As The English Concert approaches early middle age - we'll be 40-years-old in 2013 - it often strikes me how new players meld seamlessly with time-honoured ones to somehow maintain 'The English Concert sound", which emerged resplendent in the late-1970s and has since captivated audiences and been captured in scores of recordings, many of them classic performances.
The English Concert has first and foremost been an orchestra which excels in brilliant instrumental music, and it is this tradition that has inspired high praise for our recent recording of Corelli concertos with recorder virtuoso Maurice Steger, and that prompted Albrecht Mayer, principal oboist of the Berlin Philharmonic, to choose us for his first recording with authentic instruments, 'Voices of Bach'.
So, I'm particularly pleased that pied piper Steger returns in April, leading us to four European countries, and in February we welcome for his English Concert debut the remarkable Kristian Bezuidenhout, who will play and direct Mozart piano concerts at Wigmore Hall.
Collaborations with world-class singers remain central to our mission, and I'm delighted to be working again with two great Italians, Anna Caterina Antonacci and Sara Mingardo. We have performed with them singly, but never together, so our concerts at the Barbican Hall, the Salle Pleyel in Paris and De Single in Antwerp in November promise to be a vocal tour de force.
In October Alice Coote joins us in London and the USA for Dowland, Monteverdi and Handel, and in January we travel to Istanbul with Ian Bostridge to explore the legacy of Handel's 3 tenors - a programme we have also recorded with him.
40 years gained: when an ensemble plays together as intensively and for as long as The English Concert has, it creates a musical culture that is as deep as it is wide. So we are thrilled to have held our first Master Class for your harpsichordist-directors this year, at the Foundling Museum in London, and we look forward to working with more young professional musicians as part of our residency at the Spitalfields Festival in 2011.
Harry Bicket - Artistic Director
