1 Emily Mitchell (Soprano) 2 MONTEVERDI Vespers 1610 Monteverdi’s spectacular masterpiece of 1610 is the most lavish of all the music that this peerless genius wrote for the church in early 17th century Venice. Nothing composed before Bach can rival it for sonic grandeur, but there is intimacy too in Monteverdi’s brilliantly imaginative use of solo voices and instruments. With a starry vocal line-up, joined by the virtuoso players of Dunedin Consort and His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts, join us for what promises to be an unmissable event. Monteverdi Fri 09.09.2016 Vespro della beata Vergine, 1610 Lammermuir Festival, St Mary’s Haddington Director John Butt 7.30pm | £19.50 – £11.50 Soprano Sold out. Returns only Joanne Lunn Esther Brazil Soprano Emilie Renard Mezzo Sun 11.09.2016 Joshua Ellicott Tenor Perth Concert Hall Matthew Long Tenor Bass 3pm | £19.50 – £11.50 Edward Grint Matthew Brook Bass with His Majesties Sackbutts and Cornetts 3 Christine Sticher (Double Bass) 4 PURCELL, SHAKESPEARE & CERVANTES Fantasy & Madness From a world in which windmills are giants and ordinary inns are castles, through the underwater kingdom of Neptune & Amphitrite, to an enchanted forest filled with fairies, the stories of Cervantes and Shakespeare are lifted off the page by Purcell’s theatrically rich musical settings. The Elizabethan literary landscapes of Don Quixote de la Mancha, The Tempest, and A Midsummer’s Night Dream are staged fusing sound, light, costume, and the beauty of the written word. Inspired by the theatrical spectacle and machinery, which lies at the heart of Restoration period theatre and opera, two singers embody the stories of these writers through voice and action, as they continually uncover moments of transformation within their costume. Tue 18.10.2016 Dramatised selections from The Comical History of Don Quixote Edinburgh, Purcell – Matthew Locke/Purcell – The Tempest Assembly Roxy Purcell – The Fairy Queen 7.30pm £20 & £15 Unreserved Performed by John Butt and Dunedin Consort Directed by Wed 19.10.2016 Josh Armstrong with Lighting design by Dave Evans Glasgow, Royal Conservatoire Mhairi Lawson Soprano of Scotland, Matthew Brook Bass Stevenson Hall Co-produced by 7.30pm Dunedin Consort and Cryptic £20 & £15 Unreserved In collaboration with Luminate Festival 5 Rory McCleery (Countertenor) 6 HANDEL Messiah As Handel’s best-loved work, Messiah presents a journey through many of the central values associated with the festive season, best represented in the words of the Angel: ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.’ With its effervescent choruses, interspersed with both virtuosic and beautifully lyrical arias demonstrating Handel’s unique gift for vocal writing, its humanity still readily communicates with listeners today. With the expert direction of John Butt and the unparalleled dynamic clarity of its singers, Dunedin’s rendition captures the universal hope and sheer joyfulness in Handel’s score. Sat 17.12.2016 Handel Messiah HWV 56 Perth, St John’s Kirk 7.30pm | £23.50 Director John Butt Sun 18.12.2016 Mhairi Lawson Soprano Glasgow University Bute Hall Clare Wilkinson Alto 4pm (Children Messiah 45’) | £5 unreserved. Nicholas Mulroy Tenor Adults attending evening performance go free. Matthew Brook Bass 7pm | £25–£12 Mon 19.12.2016 Edinburgh, The Queen’s Hall 4pm (Children Messiah 45’) | £5 unreserved. Adults attending evening performance go free. 7pm | £25–£12 | Supported by Dunard Fund Tue 20.12.2016 London, King’s Place 7.30pm | £34.50 – £59.50 7 Frances Norbury (Oboe) 8 BACH Suites & Cantatas In addition to his role as Cantor of the Thomasschule in Leipzig, from 1729 until the early 1740s Bach also held the position of Music Director of the city’s Collegium Musicum. This offered him the opportunity to experiment with novel orchestral timbres. Bach took full advantage of these instrumental resources, synthesising his characteristically intense counterpoint with visceral dance forms to create tangibly physical musical textures. In this programme, we explore two of the orchestral suites thought to have been produced during this period. BWV 1066, opening with a majestic overture scored for oboes, bassoon and strings, is performed alongside BWV 1067, which demands extreme virtuosity on the part of the solo flautist – particularly in its dazzling Badinerie. These are paired with suitable cantatas for the calendar year; Cantata 111 dating from 1725, in which Bach invokes the example of Jonah as an example of the resolution required to overcome the dangers of the world and cantata 81 with its powerful arias for Alto and Tenor. Fri 20.01.2017 Bach – Orchestral Suites BWV 1066 Edinburgh, (in C Major) & 1067 (in D Minor) Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit Queen’s Hall Cantata 111 (Whatever my God wills, may that always happen.) 