Thursday 27 September
The Academy of Ancient Music closes a major European tour celebrating the Jubilee and Olympic summer with a performance of
Handel’s glorious Royal Music in Cambridge for one night only.
Handel’s music stood at the centre of public life:
no national celebration was complete without it. The ‘Water Music’ was written to serenade the Royal Barge of George I in
1717; the ‘Music for the Royal Fireworks’, commissioned by George II, accompanied a spectacular celebration in Green Park
attended by over 12,000 people to celebrate the end of war in 1749. Handel’s four Coronation Anthems, a set of instantly recognisable
masterpieces which lose none of their power and majesty today, intersperse the concert.
The acclaimed Choir of the Academy of Ancient Music - which won the Beijing Elites Choir of the Year Award in 2009 for a performance of Handel - closes the programme with the jubilant ‘Hallelujah’ Chorus from Messiah. Recently proclaimed as 'one of the world’s great orchestras', the Academy of Ancient Music gives performances of baroque and classical music which get back to the original sounds and attitudes which Handel and his contemporaries would have known. As well as playing on original instruments, the orchestra is committed to recapturing the passion and energy of this music when it was first performed - and to enthralling and thrilling audiences just as Handel did in the eighteenth century.
Artists
Academy of Ancient Music
Choir of the AAM
Richard Egarr conductor
Programme
HANDEL Coronation Anthem No.1: Zadok the Priest
HANDEL Water
Music: Suite No.2 in D major
HANDEL Coronation Anthem No.3: My heart is inditing
---interval---
HANDEL Coronation Anthem No.4: Let thy hand be strengthened
HANDEL Music for the Royal
Fireworks
HANDEL Coronation Anthem No.2: The King Shall Rejoice
HANDEL ‘Hallelujah’ Chorus, from
Messiah
More info at www.aam.co.uk
