Nicola Lisle looks forward to early music concerts at Keble College

The Keble College Early Music Festival is back for a third year – and it’s the biggest and most impressive yet.

“We’ve got more events this year and a much wider range of events,” says James Hardie, who started the festival two years ago while a second-year organ scholar at Keble.

“We’ve got three headline concerts rather than just two, we’ve got a charity recital and we’re very happy that our new director of music, Matthew Martin, is going to be fully involved.”

New this year is an official launch night, which will give a taste of things to come throughout the week. Admission is free.

“It’s designed to give an introduction to people who may not be into early music,” James explains. “We’re having a formal cheese and wine setting, and we’ve got three groups performing ten-minute sets throughout the night.

“So we’ve got Sansara, a fantastic up-and-coming choir based in Winchester and Oxford, who have just won the London International A Capella Choir competition. They’re going to be doing some 16th century polyphony.

“Then we’ve got Theatron Novum doing scenes from Purcell’s Fairy Queen, and The Bate Players, which is Oxford University’s only student period instrument ensemble .”

Festival patron Mahan Esfahani, the internationally-acclaimed harpsichordist, will also be offering words of welcome.

“He’s going to do five-minute talks throughout the evening on what the festival does, why we should be interested in early music and how it can be contemporary and relevant.

“It’s a crusade of his to make people realise how relevant early music and instruments like the harpsichord are. I think that’s why he is so willing to come back every year and perform and also promote what we do.”

Mahan is also giving the opening recital, a programme of music by Peter Phillips, Giles and Richard Farnaby, Bach and Couperin.

A festival highlight is the Friday evening concert by The Queen’s Six, an all-male a capella choir from Windsor Chapel, who will perform Elizabethan church and court music by the six most eminent composers of the time – Byrd, Gibbons, Weelkes, Tomkins, Tallis and Morley.

The Marian Consort, which was founded by Rory McCleery in Oxford in 2006, makes a welcome return to the festival with an evening of music by Cipriano de Rore and Carlo Gesualdo, both of whose anniversaries fall in 2016.

A charity concert on Sunday, by Royal College of Music student Fatima Lahham, is in aid of the Save the Children Syria Crisis Appeal.

The Keble College Chapel Choir will bring the festival to a close on the Sunday evening with Choral Eucharist, which will include a mass by Tomas Luis de Victoria and a selection of organ voluntaries.

“I think the early music scene nowadays is one of the most lively and paradoxically most contemporary scenes in music,” says James, whose interest in music began as a cathedral chorister at the age of seven.

“I think I’ve always had more of an affinity with early music than with music post-1800. I enjoy listening to it a lot more, and enjoy playing and directing it a lot more, so that’s where all this has come from.”

Where and when
Keble College Early Music Festival
February 22-28
01865 305305 or ticketsoxford.com
keblemusic.co.uk/earlymusic-festival