Journeys Through Music, Trevor Pinnock, Wigmore Hall, 30 October 2013

It’s not easy to get Janie up into town on a Wednesday evening. But this opportunity to hear a harpsichord recital by Trevor Pinnock was too good to miss.

And boy was it good.

A fascinating programme for the evening, starting in the 16th century and working deep into the 18th.

Click here for the Wigmore Hall programme link for this concert.

For those who don’t click, it is music by Antonio de Cabezón, William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, John Bull, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Domenico Scarlatti and Antonio Soler.

Many and varied.

Below is a YouTube sound piece of the Antonio de Cabezón we heard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK6tKcMKyB4

Below is an interview with Pinnock about his “Journey” project:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UF9ug9RlWY

He talks so sensibly and knowledgeably in that interview, as indeed he did when explaining the recital to us on the night.

Anyway, that concert in October 2013 was a delicious as well as interesting listen and such an honour to see Trevor Pinnock perform those works up close.

Emmanuel Pahud, Trevor Pinnock & Jonathan Manson, Wigmore Hall, 17 January 2009

A very beautiful, flute-based, baroque concert. What more could one ask for at the start of a new year – our first concert of 2009?

All three are excellent musicians and they played beautifully individually and together.

This is what they played:

We went home very happy – I suspect with some Ranoush shawarmas in our hands.

A Night At The Proms Without The Duchess But With Trevor Pinnock & The English Concert, 8 August 1999

Liberated from hosting The Duchess at The Proms, Janie and I went along to this concert on a Sunday evening planning nothing more than a light supper at my flat after the show. It was a Sunday evening and we both had ridiculously early starts the next morning.

Here’s the running order:

  • Johann Sebastian Bach, Singet dem Herrn, BWV 225
  • Joseph Haydn, Symphony No. 49 in F minor ‘La passione’
  • Joseph Haydn, Non nobis, Domine, Hob. XXIIIa:1
  • Joseph Haydn, Insanae et vanae curae
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Requiem in D minor (compl. Süssmayr).

This was an excellent concert. You don’t need to take my word for that – it seems it got rave reviews afterwards. It has taken me 25 years to check out those rave reviews, but that’s me.

Here’s Geoffrey Norris in The Telegraph:

Pinnock Telegraph NorrisPinnock Telegraph Norris 09 Aug 1999, Mon The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Tom Sutcliffe in the Standard was a little more equivocal, but still wrote very well of the gig.

Pinnock Sutcliffe StandardPinnock Sutcliffe Standard 09 Aug 1999, Mon Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com