be reminded of it. The week Radio 3 features material written in Italian for both Italy (the cantata, 'Tra le fiamme') and London (the opera Radamisto and an aria from Alcina), and the German devotional aria, 'In den angenehmen Buschen'. A 'Europhile' indeed!
As a newcomer, I have been pleased and delighted by the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ iPlayer site and the chance to listen to Iain Burnside's interview with Jane Glover about famous composers who visited London. It was transmitted at 10.00 am last Sunday and I was able to catch up with it later the same day. Haydn came off best. While others like Handel had a single movement played, we heard the whole of by and the . A fine recording.
Also on Sunday's night' schedule was The Storm, a short choral piece Haydn wrote for London to show that he could set English words. 4.02 am in the morning may not be everybody's ideal time to listen! Certainly, I'm going to use the iPlayer service again later in the week to catch up with it.
The varied menu goes on through the week, with three diverse genres to listen to Monday. First, part of The Creation (the 6th Day) in Classical Collection, Symphony No 44 (Trauer) with Volkov & the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Scottish Orchestra at 2 pm and the Piano Trio in E flat Hob XV 10 at 4.14 am - another graveyard slot!
Tuesday has an aria from Il Mondo della luna around 7.10 am. Then follows a Haydn-free 24 hours before the countdown of symphonies begins again in Classical Collection with No 20 on Wednesday morning and No 21 in A [no wild horns this time] on Friday the 13th. That's also a fateful day for me, as I shall be rehearsing and making the final preparations at the British Library for our Haydn Society conference there over the weekend ( for details).
All welcome, as they say!
Thanks to kleines_c for pointing me to in The Independent. Composers' reputations change over time, of course, but it's funny how each age seems to latch onto just one or two aspects of a persona and recreate a figure in that light. In the 19th century, Handel stood for God, Queen and Country, being almost exclusively associated with his oratorios. The twentieth-century reappraisal, much of which aimed to topple pompous religious certainties, replaced this idea with a vision of a profoundly human - and Humanist - artist, an earthy and commercially astute man.
This, in turn, became a stick with which to beat Handel: , in his 2005 Oxford History of Western Music, damned the composer with faint praise for just these commercial sensibilities, singling out Handel's musical word-painting in to illustrate the depths he was willing to plumb in order to create cheap belly laughs for a supposedly xenophobic British audience. Cheap laughs were turned into cheap shots. Taruskin's narrative (like Jessica Duchen's) contrasts commercialised Handel with the saintly (the kind of composer comparison of which music history is, unfortunately, all too fond), and does neither a favour in the process.
Although, of course, in musical surveys (like journalistic essays?) it's hard not to go for the colourful anecdote and pithy stereotype, I think musicology more generally is moving away from such simplistic pictures of artistic figures. In large part this is because we're growing up as a discipline, but undoubtedly increasing interest from top-flight musicians in composers such as Handel plays an important role. Just listen to 's interpretation of 'Tra le fiamme' (broadcast this morning at 8.30 and available on Listen Again), to get a sense of the vitality of modern Handel performance. Or 's electrifying performance of the brief cavatina, 'Sommi dei', that opens Radamisto, this week's Handel opera on Thursday - its unaccompanied, leaping opening line seems to encapsulate Polissena's heartache, and catapult you right into the middle of the drama. (I'll have more to say about Radamisto anon.)
I think it's only possible to dismiss a composer out of hand when one doesn't know his (or her) work too well - when you really get down to studying (or listening) to the music in detail, that dismissiveness has to be tempered at least with respect. (So , the famous late-eighteenth-century music historian, found when he began to examine Handel's scores.) Of course, what's terrific about this year is that we will get the opportunity to steep ourselves in the music of Handel, as well as Purcell, Haydn, and Mendelssohn. I know that many of us will be taking full opportunity of that.
If you can go to the tonight, you'll hear the doughty members of the (including my hubby Tom on 3rd violin) playing the . But only just.