7.30pm | £22-£10 Cantata 81 Jesus schläft, was soll ich hoffen 6.30pm Pre-concert talk (Jesus sleeps, what hope have I?) with Kate Molleson Director John Butt Sat 21.01.2017 Emily Mitchell Soprano Aberdeen, Meg Bragle Alto Tenor St Machars Nicholas Mulroy Flute 7.30pm | £20 & £15 Katy Bircher 9 Jonathan Manson (Cello and Viola da Gamba) 10 GIBBONS Do not repine fair sun In 1617, James VI of Scotland (I of England) made what was to be his first and last visit to his homeland, as part of an affair now known as the Scottish Progress. In a letter to the Scottish Privy Council, he described how he felt ‘a salmonlyke instinct…a great and naturall longing to see our native soyle and place of our birth and breeding.’ With the musical institution at Holyrood having fallen into disrepair, James imported both an organ and the singers from the Chapel Royal in London, whose journey north via ship was vividly documented. The occasion resulted in two fascinating pieces by Orlando Gibbons, chief organist of the Chapel and one of England’s foremost composers. In collaboration with Phantasm, one of the world’s leading viol consorts, we commemorate the 400th anniversary of this extraordinary historical episode. Wed 29.03.2017 Soloists of the Dunedin Consort Edinburgh, Canongate Kirk Phantasm Viol Consort 7.30pm | £20 & £15 11 Alice Evans (Violin) 12 JS BACH Matthew Passion When Bach composed his setting of the passion narrative from Matthew’s gospel for the Good Friday liturgy at Leipzig’s Thomaskirche in 1729, he could scarcely have imagined the universal connection that it was to make with musicians and audiences across the world. Even in the secular age, its relevance and impact are no less compelling. Whilst less immediately dramatic than the John Passion, its combination of choruses, arias and extended ariosos present unparalleled insight into and meditative reflections on some of our most profound emotional states. With just eight solo voices and a team of the very best specialist instrumentalists under the guest director Kristian Bezuidenhout, one of the world’s foremost keyboard artists and interpreters of eighteenth-century repertory, Dunedin Consort deliver an inimitably fresh performance of this monumental work, which still forces us to confront some of the central questions defining human existence. Wed 12.04.2017 JS Bach Matthew Passion BWV 244 Glasgow, New Auditorium, Royal Concert Hall Director 7pm | £25–£12 Kristian Bezuidenhout Thu 13.04.2017 Rachel Redmond Soprano Alto Perth Concert hall Clare Wilkinson Robert Davies Bass & Jesus 7pm | £25–£12 Good Friday 14.04.2017 Edinburgh, The Queen’s Hall 7pm | £25–£12 Supported by Dunard Fund 6pm Pre-concert talk with Kate Molleson 13 Nicholas Mulroy (tenor) 14 MONTEVERDI Love’s Fire; Love’s Ashes Claudio Monteverdi’s madrigals are a theatre of the senses. The murmur of the waves, an amorous glance, the coolness of water or the heat of the sun are all brought to life through the composer’s unparalleled gift for marrying text and music. Indeed, the music in these eight books stands alongside Schubert’s songs, or Bach’s cantatas, as one of the greatest collections of intimately personal music ever produced. This programme aims to showcase the ravishing beauty of these madrigals, as well as their expressive scope: profound darkness and blinding light; searing grief and amorous rapture. Like Shakespeare or Leonardo, there is a fresh twinkle to Monteverdi’s genius each time you look. This is music to stir the passions and move the soul, and – as the composer explicitly desired – to make us feel and know more vividly the pain and pleasure of being alive. Monteverdi Thur 18.05.2017 Ecco mormorar l’onde (book 2) St Machar’s Cathedral, Ch’io t’ami (book5) Aberdeen Parlo, misero, o taccio (book7) 7.30pm | £15 Unreserved Zefiro torna (scherzi musicali) Zefiro torna (book6) Rimanti in pace (book3) Fri 19.05.2017 Si dolce e’il tormento Mareel, Lerwick, Shetland Piagne e sospira (book4) 7.30pm | £16 Batto, qui pianse Ergasto (book6) Si, ch’io vorrei morire (book4) Sun 21.05.2017 Ohime dove’il mio ben? (book7) Sestina, ossia Lagrime Edinburgh, Methodist dell’Amante(book6) Church Nicolson Square 4pm | £20 & 15 Director Nicholas Mulroy 15 Claire Evans (Soprano) 16 WORKSHOPS Bruckner, Gabrieli & Schutz The ever-popular Dunedin Choral Workshops make a welcome return this winter. This season’s series explores music for voices and brass instruments by Renaissance luminaries Andrea Gabrieli, Giovanni Gabrieli and Heinrich Schütz, alongside works by the 19th-century masters Brahms and Bruckner, whose approach to vocal writing was transformed by their discoveries of these earlier composers. Participants will enjoy the opportunity of working on both some familiar and lesser-known repertory, with input and coaching from Dunedin’s professional singers taking into account the specific stylistic and technical challenges posed by these pieces. The intensive weekend workshop will be led by our musical director John Butt and the day workshops in Aberdeen and Glasgow, focusing on a select number of pieces, will be led by choral director Ed Caswell.