This programme brings together some of the greatest contemporary English music for the classic ‘trio sonata’ ensemble of two violins, bass viol and chamber organ, ranging from the famous three-part fantasias by Orlando Gibbons to sonatas by John Blow and Henry Purcell.

This programme contrasts concertos by Torelli & Manfredini with concertos for bassoon and viola d’amore by Vivaldi. The programme also includes the delightful Cantata Pastorale by Alessandro Scarlatti and the first East Anglian performance of Handel’s youthful Gloria, rediscovered in London earlier this year.

With dramatic ensembles and a narrative accompanied by a consort of viols, Schütz’s remarkable Resurrection History of 1623 stands at the head of a tradition that led to J. S. Bach’s oratorios and passions. Also included are several of his smaller sacred dramatic works, and the austerely beautiful double-choir Magnificat of 1671, the composer’s swansong.

This programme offers a cross-section of Thomas Linley’s remarkable music, from his earliest major work to his masterpiece, the short oratorio The Song of Moses, composed only a few months before his death, which will be receiving its first concert performance since 1777.

This programme explores the music young aristocrats might have heard in Italian cities, and on the long and arduous route through Germany and across the Alps. It includes sonatas, dances and variations by Castello, Bertoli, Frescobaldi, Rosenmüller, Böddecker and others, and features the rarely-heard virtuoso repertory for the dulcian, the predecessor of the Baroque bassooon.

This year the Christmas concert surveys music for the Christmas season from Advent to Epiphany, featuring work by J. S. Bach, Buxtehude, Schütz, Tunder, Bernard, Schmelzer, Biber and others.

In this dazzling new programme, trumpet sonatas and concertos by Torelli, Stradella, Manfredini and Vivaldi are contrasted with intense works for four-part strings by Cazzati, Legrenzi and Alessandro Scarlatti.

Bach’s St Matthew Passion is one of the great masterpieces of Western music. This performance, with a distinguished cast of soloists, is a rare chance to hear the work complete and in German using the sort of forces Bach envisaged. We believe it is the first British performance of the work as conceived around 1725.

The programme will include the A minor violin concerto, one of Bach’s greatest tributes to Vivaldi, and two Brandenburg Concertos, the brilliant no. 3 in G major, and the intimate no. 6 in B flat. There will be two less familiar works, the F major oboe concerto and the great C minor concerto for violin and oboe, the probable first versions of works that only survive as harpsichord arrangements made by Bach in Leipzig in the 1730s.

This programme evokes midnight mass in a Baroque Austrian church, and includes Mozart’s Mass in D major K194, pastorellas by Haydn and his central European contemporaries, a violin concerto by Haydn, and seasonal instrumental music by J. J. Fux and Gregor Werner.

Schubert’s String Quartet in D minor D810, called ‘Death and the Maiden’ because it contains a set of variations on his own song of the same title, has always been deservedly popular since it was composed in 1824. In this programme it is contrasted with one of Mendelssohn’s greatest quartets, op. 44, no. 1 in D major (1838), and rarities by Luigi Cherubini and Louis Spohr.

Handel wrote the first version of Esther in 1718, while he was working for the Duke of Chandos at Canons near Edgware. As Handel’s first English oratorio, and the prototype for later and better-known works, its historical importance has long been recognised, though it is rarely performed, particularly in its intimate original version.

Handel’s dramatic and sensuous motet ‘Silete venti’ is one of his greatest pieces of Latin sacred music. In this concert it is contrasted with music by Handel’s English contemporaries, including string concertos by John Stanley and William Boyce, a bassoon concerto by John Humphries and an oboe concerto by the great Italian oboist Giuseppe Sammartini. The concert also includes the first modern performance of the orchestral version of Thomas Arne’s witty cantata Cymon and Iphigenia.

In this concert, a complete performance of Messiah Part I is contrasted with works inspired by Messiah, including the striking anthem ‘The people that walked in darkness’ (1790) by John Hill of Rugby and the delightful ‘How beauteous are their feet’ (1817) by William Matthews of Nottingham. The concert concludes with a rare performance of Handel’s anthem ‘How beautiful are the feet’, which incorporates reworked versions of several movements from Messiah.

