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, who has appeared at the Festival many times accompanying singers and playing in ensembles, most recently as a member of The Parley of Instruments in Charpentier’s Actéon at the 2011 Festival. Fred studied at the Sweelinck Conservatoire in Amsterdam and now gives solo recitals and plays in Baroque ensembles all over Europe.

He is particularly known for exploring the riches of seventeenth-century lute music; in this programme he uses a ten-course lute to play early seventeenth-century music by John Dowland and his contemporaries, including Dowland’s famous Lachrimae pavan, an expressive pavan by Robert Johnson, who wrote music for Shakespeare’s late plays, a virtuoso suite by the eccentric German-Italian lutenist Johann Hieronymous Kapsberger, and dances by the French composers Robert Ballard, Jacques Gaultier and René Mesangeau – the last from a recently discovered autograph manuscript.

A recent review in the journal Early Music characterised a solo CD by Fred Jacobs as ‘magnificent music, perfectly expressed’, and we are sure that the same will be true of this concert.