2014 York Early Music Festival, July 10 to 18

This is the theme of a festival of musical contrasts; on the one hand, there will be the warm breezes of Arabic music and the glorious Catholic colour of Spanish early romantic works; on the other, the rich tradition of the rather more workmanlike German Protestant music, epitomised by CPE Bach in the 300th anniversary year of his birth.

“Artists of the calibre of Jordi Savall’s Hespèrion XXI, The Sixteen, Jacob Heringman and Ariel Abramovich, Maria Cristina Kiehr, The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Andrew Carwood’s The Cardinall’s Musick, the Zapico brothers from Spain and Yorkshire Baroque Soloists will take audiences on a musical journey through the warmth and colour of the Spanish medieval music from around the Mediterranean through to the Spanish Golden Age,” says artistic director Delma Tomlin.

“The Bach tercentenary celebrations will include a rare performance of his astonishingly beautiful oratorio Du Göttlicher, alongside a host of other important anniversaries for Neapolitan opera luminary Nicolo Jomelli, and the ‘angel and devil of the violin’, Frenchman Jean-Marie Leclair and the Italian Pietro Locatelli.

“In addition to this abundance of anniversaries, we’re also delighted to take the opportunity to round off the festivities with a celebration of youth. Thalia Ensemble, winners of the 2013 York Early Music International Young Artists Competition, make a very welcome return to York for their prize concert with a programme of Bohemian wind music by Anton Reicha on July 18 at St Olave’s Church, Marygate, at 2pm.”

On July 19, the festival will present three exceptional violinists, Bojan Cicic, Huw Daniel and Cecilia Bernardini in a day of concerts in three venues, supported by the Netherlands-based Jumpstart Jr Foundation, which loans period instruments to young performers.

The festival begins with two sell-outs today, the first featuring Lord Deramore’s Primary School in a specially adapted version of Miguel de Cervantes’s tale of pirates, intrigue, adventure and true love, The English Spanish Girl, at the National Centre for Early Music at 1.30pm. In the second, at 7.30pm, rebab lira player Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI present Kalenda Maya: Folias and Dances from Palace and Desert at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York. East meets West in this colourful evocation of medieval music from all around the Mediterranean as Savall recreates the lost sounds of medieval Spain, Provence and Italy in the context of traditional music from Armenia, Persia and Turkey.

YEMF artistic advisor Lindsay Kemp and flautist Jennifer Cohen present Fantastical And Far-Fetched, a sold-out introduction to the mind of CPE Bach at Bedern Hall tomorrow at 11.30am and The Sixteen Insight Day’s exploration of the stories behind the Choral Pilgrimage at the NCEM from 12 noon to 5pm has drawn a full house too.

The Sixteen have sold more than 1,000 seats for Voice Of The Turtle Dove tomorrow night but tickets remain available for this 7.30pm concert, where Harry Christophers’ choir revisit the golden age of Renaissance polyphony in works by three English Tudor composers. William Mundy’s monumental Vox Patris Caelestis will be followed by John Sheppard’s setting of the sacred prose of Gaude, Gaude, Gaude Maria and Libera nos I; and the earliest piece, Richard Davy’s O Domine Caeli Terraeque, which reportedly was written in only one day.

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment present Of Births and Deaths, Angels and Devils, a celebration of CPE Bach, Jomelli, Leclair and Locatelli, at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall on Sunday at 6.30pm, when the contrasting violin roles will be taken by leader Kati Debretzeni. Please note, schools are now being invited expressly to this concert.

Predictably, the BBC Radio 3 Early Music Show on Sunday at the NCEM has sold out, so you will have listen at home from 2pm to 3pm. Elsewhere, two concerts are being moved, the Minster Minstrels Anniversary Concert, To Everything A Time, switching from the NCEM to the Unitarian Chapel in St Saviourgate on Sunday at 4.30pm and Monday’s 10.30am event, The Ubiquitous Tenor: Falsetto, Fact And Fiction, requiring a bigger capacity than Bedern Hall. Andrew Parrott’s talk is re-locating to the NCEM and also will be streamed live.

