STOUR MUSIC 2020 Music for a while Purcell Songs and Instrumental Music Sponsored by Paul & Janet Batchelor Live Sunday 6th September 2020 at 5pm Boughton ALuph ChurCh online 11-27 September Music for a while Anna Dennis - soprano Hugo Hymas - tenor Frederick Long - bass-baritone David Miller, Lynda Sayce - chitarrone, guitar Catherine Pierron - harpsichord/organ Academy of Ancient Music Bojan Cˇ icˇ ic´ - violin Davina Clarke - violin Jane Rogers - viola Sarah McMahon - cello Robert Hollingworth - director Keyboards provided by Andrew Wooderson, tuned by Ed Pickering. note It has been remarked on that during his lifetime, Alfred Deller was not quite as valued in the UK (outside East Kent of course…) as abroad. In one small way this is borne out by the sheer number of Deller Consort recordings owned by my French wife (playing harpsichord tonight) as opposed to my relatively meagre library. Many of hers are of Purcell and I thought it would be fitting for my first concert as artistic director here to perform a composer associated with all Dellers, great and small. Although the programme (performed tonight for the first time) has a familiar title, there should be a few surprises. Which of us has heard the complete music from his Oedipus before, aside from ‘Music for a while’ itself? And while a few of Purcell’s odes get full performances, many others rarely performed contain individual gems that rarely get an outing so it’s a pleasure to draw your attention to the heart-rending genius of ‘The sparrow and gentle dove’, ‘When Orpheus sang’ and others. It has been a strange few months and I find that Purcell’s music can express what we feel better than we know it ourselves. The mournful Pavan, the searing ‘Slow Music’ that begins the Dance of the Furies, the upbeat ‘Mark, Mark’ (pun with my predecessor probably intended) and unbridled joy of the chaconne from Dioclesian that ends the concert - all of these pieces make life worth living and give us something to hang to in such distracted times. Robert Hollingworth Programme Please reserve any applause for gaps in the programme as marked below. Urge me no more (1680) Overture: The Double-Dealer (1693) Complete music from Oedipus (1690-95) Dance of the Furies (Dioclesian, 1690) Pluto arise (Circe, 1689) Oh fair Cedaria (1689-92) Pavan of 4 parts (c.1678) When Orpheus sang (Ode: ‘Celestial Music’, 1689) Mark how the instruments (Ode: ‘Raise the voice’, c.1685) Awake and with attention hear (1685) When the cock begins to crow (Purcell?) Hornpipe (King Arthur, 1691) When first Amintas sued for a kiss The sparrow and the gentle dove (Ode: ‘From hardy climes’, 1683) She loves and she confesses too (1680) Triumph, Victorious Love (Dioclesian, 1690) Anna Dennis (soprano) studied at the Royal Academy of Music. Her concert performances have included Britten’s War Requiem at the Berlin Philharmonie, roles in all three Monteverdi operas in John Eliot Gardiner’s world tour of the trilogy, Thomas Ades’ Life Story accompanied by the composer at the Lincoln Centre’s White Light Festival in New York, and Bach cantatas with Les Violons du Roy in Montreal. Her BBC Proms appearances include performances with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Recent opera roles include: Paride/Gluck’s Paride ed Elena and Iphigenie/Iphigenie en Tauride (both Nürnberg Internationale Gluck Festspiele) Katherine Dee/ Damon Albarn’s Dr Dee (English National Opera), Emira/Handel’s Siroe, Rosmene/ Handel’s Imeneo, Florinda/Handel’s Rodrigo (all at the Göttingen Händel Festspiele), Bersi/Andrea Chenier (Opera North) Ilia/ Idomeneo directed by Graham Vick (Birmingham Opera Company), and Queen of the Night/Zauberflöte (Clarion, New York) hugo hymas (tenor) Recent concert performances include Purcell and Handel with Freiburg Baroque Orchestra (Kristian Bezuidenhout), Handel’s Messiah with The English Concert (Harry Bicket), Monteverdi’s Vespers and Bach’s St Matthew Passion with Dunedin Consort (John Butt), Handel’s Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno with Croatian Barokk Ensemble (Lawrence Cummings), and Handel’s Semele with Monteverdi Choir (Sir John Eliot Gardiner) the latter of which brought about his debut at Teatro alla Scala Milano. Hugo has also performed as a soloist for Les Arts Florissants (William Christie) and Gabrieli Consort (Paul McCreesh). He also works regularly with Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and is on their ‘Rising Stars’ scheme for the 2019-21 seasons. Hugo’s staged opera roles of late include Septimius in Theodora (Handel) for Potsdamer Winteroper, Jupiter in Semele (Handel) with Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (Yu Long), and Indian Boy and Fame in The Indian Queen (Purcell) with Opera de Lille (Emmanuelle Haïm). Hugo grew up in Cambridge where he sang as a chorister in Great St Mary’s Church Choir and subsequently joined the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge as a tenor. In 2014 he graduated with an honours degree in Music from the University