L’Amfiparnaso (‘The Twin Peaks of Mount Parnassus’ – that is, the union of music and comedy) is the best-known and greatest madrigal comedy of the Italian Renaissance. In this highly dramatic performance, Vecchi’s comedy is contrasted with serious madrigals of love, passion and despair by Claudio Monteverdi and his great English contemporary Thomas Tomkins.

This concert brings together three major works that reveal his musical preoccupations. His remarkable Symphony in Bb (1802) is the only English symphony that can stand comparison with Haydn’s London symphonies, while the delightful ‘Ave maris stella’ (1786) is scored for two sopranos and strings. Wesley thought the ‘Confitebor tibi Domine’ (1799), a setting of Psalm 110, his finest work.

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, we bring together two of his late masterpieces: Symphony no. 40 in G minor K550 and the Clarinet Concerto in A major K622, contrasted with earlier and less familiar works.

A sequence of vesper psalms and a Magnificat richly scored for solo voices, choir and five-part strings. They come from a collection published by Biber in 1693.

Savadi means ‘in an another way’ in Latvian, and the group is unique in performing the Baroque repertory for one and two sopranos with the beautiful and flexible accompaniment of the Italian triple harp. In this programme they contrast intense and dramatic solos and duets by Claudio Monteverdi, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Barbara Strozzi and others with music from seventeenth-century England, including songs and dialogues by John Dowland, Robert Johnson, Richard Dering, John Coprario and Henry Purcell.

Bach’s Mass in B minor is probably the greatest religious work from the Baroque period. It has its origins in a separate Sanctus written for a Christmas service at St Thomas’s church in Leipzig in 1724 and a Kyrie and Gloria written for the Dresden court in 1733.

Three contrasted seasonal vocal works written by, or attributed to, J.S. Bach. The programme also features Telemann’s fine Concerto in B flat.

This programme ranges from Corelli’s famous ‘La Folia’ variations, his op.5, no.12 of 1700, to Thomas Linley junior’s virtuosic A major sonata, written while he was studying in Florence with Pietro Nardini in the late 1760s. It also includes Pietro Locatelli’s op.6 no.6 sonata, Francesco Veracini’s op.2 no.12, and Tartini’s ‘Devil’s Trill’ sonata. There is also harpsichord music by the Scarlattis, variations on ‘La Folia’ by Alessandro and sonatas by Domenico.

Alexander’s Feast, or The Power of Music, Handel’s fourth English oratorio, was written in 1736 and based on John Dryden’s Ode on St Cecilia’s Day. Handel responded to the varied moods and situations with some of his finest and most colourful music. This rare performance of the original 1736 version uses vocal and instrumental forces similar in size to Handel’s and follows his practice of introducing concertos at strategic points during the oratorio.

Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643–1704) was the greatest composer of late seventeenth-century France, equivalent to Henry Purcell in England. Recreating the spirit of a French midnight mass, to Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit (Midnight Mass) we have added other suitable Christmas music, including works by Henry Du Mont (1610–1684) and Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (1676–1749).

In this programme, the award-winning young chamber choir Stile Antico explores the connections between the Biblical Song of Solomon and Marian devotion in the sixteenth century. Sumptuous motets by the great Continental Renaissance composers, including Palestrina, Victoria, Gombert, Guerrero, Lassus and Clemens non Papa, are contrasted with the great plain song hymns ‘Regina coeli’, ‘Alma redemptoris mater’, ‘Salve regina’ and ‘Ave regina coelorum’.

As part of our occasional series exploring the music of eighteenth-century English composers, this concert celebrates the music of William Boyce (1711–1779).

Works by Monteverdi are contrasted with Christmas motets and sonatas by his colleagues and contemporaries, including Tarquinio Merula, Giovanni Antonio Rigatti, Francesco Cavalli and his German follower Heinrich Schütz. This passionate and operatic music will come as a revelation to those who only know Monteverdi’s early Vespers of 1610.

Trio Goya contrast Haydn’s late Trio no. 27 in C major and the Trio in D major by the English composer Stephen Storace (friend and pupil of Mozart) with Mozart’s Sonata in B flat major for violin and piano, K454, and Beethoven’s Variations in F major for violoncello and piano, based on an aria from Mozart’s Magic Flute.

