• Claire Tomlin soprano
• Joel Raymond oboe
• Sally Holman bassoon
• Essex Baroque Orchestra
• directed by Peter Holman

Handel’s dramatic and sensuous motet ‘Silete venti’ is one of his greatest pieces of Latin sacred music, and yet it was written in London in the 1720s probably for concert performance rather than for the Catholic church. 

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, who settled in London in the 1720s and was a star performer in Handel’s opera orchestra. 

The concert also includes the first modern performance of the orchestral version of Thomas Arne’s witty cantata Cymon and Iphigenia, recently discovered in Birmingham.

Claire Tomlin has been appearing at the Suffolk Villages Festival since she was a student, and is now much in demand as a solo and consort singer with such groups as the Monteverdi Choir and Ex Cathedra.  Joel Raymond and Sally Holman play regularly in Essex Baroque Orchestra and are outstanding period-instrument specialists of the younger generation.