Following the success of our Heinrich Schütz concert at the last festival, we present a rich cross-section of the music by his great contemporary Claudio Monteverdi, ranging from his early years at the Mantuan court to his old age as the maestro of St Mark’s in Venice and taking in opulent sacred works, richly scored concerted madrigals, dramatic scenes and virtuoso solo songs. The centrepiece is a rare performance of the dramatic madrigal Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, a vivid, poignant and innovative setting for three voices, strings and continuo of Tasso’s poem about hand-to-hand combat between a Christian knight and a mysterious Saracen adversary who is eventually revealed to be a woman and his lover. Other highlights include the extraordinary madrigal ‘Con che soavità’, scored for soprano with three spatially separated groups of instruments, the beautiful setting of the hymn ‘Ave maris stella’ from the 1610 Vespers and the joyful setting of the psalm ‘Beatus vir’ – together with the madrigal ‘Chiome d’oro’ on which it is based.

Peter Holman’s vivid performances of seventeenth-century music have delighted audiences at the Festival and further afield for many years. In this concert he is joined by two of our regular vocal soloists, our resident chamber choir Psalmody, and the John Jenkins Consort, named after East Anglia’s greatest seventeenth-century composer and bringing together leading violin, viol and continuo players associated with the Festival.