Sedbergh Music Festival 2010

Emma Kirkby & Anthony Rooley.
Photo Ian Beech Images.

Emma Kirkby has made well over a hundred recordings of all kinds, from sequences of Hildegarde of Bingen to madrigals of the Italian and English Renaissance, cantatas and oratorios of the Baroque, works of Mozart, Haydn and J. C. Bach. Recent recordings include: Handel: Opera Arias and Overtures 2 for Hyperion, Bach wedding cantatas for Decca, Bach Cantatas 82a and 199 for Carus; and four projects for BIS: with London Baroque, one of Handel motets and one of Christmas music by Scarlatti, Bach and others; with the Royal Academy Baroque Orchestra the first recording of the newly-rediscovered Gloria by Handel; and with the Romantic Chamber Group of London, Chanson d’amour: songs by the American composer Amy Beach, who died in 1944.

In 1999 Emma was voted Artist of the Year by Classic FM Radio listeners; in November 2000 she received the Order of the British Empire, and in June 2007 was delighted to be included in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for appointment as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. BBC Music Magazine, April 2007, in a recent survey to find “The greatest sopranos”, placed Emma at number 10. While such things are inevitably parochial, partial, controversial, and outdated as soon as they appear, she is pleased at the recognition this implies for an approach to singing that values ensemble, clarity and stillness alongside the more obvious factors of volume and display.

Despite all the recording activity, Emma still prefers live concerts, especially the pleasure of performing favourite programmes with colleagues; every occasion, every venue and every audience will combine to create something new from this wonderful repertoire.

Recital Programme

Emma Kirkby (soprano) and Anthony Rooley (theorbo–lute) explore the relatively little known riches of English Song from an era steeped in classical awareness. This newly researched programme begins with the lovely ‘When to her lute Corinna sings’ by the great polymath Thomas Campion (physician, classics scholar and poet). The tragic story of Hero and Leander is given a dramatic setting in the newly imported Italian recitativo style by Nicholas Lanier - a work which influenced young Purcell’s generation profoundly. John Blow, Henry Purcell’s teacher, contributes a Sapphic translation: Sappho to the Goddess of Love. Ben Jonson, the lover of ancient metaphor and epigram, provides an exquisite example of both in his ‘So Beauty on the water stood’, set by Alfonso Ferrabosco in 1609.

There exist a few rare settings of the original Latin of Horace in an autograph manuscript in the Bodleian Library, by the first Heather Professor of Music, John Wilson. Yet more rare are the two Henry Lawes settings of the original Greek lyric poems by Anacreon, along with contemporary translations. The contiguous settings reveal fascinating comparisons and contrasts, and raise a question: was Lawes attempting an ‘ancient’ style of harmony and accompaniment, affecting the manner in which the lyre might have been played?

The programme concludes with a sequence of songs concerning Orpheus, including the Maurice Greene setting of Shakespeare’s ‘Orpheus with his lute’, and the very un–pc William Boyce setting of ‘When Orpheus went down to the regions below’, (and the anonymous ‘Lady’s answer’!).