Had you ever heard of the London Handel Festival? I hadn’t although I am not (or at least I wasn’t) that great a Handel fan so maybe that is not surprising. And I only got to hear of it this year through an alert from one of my favourite venues, StoneNest in the heart of London’s West End. They were hosting one of the festival’s first events in their Forces of Nature festival.
This was In the Realms of Sorrow – four early Handel Cantatas – all lengthy and melodramatic laments based on classical tragedies. Passionately sung and danced in the wonderfully atmospheric brick chapel that is StoneNest, they were totally mesmerising. To get a tiny flavour check in to this post on their Instagram feed.
So inspired was I by this performance that I immediately booked up for the next event – the delightful Norwegian violinist Bjarte Eike with Barokksolistene group in St George’s Hanover Square (Handel’s home church). Barokksolistene work in the field of ‘historically informed performance’ – which includes not only ‘serious’ composers but folk songs and and alehouse drinking songs.
For the festival they had brought a small group of their players who were joined by students from the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama – and a dancer. None other than Steve Player who I had seen only weeks before jigging and prancing with the Vauxhall Band. Pieces by Handel, Purcell and Rebel were interspersed with Norwegian folk tunes which got ever more riotous ending up with the musicians abandoning their music stands and dancing and playing their way down the nave and out of the chapel. They were obviously having such fun that it was impossible not to get caught up – and the performance ended with a standing ovation.
So I signed up for the next event…..
This was in The Shoreditch Treehouse – well who could resist that?
This was a more restrained, although no less enjoyable event with the Hermes Experiment – an unusual combination of harp, clarinet, double bass and soprano – with solo interventions from a recorder. They played Handel, Barbara Strozzi, Elizabeth Jaquet de la Guerre and their own improvisations while we sipped our fizz under the Treehouse’s fairy lights.
And finally (well, finally for me as there were other events including their singing competition that I did not get to) Scipione back in St George’s Hanover Square with the Early Opera Company.
Like most of Handel’s operas, Scipione is a lengthy saga drawn from classical history in which a confusing number of people fall in love with each other, lose their nearest and dearest, get imprisoned, get reprieved, get executed – all the while singing a delightful succession of arias and recitatives which to the untutored Handelian ear (like mine) sound pretty similar but equally charming. Be it said that after three hours on the singularly uncomfortable St George’s pews, I was still up for more – which certainly says something not only for Handel but for the flawless singing and playing of the Early Opera Company.
So what a delightful discovery. I now cannot wait for next year’s festival in the hopes that it will be as imaginative, exciting and enjoyable as this one’s has been. Sign up to their newsletter to be ahead of the game – and thank you StoneNest for alerting me.
Upcoming Salon Music concerts:
Sunday 2nd April – Highgate Society Lunchtime concert
Jonah Phillips and his group – piano, bass & drums
Book here – £15 to include copious quantites of Bucks Fizz
Sunday 7th May – evening – The Hanover Square Quartet
Music by Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn and Emilie Mayer.
Book here – £28 to include buffet supper and wine
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