It was one of those moments that belongs in that as-yet-unmade TV series 'It shoudn't happen to an orchestra'. The LPO and their principal conductor took off for the States for a 6-day tour, including three sell-out concerts in New York. After the last one, on Sunday afternoon, they set off for and two overnight flights home. Tom, by some amazing chance, had put down his name for the earlier plane. The majority of the orchestra went on the later one.
Snow was beginning to fall as Tom and about 17 colleagues took the sky. But back on the ground, the planned second plane had proved only half full, so the airline in its infinite wisdom apparently elected to cancel it and move the passengers, including some 75 LPO musicians, onto a slightly later one. By the time said later plane was due to depart, the airport was snowed in and it was simply snow go.
The orchestra overnighted in the terminal, with a few pillows and, obviously, nowhere to practise. I'm told that few airline staff, if any, were in evidence and no info was forthcoming about their likely fate.
They finally landed at at 12 noon on Tuesday instead of 11am on Monday, the Tuesday chamber rehearsal had to be cancelled and tempers are riding high. I keep telling Tom it will be all right on the night, that Mendelssohn's wonderful energy will carry them along once they get going. But I suspect that the pub closest to the Wiggy will become very busy at about 9.45pm tonight once it is all over.
Meanwhile, if you can't sleep on Thursday night, tune into R3 where a Mendelssohn marathon for insomniacs is scheduled. Like , which were designed to entertain the commissioning aristocrat when he couldn't sleep as opposed to sending him off to dreamland, Mendelssohn does seem more likely to keep you awake...
The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳NOW's Elijah as broadcast on Radio 3 last Sunday evening (conducted by Thierry Fischer) is now available to view on the Internet. Follow this link.
provides an eloquent introduction (in which I'm afraid that I almost thought he was going to say the Patron Saint of the day was Mendelssohn!) One interesting point he makes is that by Mendelssohn 's time - the premiere of Elijah having taken place in 1846 - grand-scale oratorios of this type were somewhat out of fashion.
The oratorio as a form holds a special place in British musical life. We may lag behind Germany in our number of composers of genius; our musical tuition for young people has sadly never approached the levels of excellence common in Russia or Hungary; but for amateurdom in its finest and truest sense - an absolute passion for making music in a non-professional context - we must surely be world leaders, and there principally for choral singing.
Some of my formative influences involved singing in a school choir which regularly sent a contingent to participate in the at the Royal Festival Hall. We sang special arrangements of works ranging from Vivaldi's Gloria to Haydn's Creation and Fauré's Requiem. Getting to know such amazing music from the inside and being part of it with all the adrenalin of performance in real time, moreover in a great concert hall with a huge audience, was an overwhelming, unforgettable experience - especially at the impressionable age of 14.
There is no better reason to sing than for joy, and few better joys than to sing. It's proven to be healthy, too - it opens up your channels, gets the oxygen flowing and provides, I've heard, a form of healing that involves being part of a 'flow' greater than oneself, engaging with many others in creating something of beauty and communicating the positive energy of sound to each other and an audience. Something like that, anyway. Alas, these days I can't sing to save my life, but I have innumerable friends whose weekly highlight is their participation in choral societies or the fine vocal ensembles associated with top professional orchestras.
If it hadn't been for Mendelssohn, and especially , the entire tradition of oratorio singing might well have lapsed irredeemably, and our singing with it. Elijah is a gift for choral societies - easy to follow, well written, dramatic and effective. Perhaps it served as a shot in the arm to national musical life.
So we have much to thank our Felix for. And if there's something better than listening to Elijah, it would be singing in it. If you can, do.
Radio 3's sequence of symphonies is now into double figures and a pair of rarities are featured this week.
