Early Music Festival: Et in Arcadia Ego: Italian sonatas and cantatas

Concentus VII: Emily Atkinson (soprano) Belinda Paul (oboe & recorder) Louise Strickland (recorder) Amélie Addison (cello) Dan Tidhar (harpsichord)

“Concentus VII capture the simple directness of this idyllic music, with well-chosen instrumental sonatas to keep the ears fresh between cantatas”

BBC Radio 3 CD Review

Concentus VII performs small scale baroque works for wind instruments, voices, strings and continuo. Our repertoire ranges from Monteverdi to C. P. E. Bach, and is drawn from the intimate, often virtuosic and experimental music composers wrote for the enjoyment of their friends, families and colleagues. Members perform with leading early music ensembles (The Academy of Ancient Music, New London Consort, Il Giardino Armonico, Gabrieli Consort and Players, The Tallis Scholars, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin).
The Pontificia Accademia degli Arcadi (The Academy of Arcadia) was an Italian literary society established in Rome in 1690. The Academy advocated a simpler, direct style and to this end took inspiration from the simple lives of peasants—an idealised world of rural innocence peopled with shepherds and nymphs and burbling streams; in short a recreation of an imagined Arcadian Golden Age replete with classical forms and mythological themes.
George Frideric Handel attended meetings of the Academy while he was in Italy; Alessandro Scarlatti was also a member. The other works in our programme are all based on the pastoral themes typical of the Academy’s house style.

Part of the Early Music Festival.

Tickets: £15
£13 (advance saver - available until 9 February)
Free - Students and Under 16s

Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall