After our recent recording 'Three Baroque Tenors' with Ian Bostridge, it is wonderful to open the season with him at Wigmore Hall. Indeed, Ian is a featured artist at the Wigmore over the coming months, and our 2012 concerts with him feature distinguished guests Angelika Kirchschlager and the Aurora Orchestra in repertoire not always Baroque!
Another recent recording success for The English Concert has been our first CD with Elizabeth Watts – Bach Cantatas and Arias. We return with her and Laurence Cummings to Wigmore Hall in November to perform less well-known but nonetheless superb vocal works by Alessandro Scarlatti.
After a sell-out US tour last year with Alice Coote, who sings with us at Wigmore Hall in 2012, we travel to the States this autumn with countertenor Andreas Scholl, focussing on Purcell’s semi-operas, Fairy Queen and King Arthur. Tours to Germany, Holland and Belgium will mark the welcome return of Vesselina Kasarova, Mark Padmore, and Lucy Crowe, whose debut recital CD with us, Il caro Sassone, will be released later this year.
The Choir of The English Concert is again moving to the forefront of our activities, first with Schütz's Christmas Story as part of this year's St John's, Smith Square Christmas Festival, and next year in the closing concert of the Leipzig Bachfest, with Bach's monumental Mass in B minor.
Recent residencies at London museums include the V&A in 2009 for their International Baroque exhibition, and our first Master Class at the Foundling Museum in 2010. Next year we return to this gem of a museum, with its strong Handel associations, to present concerts during a Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens exhibition and to give a second Master Class.
All in all, a great deal of wonderful music and music-making to look forward to. I hope very much to welcome you during the coming months.
Harry Bicket - Artistic Director
