Announcements   |   September 04, 2025
The English Concert announces a soaring 2025/26 season
This season, The English Concert presents two major Handel dramatic works, with all-star casts, global tours and London performances. TEC also continues its outstanding concert series at Wigmore Hall, including a special New Year’s Eve gala with Iestyn Davies
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Season Highlights

  • TEC bring Rinaldo (HWV 7) to St Martin-in-the-Fields in October, after a tour of cities in East Asia including Shanghai, Incheon, and Beijing. Cast features Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, Mary Bevan, and Rachael Wilson.
  • Handel’s Hercules (HWV 60) will tour the USA and UK. Although lesser-performed, this is a work that is well-known to Harry Bicket and The English Concert. The tour visits Carnegie Hall (NY), Zellerbach Hall (CA), Orpheum Theatre (NE), and Spaulding Auditorium (NH), before returning to London.
  • TEC continues its partnership with Wigmore Hall, including a series of solo recitals:
    • A night of Bach with Iestyn Davies and Lars Ulrik Mortensen on New Year’s Eve
    • A countertenor recital in September with rising star Hugh Cutting
    • Handel and Corelli with mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey in January
    • English baroque from the Restoration Chapel Royal including Blow, Humfrey, and Purcell on 16 December
  • TEC continues its relationship with Garsington Opera in summer 2026, bringing Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria to the Wormsley stage.
  • The Handel for All video project goes from strength-to-strength, with major new films to be released, and HD recordings captured as part of Handel projects throughout the season.

The 25/26 season brings out the richness in the repertoire’s variety. There will be big Handel operas of course, but through the likes of Pelham Humfrey and John Blow, we’ll see how whole styles and forms like church choral music and English orchestral music began to define themselves. In between concerts, remember to keep an eye on Handel for All, as there is an increasing body of excellent films on there and plenty more to come this year.

Harry Bicket, artistic director

Concerts

A baroque journey at Wigmore Hall with Hugh Cutting: 28 September

Following an acclaimed summer in The English Concert’s Rodelinda at Garsington Opera (in which he was “flawless” – The Times), the rising star countertenor Hugh Cutting will reunite with TEC at Wigmore Hall for a special solo recital.

The programme takes the shape of a journey around the baroque music of Italy, Germany, and England, calling in on composers including Monteverdi (Ottone’s aria ‘E pur io torno’ from L’incoronazione di Poppea) and Purcell (selections from various operas, including ‘One charming night’ from The Fairy Queen and ‘Fairest Isle’ from King Arthur.)

Hugh made history in 2021 as the first countertenor both to win the Kathleen Ferrier Award and join the roster of BBC New Generation Artists. The English Concert will be directed by artistic director Harry Bicket.

Concert Information

Handel’s Rinaldo at St Martin-in-the-Fields: Asia and UK tour: 14 – 24 October

When Rinaldo premiered in 1711, it cemented Handel at the forefront of London’s operatic landscape. To this day, it remains one of his most-revered works. A blockbuster cast joins The English Concert for an international tour of Rinaldo in October.

The project will tour East Asia, visiting Beijing (14 October), Shanghai (16 October) and Incheon (18 October).

On 24 October, TEC will bring the opera to St Martin-in-the-Fields, just round the corner from the London theatre where it started life 314 years ago.

Grammy-winning American countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen takes on the title role, with Mary Bevan as Almirena. Other outstanding soloists include  regular TEC collaborators Paula Murrihy, Alexander Chance, and Ashley Riches,  mezzo-soprano Rachael Wilson and young countertenor Andy Shen Liu

This is an enchanting opera of seashores and mountains, witchcraft and warfare; not to mention some of Handel’s finest melodies.

Director Harry Bicket says: “Rinaldo was not only Handel’s first operatic success in London, but one of the first Handel operas I ever conducted professionally, 25 years ago in Munich. It is a kaleidoscope of hit arias, each more virtuosic and colourful as the opera progresses.”

Tour Information

English Baroque at Wigmore Hall: 16 December

In the shortening days before Christmas, TEC come to Wigmore Hall with a bright programme of English baroque. The programme centres around the music of the Chapel Royal during the Restoration. Alongside Henry Purcell, this concert will explore music by some of his seniors from the Chapel, Pelham Humfrey and John Blow.