Haydn’s Oratorio The Creation was first performed in public in Vienna in 1799. This performance marks the 200th anniversary of Haydn’s death on 31 May 1809, and is a rare opportunity to hear a historically informed account of his masterpiece with an orchestra of Classical instruments and a choir similar in size to that used for the composer’s last public appearance.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, written for the Christmas festivities in Leipzig in 1734, is a set of six self-contained but linked cantatas rather than a conventional oratorio. This concert features cantatas 1 and 3, as well as his cantata ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ and Telemann’s delightful concerto in E minor for recorder and flute.

This fascinating programme explores music written in England between about 1680, when Henry Purcell was in his prime, and 1720, when Handel was well established in London. It contrasts works by Purcell and his followers William Croft, Raphael Courteville, and John Weldon with music in the Italian style by immigrant composers, including Handel, Giovanni Battista Draghi, Nicola Matteis, J.C. Pepusch and Nicola Haym.

In this programme elaborate and expressive motets for Holy Week by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, François Couperin and Michel de Lalande are contrasted with pieces for harpsichord, theorbo and bass viol by Louis Couperin, Robert de Visée, Johann Jacob Froberger and Marin Marais.

Charles Jennens compiled the vivid text – concerning the plagues of Egypt, the exodus of the Israelites and the Song of Moses – directly from the Bible, and Handel matched it with music of unparalleled splendour: the choir is the main protagonist, often divided into two for dramatic effect, and is accompanied by a large orchestra, including trumpets, timpani, trombones, flutes, oboes, bassoons, strings and two organs.

The folk-like style of Joseph Haydn’s charming Missa Sancti Nicolai seems intended to evoke the music of the shepherds in the Christmas story. In this programme the mass movements are surrounded by other music, as they would have been at the time. The delightful D major horn concerto by Johann Michael Haydn, Joseph’s younger brother, is played during the Communion. The programme is completed by Joseph Haydn’s Cantilena pro Adventu, an Advent aria in operatic style, and several choral pastorellas, written in the same rustic Christmas style as the Mass.

In this programme Trevor Pinnock plays a selection of some of the greatest music written for the harpsichord by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century German and French composers.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s setting of the Magnificat is one of his finest and most popular religious works. The concert includes three mature festive cantatas that also use a large orchestra, including three trumpets and timpani. The ‘Ascension Oratorio’ ‘Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen’, performed on 19 May 1735, is notable for its concerto-like first chorus and the aria ‘Ach, bleibe doch’, the first version of the Agnus Dei of the B minor Mass. The Whitsun cantata ‘O ewiges Feuer, O Ursprung der Liebe’ begins with one of Bach’s greatest and most complex choruses.

In this concert five of Handel’s finest op. 6 concertos are contrasted with three works, with solo trumpet, by Italian composers connected with Handel.

This concert brings together vivid settings of Biblical scenes by English seventeenth-century composers and their great German contemporary Heinrich Schütz.

David Owen Norris devised this programme to suit the historic Broadwood piano at St Mary’s Church in Boxford. It begins with Mendelssohn’s innovative Songs without Words op. 19, followed by the Klavierstücke op. 118 by Brahms. He then plays William Sterndale Bennett’s extraordinary ‘Maid of Orleans’ Sonata op. 46. The concert ends with the full original version of Elgar’s barnstorming Concert Allegro op. 46, the composer’s only major solo piano work.

For this concert we have assembled a sequence of Vivaldi’s music for Vespers of the Virgin Mary, consisting of a sequence of psalms, the hymn Salve Regina, and the powerful G minor setting of the Magnificat RV610.

Handel’s Fireworks Music, written for a celebration in Green Park in 1749 to mark the Peace of Aix la Chapelle, is an appropriate choice for a concert during the Bonfire Night weekend. The sparkling and delicate Water Music suite is an excellent foil to the Fireworks Music. The programme is completed by Handel’s Concerto Grosso in A minor.

The Christmas Story is one of the masterpieces of Heinrich Schütz’s old age. The first half of the concert is an anthology of seasonal music by Schütz’s German contemporaries, including settings of Lutheran chorales by Michael Praetorius and Samuel Scheidt for divided choirs of voices and instruments, a virtuoso duet by Schütz’s friend Johann Hermann Schein, and instrumental canzonas for cornetts, trombones, dulcian, strings and organ by Schütz’s teacher Giovanni Gabrieli.

