BATH Festivals has announced some of the highlights of next year’s international music festival, with tickets for five concerts released early – a perfect post Christmas gift for the music-lover in your life!
The international music festival will run from Saturday 30th May to Sunday 7th June, and the first of the newly released events is on the opening night, with American pianist Richard Goode playing Beethoven sonatas at St Mary’s Church, Bathwick.
Goode is a musical legend, renowned for the beauty and emotional depth of his performances, particularly of Beethoven – he has recorded the complete sonata cycle.
On Sunday 31st, the Royal Northern Sinfonia will be at St Mary’s, with Maria Włoszczowska, violin/director, playing a baroque programme, mainly works by Bach, including the Brandenburg Concerto No 3, plus Handel’s Concerto Grosso in F major, Op. 6 No. 2.
The third early release event is on Monday 1st June, at Bath Abbey where the Gesualdo Six, with viol consort Fretwork, will give two performances of Secret Byrd. Hear Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices as he intended, sung for worship in strictest secrecy, celebrating the 400th anniversary of one of England’s finest composers. This will be an immersive theatrical performance – soup and bread are passed to foster a sense of ritual and inclusivity. The audience roves freely among the costumed artists feeling the original hand-made part-books.
During the Reformation, Byrd was a recusant Catholic, writing masses to be sung in secret by worshippers in private homes with smuggled priests, hidden Catholic artefacts and the constant danger of discovery and arrest. Byrd’s courage in expressing his faith through art is a continuing inspiration, when three quarters of the world’s population still suffer from religious intolerance. There are two promenade concerts at 6.30pm and 9.30pm
On Tuesday 2nd June, from 6pm, at St Mary’s, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet plays the complete piano works of Ravel, including Sérénade grotesque, Menuet antique, Le Tombeau de Couperin and the poignant and gorgeous Pavane pour une infante défunte. It is a musical journey tracing the composer’s development through his charming earlier works to the staggeringly virtuosic Gaspard de la nuit. It is a three-hour concert, with two intervals.
Piano virtuoso Steven Osborne plays Schubert at St Mary’s on Thursday 4th. The programme includes the pianist’s own arrangements of Liebesbotschaft and Am Meer, and three other late sonatas. These beautiful, timeless masterpieces carry an almost bewildering range of emotions from sunlight to tragedy, from optimism to wistful resignation. Osborne, one of today’s finest Schubert interpreters, was Artist in Residence at Bath International Music Festival in 2015.
Pictured: Secret Byrd; and Northern Sinfonia with Maria Włoszczowska.