Below are sample programmes that show an example of the repertoire that we perform. Within our recital programmes we also frequently include solo pieces if it is appropriate to the programme required. When asked to give a recital we will liaise with the venue to establish the most suitable programme for the length and type of concert desired. Our short spoken introductions make our recitals easily understood and enjoyed by all.

“Alles jauchzet, alles lacht”: sacred music for eighteenth-century Hamburg

Handel composed a set of nine sacred arias between 1724-1726 when he was living in London. These arias were settings of German texts, taken from a collection by Barthold Heinrich Brockes and published in Hamburg, set to music developed in the Italianate style. The texts all relate to the joy and beauty found in the natural world which is taken as evidence of the abundant goodness of the creator God. In “Meine Seele hört im Sehen” the singer observes how all things rejoice and laugh to exalt the creator. Handel captures the blossoming of nature in springtime with joyful music. “Flammende Rose” takes the rose as an example of God’s creation. No eye which sees the rose’s beauty can fail to recognise that it was made by the hand of God.

It is thought that Handel intended these arias to be performed in Hamburg, the city in which his friend and contemporary, Georg Philipp Telemann, resided and was director of music for the churches.

Less well-known than Handel’s nine arias and sadly rarely performed are Telemann’s seventy-two cantatas from his cycle “Harmonischer Gottesdienst” which was published in Hamburg in 1725. However, Handel himself points to these works as a source of inspiration for his own composition. Telemann’s cantatas are beautifully crafted, small-scale works written for private, home or church devotion in Hamburg and thus very flexible in performance possibilities.

The two Telemann cantatas performed here were written specifically for recorder obligato whereas the Handel arias were originally written for violin, but suit the tone of the recorder just as well.

 

Nymphs and Shepherds

Pepusch published his set of English cantatas in 1710 at a time when Italian music and culture in general were very fashionable in London. Pepusch was one of the first English composers to adopt the Italian model of the cantata. His aim in doing this was to demonstrate that the English language was just as capable of expressing the different parts of the cantata – both recitative and aria – as the Italian language. It also enabled an English audience to fully grasp and appreciate the meaning of the text which was particularly important when it came to the rather obscure form of recitative. The subject matter for these cantatas is taken from pastoral, Arcadian texts in which figures from classical mythology – mostly nymphs and shepherds – give vent to their passions by singing and piping for their absent lovers. Hence the recorder was the obligato instrument of choice as it imitated the shepherd’s pipe.

By the mid-eighteenth century the Italian musical model began to lose its appeal in London with the da capo form fading out. The music of Thomas Arne reflected the new trend for major keys and themes of patriotism, although the charming settings of Shakespeare’s texts, “Under the Greenwood Tree” and “Where the Bee Sucks” still focus on pastoral subject matter.

Writing over half a century earlier, Purcell’s music is stylistically very distinct from Pepusch and Arne. The text of “Not all my Torments” is set as a dramatic, free recitative which captures the sentiments of tormented anguish and rejection with angular intervals and changes of tempi. The original manuscript of the plaint “O let me weep” indicates that the obligato line should be played on the violin. However the plaintive quality of the recorder captures the mood perfectly.

 

Desperanza

The themes of love, hope and despair are common in the Baroque repertoire for voice, recorder and continuo. This programme explores these themes as they are experienced by the singer yearning for their loved one. The instrumental additions demonstrate how instrumentalists too can ‘pull at the heart strings’ taking the listener on a real emotional journey throughout the duration of this concert.