Brahms’s Trio in E flat, op. 40 for horn, violin and piano, is one of the last great works for the natural horn, memorably evoking nature and the hunt. There will also be a delightful trio by Heinrich Herzogenberg (1843-1900), an Austrian friend and follower of Brahms, and violin and horn solos by Schubert and Schumann.

This is the first solo lute recital SVF has promoted, and it is fitting that it is given by Fred Jacobs, one of Europe’s most prominent lutenists. In this programme, he uses a ten-course lute to play early seventeenth-century music by John Dowland and his contemporaries.

Handel’s oratorio Susanna, composed in 1748 and performed the following year, is one of his freshest and most delightful works, described by the scholar Winton Dean as ‘an opera of village life, and a comic opera at that’.

SVF favourite Timothy Travers-Brown joins our resident Baroque orchestra in an exciting programme of eighteenth-century music for countertenor and orchestra.

Joglaresa ring in Christmas and the New Year with voices, fidel, harp, bells and bagpipes, singing and playing carols, lullabies, dance tunes and wassails.

Buxtehude was Bach’s greatest predecessor; his best-known work is ‘Membra Jesu nostri’. We perform it with Bach’s first masterpiece, the ‘Actus tragicus’, and other music by Buxtehude. The concert features rich and varied combinations of solo voices, choir, violins, viols, recorders and organ.

J S Bach’s Mass in B minor is arguably the greatest religious work from the Baroque period and sums up his career as a composer. This performance incorporates recent advances in our knowledge of how such works were performed in the eighteenth century.

A pre concert talk by Mark Bills

The painter Thomas Gainsborough was intensely musical and included musicians in his circle of friends, including Charles Frederick Abel and John Christian Bach. We explore music composed by Gainsborough’s friends, much of it performed at the Bach-Abel concerts.

We contrast festive anthems, carols and other sacred music for voices and viols by Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, John Amner, Martin Peerson and George Jeffreys with seasonal secular music bringing Shakespeare’s England vividly to life, including arrangements of popular songs by Thomas Ravenscroft and Richard Dering.

The programme consists of five masterpieces from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the piano was developing rapidly and composers were revelling in the the possibilities it offered them.

BBC Music Magazine described Rachel Podger as ‘Britain’s finest period violinist’. Guardian Angel is her personal exploration of the Baroque repertory for solo violin, including virtuoso music by J.S. Bach, Nicola Matteis, Giuseppe Tartini and Heinrich Biber.

A feast of colourful and joyful Christmas music from around Baroque Europe, with carols, motets, and instrumental music by Giovanni Gabrieli, Michael Praetorius, Heinrich Biber, Henry Purcell, Georg Philipp Telemann and others.

We celebrate St Valentine’s Day with a delightful programme on the theme of love in its various aspects, sacred and secular and from first rapture to profound grief. The programme features work by Charpentier, Blow, Purcell, Dumont, Couperin, Draghi and Monteverdi.

‘Acis and Galatea’ is one of Handel’s most memorable and popular English theatrical works. We perform the rarely heard revised version of the work, as performed by Handel in London and Dublin between 1739 and 1742. ‘The Masque of Cupid and Bacchus’, written by Henry Purcell for Shakespeare’s play ‘Timon of Athens’, is a delightful curtain-raiser.

Sebastian Comberti makes a welcome return to SVF with a programme bringing together three of the greatest 19th-century sonatas for violoncello and piano, written roughly 40 years apart.

This special concert, promoted by Gainsborough’s House in association with SVF, celebrates Sonia Wronkowska’s extraordinary discovery of at least 25 unknown viola da gamba sonatas by Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-87) from the collection of Count Joachim Carl von Maltzan.

Our traditional December concert focuses on one of the greatest and best loved Christmas works, Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s ‘Messe du minuit pour Noël’. In the second half, we explore Christmas music from early 17th-century Germany and Spain to 19th-century Yorkshire, ending with John Foster’s famous setting of ‘While Shepherds watched their flocks by night’.