On Wednesday 4th March, I plan to listen to Classical Collection at 11.09 am for in a seldom-heard recording by the under Marzendorfer. This will be while I'm putting delegates' packs together for the 's conference at the over the weekend of (click the link for details). Unlike Nos 16, 17 & 19, which also only have three movements, No 18 in G has a minuet finale with high horns much in evidence!
Two days later, at the slightly earlier time of 10.25 am, there will be a chance to hear the last of this three-movement group of works. This is , played by the Little Orchestra of London conducted by Leslie Jones. Jones was a pioneer in producing clear, unfussy readings of Haydn's symphonies. This performance dates from 1959, along with the and the . It would be good to hear what other people think of it.
Tonight - Tuesday 3rd March - at Sheffield University the brings its programme of Purcell Fantazias. Wake up you students with your cheap bus fares and your republican attitudes. Eat your Coco Pops.
Tomorrow afternoon - Wednesday 4th March - I'll be tuning in to Choral Evensong at 4pm on Radio 3, live from , Oxford. You'll see from the order of service that Purcell is providing the Introit, Evening Canticles and Anthem:
Introit: Remember not Lord our offences (Purcell)
Responses: Reading
Psalms: 22, 23 (Camidge, Parisian Tone)
First Lesson: Genesis 11 vv1-9
Canticles: Cantate Domino and Deus Misereatur in B flat (Purcell)
Second Lesson: Matthew 24 vv15-21
Anthem: Let mine eyes run down with tears (Purcell)
Hymn: Creator of the earth and skies (Agincourt)
Organ Voluntary: Toccata Settima (Rossi)
Sub-organist:
Director of music: .
The broadcast is repeated next Sunday afternoon at 4pm.
Then tomorrow night - Wednesday 4th March - at the Barbican, William Christie conducts and Le Jardin des Voix match our man with and . The singers are young and yet unknown. This is their big opportunity. They include three sopranos - Emmanuelle de Negri, Katherine Watson, and Tehila Nini Goldstein, one countertenor Maarten Engeltjes, one tenor Sean Clayton and one baritone Andreas Wolf.
On Thursday evening - 5th March, conducts the at . Their programme includes the great alto duet Sound the Trumpet and the old favourite Nymphs and Shepherds Come Away.
Well spotted, Thurifer. That'll teach me to be careful for nothing.
Thurifer, readers, has questioned my description as unaccompanied the Purcell anthems listed in the last blog which clearly have at least a continuo accompaniment. It is the sort of howler to which I have been prone all my life. Think of me as Wikipedia. It is said that any false entries there are corrected by readers within minutes. Thurifer, you were quick off the mark even if it was a sitter. You have my gratitude, standing there this St David's Day morning, swinging your .
Here, for my penance, are fuller details:
Jehova quam multi sunt hostes mei is a five-part verse setting of Psalm 3 with a bottom F for the bass soloist when he sings about his enemies' broken teeth. Given the Latin text, it was probably composed for 's Roman Catholic wife to be sung in her private chapel.
Miserere Mei is a four-voice canon written in 1687 during the reign of the .
Remember not Lord our Offences is a five-part full anthem composed around 1680. The pleading words are taken from the Order for the Visitation of the Sick in the .
Beati Omnes qui timent Dominum is a setting of for four-part chorus and soprano and bass soloists. Like Jehova quam multi, it was probably written for private performance before Charles II's queen by minimal forces.
Let mine Eyes run down with Tears is a verse anthem for choir plus treble, alto, tenor and bass soloists. The words are taken from .
O dive custos is one of two Elegies written on the Death of . It is a duet for sopranos with words by with long wailing melismas and a fabulous chromatic descent on the final 'moriente' (dying).
The Funeral Sentences (first set Z27) date from the late 1670s. They are in verse and chorus form and comprise three parts: 'Man that is born of woman', 'In the midst of life', and 'Thou knowest Lord the secrets of our hearts'. The words are taken from the Burial Service in the Book of Common Prayer. A more famous setting of the last part was composed by Purcell as part of the Funeral Music for Queen Mary.
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