Church music today owes much to the legacy of this ground-breaking community of composers, and the concert will explore the very emergence of the English orchestral style.

Led by Harry Bicket, countertenor Alexander Chance reunites with TEC after the Rinaldo tour, to sing alongside soprano Amy Carson and tenor Anthony Gregory.

Concert Information

Bach on New Year’s Eve with Iestyn Davies, dir. Mortensen: 31 December

Iestyn Davies joins The English Concert for a very special New Year’s Eve concert of J. S. Bach at Wigmore Hall, directed by Danish early music luminary, Lars Ulrik Mortensen.

Lars has a distinguished history with TEC, including the classic 1982 recording of Bach’s concertos for 3 and 4 harpsichords.

The two-hour concert begins at 7pm, making this a perfect appetiser before any later plans, or an ideal festive event in itself. What better way to celebrate than with this magnificent collision of three of early music’s most renowned institutions? Iestyn, Lars, and The English Concert all in one room.

Concert Information

Handel and Corelli with Kate Lindsey at Wigmore Hall: 28 January

In 2020, American mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey appeared in Handel’s Agrippina at the Met Opera. This concert at Wigmore Hall  opens with the opera’s instrumental suite and a selection of its arias.

In the second half, TEC perform Corelli’s concerto grosso in D, the first in his immense Op. 6, before Lindsey joins with the choir for Handel’s Italian cantata, Donna, che in ciel. This piece was written and performed during Handel’s period of Italian residency, “for the anniversary of the deliverance of Rome from the earthquake on the feast of the Purification of the Virgin.” Harry Bicket directs.

Concert Information

Handel’s Hercules: begins 8 March, London on 20 March, St Martin in the Fields

This season’s transatlantic Handel oratorio will be the lesser-known Hercules (HWV 60), a study of destructive jealousy. Harry Bicket, an expert on the work, deepens TEC’s interpretation for this tour of the US and UK in March.

Bass, William Guanbo Su, will be the titular hero, returning to his wife Dejanira (Swedish mezzo, Ann Hallenberg), after over a year away in battle. With him is Iole, the daughter of a king he killed, sung by soprano Hilary Cronin, a regular collaborator with The English Concert. Steven Fox’s radiant choir, Clarion, also return as collaborators, with their unmistakable vocal timbres.

Thomas Broughton’s libretto draws from Ovid and Sophocles, with the chorus commenting on events as they unfold like a Greek tragedy.

Tour Information

Garsington Opera: May – July 2026

In summer 2026, The English Concert continues its residency at Garsington Opera on the Wormsley Estate. TEC made their Garsington debut in 2019 with Monteverdi’s Vespers, and will once again perform work by the Italian: this time, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. Translating as ‘the return of Ulysses to his homeland’, this early opera was inspired by Homer’s Oddyssey and stages the confusion and chaos of Ulysses’ arrival back in Ithaca, ten years after the Trojan War. John Caird will direct the opera, and Laurence Cummings returns as music director, marking a reunion of the creative team for Garsington Opera’s acclaimed Orfeo in 2022

Handel for All

Described by Gramophone as a ‘defiant vote of confidence in classical music,’ Handel for All is The English Concert’s generational new legacy to film every work by Handel.

Handel repertoire this season will be recorded in the highest definition. H4A audience figures are going from strength-to-strength, with total views expected to hit the one million mark this year.

This season, TEC will be filming the major opera projects Rinaldo and Hercules, as well as various pieces of vocal and chamber music from other concert programmes.

Films shot in previous seasons to be released this season will include Rodelinda featuring Lucy Crowe and Iestyn Davies, and last year’s critically acclaimed version of Giulio Cesare in Egitto.

Handel for All

This is a season where our collaborations really shine. It is an honour and a delight to see returning artists like Hugh Cutting, Ann Hallenberg, Hilary Cronin, Kristian Bezuidenhout and Iestyn Davies, as well as new collaborations with Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Rachell Ellen Wong, William Guanbo Su, Rachael Wilson and Kate Lindsey, to name a few. Our collaborations also extend to the venues who host us, like Wigmore Hall, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Carnegie Hall and Garsington Opera, all of which we will be re-visiting this season – in Wigmore Hall’s case, many times!

Alfonso Leal del Ojo, chief executive

Full Concert Diary

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