A programme that brings together some of the greatest Baroque music for viola da gamba and harpsichord, with extraordinary pieces for solo harpsichord. J S Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue has been a favourite with virtuoso keyboard players ever since it was written, while Handel’s monumental Chaconne in G is one of his greatest keyboard works.

We continue our ‘Bach spring’ with a special concert of three mature sacred masterpieces: his Mass in A major, Cantata ‘O ewiges Feuer’ and the Easter Oratorio.

This unusual and fascinating programme, much of it for divided choir and six-part strings, ranges from Michael Praetorius’s extraordinary italianate setting of the Lutheran chorale ‘Wachet auf’ to Agostino Steffani’s great Stabat Mater.

Gabriel’s Message is a vivid celebration of Advent and Christmas. Songs, carols and dances from Mediaeval England evoke the sounds of winter, from harsh winds to crackling fires, from a peal of bells to a baby’s cry.

Our series of Bach’s chamber music continues, with sonatas from the great set for violin and obbligato harpsichord BWV 1014-1019.

Semele is a lively retelling of the story of Jupiter’s pursuit of the Theban princess. It is a highly dramatic and effective response to the text, in an attractive idiom mixing English and Italian elements – think Purcell crossed with Corelli. It deserves to be much better known.

A richly rewarding musical journey through the Christmas season with Johann Sebastian Bach, featuring Cantata 61 (with a dramatic setting of Martin Luther’s Advent chorale), Cantatas 2 & 4 of the Christmas Oratorio (featuring choirs of woodwind instruments and hunting horns) and the superb but little known Cantata 65, which uses horns, recorders, oboes da caccia and strings to depict the exotic world of the Wise Men.

Author, broadcasterand virtuoso pianist David Owen Norris presents a specially devised recital exploring the role of counterpoint in J.S. Bach’s music, and the creative ways composers from Mozart to Vaughan Williams responded to it. The programme includes a complete performance of Mendelssohn’s Six Preludes and Fugues Op. 35.

A rare chance to hear some of the grand ceremonial motets and instrumental pieces for divided choirs written by Giovanni Gabrieli for St Mark’s and other Venetian institutions around 1600. The second half of the concert celebrates Gabrieli’s influence in Germany around 1620.

A concert to transport you to the splendour of Baroque Salzburg around 1700. As usual we are joined by a choir of local schoolchildren, trained by Tom Stapleton.

A programme of superb 17th‐century music for voices, viol consort and continuo. We end with a haunting funeral aria by Johann Christoph Bach, a memorial to Julia King (1958‐2019), a longstanding and valued member of Psalmody.

Theodora, the masterpiece of Handel’s old age, was said to be his favourite oratorio. Handel responded to the tragic drama with music of superb quality, by turns passionate, dramatic and full of pathos.

We very much hope this concert will take place. We must ask you to be aware, though, that it may have to be cancelled at short notice.

We very much hope that this concert will go ahead as planned. Full details to be announced as soon as possible.

THIS PERFORMANCE IS SOLD OUT BUT THERE ARE STILL TICKETS AVAILABLE FOR THE REPEAT PERFORMANCE AT 6PM

NOW POSTPONED
A concert of seventeenth-century music exploring the striking combination of bass voice, solo violin and continuo. Socially distanced and conforming to government guidelines.

A special concert to thank our supporters during the COVID-19 crisis. Socially distanced and conforming to government guidelines.

Due to popular demand, a second performance of our special concert to thank our supporters during the COVID-19 crisis. Socially distanced and conforming to government guidelines.

SOLD OUT

A REPEAT PERFORMANCE!

Our one-hour, socially-distanced Christmas concert

The second of two performances of this one-hour, socially-distanced Christmas concert

Catherine Martin (violin) & Jan Waterfield (chamber organ)

All the best music in a sequence lasting about an hour and a half without an interval

Julian Perkins & Emma Abate (piano duet)

Coronation music from Charles II to George III

The Age of Monteverdi: Music for solo voice, obbligato cornett and basso continuo from the dawn of the Baroque era.

Scenes from Molière: pre-concert talk by Professor Richard Andrews, University of Leeds

music by Jean-Baptiste Lully & Marc-Antoine Charpentier