of Durham. Frederick Long (bass-baritone) received a DipRAM from the Royal Academy of Music and furthered his training at the National Opera Studio. Having begun his operatic career at Glyndebourne, he has since been invited to many of the UK’s leading opera houses. Recent performances have received particular acclaim for their musicality, allied to vivid stagecraft, notably as the Sorceress in Dido and Aeneas and Guglielmo in Cosi fan tutte for English Touring Opera. Frederick enjoys bringing this dramatic approach to a variety of concert and oratorio repertoire, to which his wide range and rich timbre are ideally suited. Already an experienced exponent of the baroque masterworks of Bach and Handel, he recently took on two of the great romantic roles - Mendelssohn’s Elijah and St Peter in Elgar’s The Kingdom - as well as the Verdi Requiem with a chorus of two thousand at the Royal Albert Hall. the Academy of Ancient Music is an orchestra with a worldwide reputation for excellence in baroque and classical music. It takes inspiration directly from the music’s composers, using historically informed techniques, period-specific instruments and original sources to bring music to life in committed, vibrant performances. Founded by Christopher Hogwood in 1973, the ensemble remains at the forefront of the early music scene more than four decades on; Richard Egarr became its Music Director in 2006. It was established to make the first British recordings of orchestral works using instruments from the baroque and classical periods and has released more than 300 discs, many of which are still considered definitive performances (among its countless accolades for recording are Classic BRIT, Gramophone and Edison awards). It has now established its own record label, AAM Records, and is proud to be the most listened-to orchestra of its kind online, with over one million monthly listeners on Spotify. AAM is Associate Ensemble at London’s Barbican centre and the Teatro San Cassiano in Italy; Orchestra-in-Residence at the University of Cambridge, The Grange Festival, Milton Abbey International Summer Music Festival, Music at Oxford and the Apex, Bury St Edmunds; Research Partner to the University of Oxford; and an Artistic Partner to London’s Culture Mile. www.aam.co.uk David Miller is a long established soloist and well known as an accompanist and continuo player on lute, theorbo and early guitars, flourishing in both the early music world and the mainstream musical scene. He maintains a busy recital schedule and performs with all the principal English period instrument orchestras, many of the finest ensembles, and a number of top opera companies. He is much sought after as a sensitive and stylish accompanist. Amongst his numerous recordings are several CDs of English songs and lute music. His solo album, The Famous Weiss, featuring music by the great German Baroque lute virtuoso Silvius Leopold Weiss, has received many enthusiastic reviews. David has performed at Dartington since the mid-1990s, and he continues to inspire the younger generation of lutenists in his teaching role as professor of lute at the Guildhall School. One of Britain’s leading lutenists with over 100 recordings to her name, Lynda Sayce read Music at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, then studied lute with Jakob Lindberg at the Royal College of Music. She performs regularly as soloist and continuo player with leading period instrument ensembles worldwide, and is principal lutenist with The King’s Consort and Ex Cathedra. She directs the lute ensemble Chordophony, whose repertory and instrumentarium are based entirely on her research. Lynda has performed with many leading modern instrument orchestras and opera companies, and was chosen by Sir Simon Rattle to play lute continuo for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra’s recent epic staging of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, performed in Europe and the US. Her discography ranges from some of the earliest surviving lute music to the jazz theorbo part in Harvey Brough’s ‘Requiem in Blue’ and the latest album from Russian folk rock legend Boris Grebenchshikov. Lynda holds a Ph.D for her work on the history of the theorbo, which is being prepared for publication, and has written for the New Grove Dictionary of Music, Early Music, and the art journal Apollo. An enthusiastic photographer, she also specialises in the digitisation of historic music manuscripts, and many thousands of her images are available online, making this unique material available to scholars worldwide. Catherine pierron studied harpsichord with Kenneth Gilbert and Christophe Rousset at the Conservatoire Nationale Superieur de Paris, obtaining her Premier Prix, before coming to London in 1994 to study with David Roblou (financed by the Ministère de la Culture). She was harpsichordist for the European Community Baroque Orchestra, and set up her own ensemble in the UK, The French Connection, to perform French 17th and 18th century repertoire.