22 August 2010: The Rare Theatricall with Sarah Barnes
This concert has already taken place.
Background
The London-based early music instrumental and vocal group The Rare Theatricall was formed in 2008; it holds a Leverhulme Junior Chamber Music Fellowship at London’s Royal Academy of Music, where it has so far performed music from William Lawes to Monteverdi, and from John Jenkins to Schmelzer. Its director, Christopher Bucknall, is well known to Snape audiences as continuo player and chorus-master for performances of baroque works, including the 2009 Festival St Matthew Passion, in which Canadian soprano Sarah Barnes – singing at Cratfield – also performed. Christopher also assisted in The Turn of the Screw at Snape in 2009. Sarah has regularly been selected for vocal masterclasses in the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme, in July 2009 giving memorable performances of Britten’s Holy Sonnets of John Donne, guided by Sir Thomas Allen; she was the radiant solo soprano at Snape at Easter 2010 in the Haydn Harmoniemesse under Antonello Manacorda and returned to Snape in June 2010 for the English Song masterclasses.
Playing at Cratfield
The concert is at 3pm on Sunday 22 August 2010.
Concert programme
‘Music, thou divine, mysterious thing‘: The Rare Theatricall will be joined at Cratfield by soprano Sarah Barnes for a programme of sacred songs by Purcell and his colleagues William Croft and Jeremiah Clarke, partnered by Dietrich Buxtehude’s glorious and virtuoso cantatas for voice and strings. Purcell’s sacred songs share all the extravagance and gesture of his theatre works, but with a deeper, more poignant intensity, whilst Buxtehude’s solo cantatas glory in the voice as an instrument of praise and jubilation. Coupled with virtuoso instrumental music selected from Purcell and Buxtehude’s wonderful sets of sonatas, the concert promises a glorious combination of the sensual and the spiritual, of music at its most original and at its most profound.
CDs
[not yet!]