The festival will run from the 14th to the 18th May.
This May, St John’s Smith Square and the Southbank Sinfonia have confirmed that they will be presenting a programme featuring some of the world’s finest Baroque
talent with the London Festival of Baroque Music 2024: Overtures – a love letter to Baroque chamber music.
The festival is set to feature 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, to perform a mixture of chamber, choral, and solo works.
Roger Sayer will open this year’s festival 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.
It will then continue 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, the familiar tunes of Fandango to the dramatic crescendos of Overtures as well as the symphonies of Nebra, Conforto, and Corselli sweep listeners away, alongside unexpected surprises from rising talents like Baset, Castel, and Mele.
The lunchtime concerts will continue 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.
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 festival will then culminates with Streams of Pleasure presented by Early Opera Company, with Iestyn Davies and Mary Bevan.
To book tickets for any of the events in the festival visit: https://www.sjss.org.uk/whats-on