London Festival of Baroque Music, St John's Smith Square

The London Festival of Baroque Music is back for another five day run. This time around, the theme is very broad indeed – women in baroque. Consequently, over nine concerts largely held in St John’s Smith Square, the festival will showcase some of the our finest female musicians and vocalists. Although baroque music has become a popular fixture of London’s classical scene, it is rare to experience so much work from outside a selective handful of composers; the festival offers an admirable variety of works and interpreters. Each concert, with its carefully curated theme, seeks to inform as well as delight.
Proceedings begin at 6pm on Friday 15^th May, with a pre-concert talk from lecturer Dr Berta Joncus on female baroque musicians in history. At 7.30pm, the programme properly opens with Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan, performing a selection of Bach’s concertos and cantatas. Soprano Hana Blažíková, one of the world’s foremost early music singers, leads as soloist.
Saturday 16^th brings a diverse line-up of concerts, starting at 4pm with Concerto Soave, soprano Maria Christina Kiehr and keyboardist Jean-Marc Aymes. They will focus on the seventeenth century’s relatively unsung female composers, including Strozzi, Caccini, Leonardo and Assandra. At 7pm, Carolyn Sampson will sing songs written in for legendary soprano Marie Fel, a favourite of Rameau. The evening ends at 9.30pm with Jonathan Rees and Vladmir Waltham playing viols.
At 10.30am on the 17^th there will be a baroque singing workshop led by the OAE’s Robert Howarth, while at 2pm the festival moves to Marylebone’s Wallace Collection for the afternoon. First, there will be a gallery tour looking at music and dance in French art; then, at 3.30pm, harpsichordist Béatrice Martin, violinist Nicolette Moonen and The Bach Players will dedicate a concerto to Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, the first professional female composer. Back in St John’s at 7.30pm, the weekend closes with the all-female Schola Pietatis Antonio Vivaldi and the OAE, performing Vivaldi’s masterworks.
The festival continues into the next week with three more concerts. At 1.05pm on the 18^th, soprano Rowan Pierce and Medici deliver a smattering of Bach, Handel, Telemann and others, while at 7.30pm Julia Doyle and Grace Davidson take on Couperin’s Leçons de ténèbres, composed to be sung by nuns.
As has become an annual traditional, the season’s final night will be held in the hallowed nave of Westminster Abbey, at 7.30pm on Tuesday 19^th. Its own choir, with the St. James Baroque, will close with a performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, devoted to the Virgin Mary.