We open our summer online festival with a journey through the heart of musical London, including pieces performed in and around the church in the 17th and 18th centuries. Featuring well-known movements from Purcell’s Abdelazer and Handel’s Water Music, alongside part of Mozart’s London Sketchbook composed during his childhood London residency together with music by Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, an extraordinary composer, violinist and conductor born in 1745 in Guadeloupe.
A programme of some of Bach’s most beautiful and virtuosic choral motets on themes of religious longing, comfort and praise, intertwined with the haunting Cello Suite No. 4 and the celebrated Cello Suite No 1.
A portrait of Venice in the Baroque period, with a performance of Vivaldi’s Gloria sung by an all-female vocal ensemble, just as in Vivaldi’s first performance at the Ospedale della Pietà. The concert also features one of the many solo vocal introductions he composed for the work, as well as madrigals by Barbara Strozzi, one of the most illustrious singers and composers of her time.