Seville lute and vihuela player Ariel Abramovich has reconstructed the songs of the Cancionero de Palacio and the Segovia Manuscript for baroque soprano María Cristina Kiehr to sing in the Andad Pasiones, Andad concert on July 16 at the National Centre for Early Music.

Tickets remain on sale for this event but not for Abramovich’s earlier appearance at the festival, when he joins fellow vihuela de mano player Jacob Heringman in the candle-lit Chapel at the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall for Cifras Imaginarias.

Hurry if you want to see The Cardinall’s Musick focusing on Spain, Defender of the Faith: Masterpieces from the Greatest Empire of the 16th Century in The Quire of York Minster on July 17 at 7.30pm, as it is very close to selling out. Tomàs Luis de Victoria’s Missa Salve Regina and Magnificat will be set alongside works by his contemporaries and compatriots Guerrero, Esquivel and Lobo.

One further sell-out should be noted: Forma Antiqua at the NCEM on July 18 at 7.30pm. Brothers Daniel Zapico, theorbo, Pablo Zapico, baroque guitar, and Aarón Zapico, harpsichord, will be performing Concerto Zapico: Fandangos, Folias and Passacaglias, a programme of works from16th, 17th and 18th century Italy and Spain by Kapsberger, Scarlatti and Santiago de Murcia.

Festival tickets are on sale on 01904 658338 and at ncem.co.uk

John and Peter really were in there Early...

NO York Early Music Festival would be complete without contributions from John Bryan and Peter Seymour.

Both took part in the very first Early Music week in York in 1977, when John had just left behind his studies in the University of York music department and Peter was still a student there. They have been involved every year since then.

For the 2014 event, John and his fellow viol players in the Rose Consort of Viols will be joined by mezzo-soprano Clare Wilkinson for Mynstrelles with Straunge Sounds: The First Viols in England at St Olave’s Church, Marygate, tomorrow at 2pm, while Peter has no fewer than three engagements.

He will play the fortepiano in the company of sopranos Bethany Seymour and Catrin Woodruff, alto Nancy Cole, tenor James Gilchrist and bass Matthew Brook in Songs of the Soul: Leider from Berlin by CPE Bach, J F Reichardt and CF Zelter at the NCEM on Saturday at 11am, before switching to conducting duties for the same line-up in the Yorkshire Baroque Soloists’ 7.30pm programme of CPE Bach’s Du Gottlicher: A Passion Cantata at St Michael le Belfrey Church that night. He will also be a guest on the BBC Radio 3 Early Music Show on Sunday afternoon.

“Right from the start, I was one of the festival instigators, not long since I graduated from the university, and it was while there that I got a big thing for early music and early music instruments,” says John. “I formed the Landini Consort and grew more and more interested in viol music.

“It’s really the music that attracts me as much as the viol instrument. All viols have equal parts in a consort; not only the lead instrument has the melody. It’s a musical conversation of equal participants.”

For more than 30 years now, John has run the Rose Consort of Viols, the present line-up being together for 15 years.

“I like to think the audience now trust my judgement when I bring out these obscure instruments,” he says.

Peter, meanwhile, recalls the journey into the unknown in the first York Early Music celebration in 1977. “I didn’t understand what we were starting! It was decided it would be ideal to start the festival with John and I as the local young worthies,” he says.

“I can remember what we performed on the final Saturday, Bach and Scarlatti, and John and I have been performers and planners in every festival since then.”

He is particularly looking forward to performing CPE Bach’s du Gottlicher for the third time, having done so in 1988 and 2004, that time with the Northern Sinfonia and Chamber Choir.

“It’s a fantastic piece thought it’s not played anywhere,” he says. “But I have the only edition in the UK of Bach’s parts and his 300th anniversary is the ideal chance to do it again, ahead of anyone else now hoping to do so.”