EX CATHEDRA'S Christmas by Candlelight concert, An Elizabethan Christmas, is the first to have sold out at the 2015 York Early Music Christmas Festival.
Three generations of English composers will be represented in the 7.30pm programme on December 11, conducted by Jeffrey Skidmore with James Johnstone at the organ at the National Centre for Early Music. Works by Thomas Tallis, John Sheppard and William Byrd will feature, along with Orlando Gibbons, the "silver swan" of the Elizabethan era, who brought this golden age of music to its conclusion.
The festival will run from December 4 to 12 and three more 7.30pm concerts at the festival headquarters are close to selling out too, so prompt booking is advised for the European Union Baroque Ensemble on December 4, Joglaresa on December 8 and festival stalwarts The York Waits the following night.
In the festival's opening concert, A Taste Of The Baroque, Lars Ulrik Mortensen will direct the European Union Baroque Orchestra from the harpsichord in a programme of Muffat, Biber, Marcello and Telemann. "They were here two years ago, performing a really sparkling concert," says festival director Delma Tomlin.
"This orchestra is a wonderful training opportunity for the best young baroque musicians, who come together for a year under Lars to play concerts across Europe, including Eastern Europe, and unlike other orchestras, each year the membership changes and new personnel are selected, so we'll see a completely different line-up in York from 2013."
The ever-cheerful Joglaresa will celebrate Christmas in Sing We Yule!, chasing out the chill from the Celtic fringes of Europe. Traditional wassails, medieval carols, sizzling fidels, dulcet harp, virtuoso percussion, bells, bagpipes and soaring voices will bring the carnival spirit to the season.
The York Waits will focus on Northern European music from the 16th and early 17th centuries in Crions Noel, including familiar Advent and Christmas chorales by Michael Praetorius and his contemporaries. In the line-up will be a trio of Marshalls, Anna, Susan and Williams, Lizzie Gutteridge, Tim Bayley and vocalist Deborah Catterall.
Along with The York Waits, no early music festival in the city would be complete without their fellow York musicians, the Yorkshire Bach Choir and Yorkshire Baroque Soloists. Conducted as ever by Peter Seymour, they will perform Haydn's 1798 choral masterpiece The Creation in the Lyons Concert Hall on December 5 at 7.30pm, joined by soprano Bethany Seymour, tenor Charles Daniels and tenor Stephan Loges.
The Creation was performed nearly 40 times in Haydn's lifetime and it remains a wonderfully life-affirming piece, concluding with the emergence of the oceans and mountains, the sunrise and moonrise, the birds and the whales.
Clare Wilkinson: Luther's celebrations
From 10am to 3.30pm on December 6 at the NCEM, John Bryan, Professor of Music at the University of Huddersfield, will lead a War And Peace workshop for singers and players of Renaissance instruments: viols, recorders, well-behaved cornetts, sackbuts, curtals and such like. Marking the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Marignano, when the forces of Francois I of France defeated Italian and Swiss opponents, the sessions will feature chansons by Janequin, masses by Victoria and Guerrero and Susato's Battle pavan, along with settings of the prayer for peace, Da Pacem, Domine, by Lassus, Ferrabosco and Franck. Places must be booked by November 27; music will be available via ncem.co.uk/battle
Soprano Ulrike Hofbauer first came to York in 2003 on the Young Artists scheme in the summertime York Early Music Festival and now returns to perform with L'Arcadia in a Christmas By Candlelight concert at the NCEM on December 6. "Ulrike has kept in touch all this time and it's really lovely to be able to welcome her back for this year's festival," says Delma.
The 7.30pm programme is entitled The Thomaskirche Contenders on account of Bach, Telemann, Fasch and Graupner all being finalists for the same position at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. "The post went to Bach, but history records that he was the search committee's last choice," says Delma.
The Marian Consort will be playing the festival for the first time, presenting Christmas With The Shepherds in a Christmas By Candlelight concert at the NCEM at 7.30pm on December 7.
Under director Rory McCleery, they will follow the Christmas story through the eyes of those key players in the Nativity, the shepherds, in a 15th and 16th-century programme with Jean Mouton's motet Quaeramus Cum Pastoribus at its epicentre.
"I brought them to the festival after I saw them play in London and they were also involved in the Brighton Early Music Festival," says Delma.
One further Christmas By Candlelight concert, at the NCEM on December 10, will find the Courtiers of Grace sitting around a table, singing and discussing music in A Rose There Is...Christmas At Luther's Family Table.
Singer Clare Wilkinson and her friends, Jacob Heringman on lutes, Gawain Glenton on cornett and recorder, Kirsty Whatley on harp and Stephen Wilkinson on reading duty, will take the audience back to Luther's Christmas celebrations of 1538 at 7.30pm.
Tickets for the 2015 York Early Music Christmas Festival can be booked on 01904 658338 or at ncem.co.uk/xmas
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