Concert Season 2010–11
Sunday 31st October 2010 at 3:00 p.m.
Clothworkers’ Centenary Concert Hall, The School of Music, University of Leeds
Vivaldi – Venetian Vespers
Leeds Baroque Choir and Orchestra, directed by Peter Holman
This rich setting of “Vespers” for soprano soloist (Sarah Kelly) and double chorus and orchestra brings together some of Vivaldi’s most exciting choral writing for the liturgy and includes Nicolo Porpora’s Dixit Dominus in G.
This performance was supported by Friends of Leeds Baroque.
Sunday 21st November 2010 at 8.00 p.m.
Leeds Cathedral, Great George St, LS2 8BE
Monteverdi – Vespers of 1610
A liturgical performance for the Feast of the Presentation.
Leeds University Project Chorus with members of Leeds Baroque, Directed by Clive McClelland.
This year is the 400th anniversary of the publication of Monteverdi’s choral masterpiece, the 1610 Vespers. As the title page declares, it is not a single work, but a collection of pieces comprising “a Mass for six voices and Vespers for more, with some sacred concertos”. Although these pieces are intended to be sung to the Blessed Virgin Mary, there is no single occasion when all of them could conceivably be performed together.
For this concert, the aim is to reconstruct a complete sequence of music for 2nd Vespers at the Feast of the Presentation (21st November), using Monteverdi’s polyphonic settings of the five Vespers psalms, the hymn Ave maris stella and the seven-part Magnificat, interspersed with the seasonal plainsong antiphons, prayers and responses and concluding with an unaccompanied Marian motet. It promises to be an occasion both magnificent and devotional.
Sunday 13th February 2011 at 3.00 p.m.
Clothworkers’ Centenary Concert Hall, The School of Music, University of Leeds
C.P.E. Bach – St Matthew Passion (1769)
Stephen Muir (tenor); Leeds Baroque Choir and Orchestra, Directed by Peter Holman
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), J.S. Bach’s second son, composed twenty-one settings of the Passion for performance during Lent in Hamburg; he moved there from Berlin in 1768, succeeding Telemann as civic director of music.
Nearly all of them were believed to have been destroyed during World War II, until the manuscripts were rediscovered in Kiev in 1999. The 1769 St Matthew Passion is the first and most elaborate of the series, and was given a number of performances in Hamburg churches during February and March, ending on Good Friday, 24th March. Like all German Passion settings (including those by J.S. Bach), it is a pasticcio to some extent: it borrows some crowd choruses, chorales and recitative sections from his father’s St Matthew Passion, and the first chorus from his own setting of the Magnificat. However, it is much shorter, more dramatic and generally more modern in style than J.S. Bach’s setting, with an orchestra including horns, obbligato bassoons and timpani. Rarely performed (this may be only the second British performance) this will be a concert not to be missed!
Saturday 9th April 2011 at 7.30 p.m.
Bradford Cathedral
The Glories of Venice
Monteverdi, Gabrieli, Vivaldi, Lotti
The Bradford Chorale with Leeds Baroque, Conducted by Paul Dewhurst
Crispian Steele-Perkins (trumpet); Peter Holman (harpsichord); Clare Walker (soprano); Joanna Gamble (mezzo-soprano); Stephen Muir (tenor)
Sunday 19th June 2011 at 3.00 p.m.
Leeds University Great Hall
Scenes from Molière
Leeds Baroque Choir and Orchestra, directed by Peter Holman
The comedies of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, alias Molière, (1622-1673) have been central to the European theatrical tradition from the seventeenth century to the present, though they are rarely revived with their original music. In this specially researched programme, Leeds Baroque explores the music written for Molière’s plays by his great contemporaries Jean-Baptiste Lully and Marc-Antoine Charpentier, including Charpentier’s prologue to Le Malade Imaginaire (1673), effectively a miniature self-contained opera, and Lully’s spectacular concluding ballet for George Dandin (1668), in which opposing groups debate the merits of Love and Bacchus. Also included are Molière’s two famous satirical mock ceremonies, of Turks in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670), set by Lully, and of doctors in Le Malade Imaginaire, set by Charpentier.
Pre-concert talk by Richard Andrews
2:15 p.m., Lecture Theatre 1, Leeds University School of Music
Music into drama: Italy into France?
Why did Moliere introduce music into his spoken comedies? Were he and his composers just reacting to demands from Louis XIV? In the background, though, Jean-Baptiste Lully was plotting to monopolize music theatre and create an opera house in Paris. But opera was a form invented in, and identified with, Italy. What was going on here? How far was ‘classical’ French theatre already a product of Italian models?
“What an exciting ensemble, music cunningly articulated …every work delivered different colours and emotions.”