2012 York Early Music Festival

WHAT do 16 Bolivians, 14 Swedes, nine Israelis, five Hispanics and a septuagenarian Polish priest have in common?

All will be participating in the 2012 York Early Music Festival, in keeping with this year’s theme of Crossing Borders.

“So much for caution this time!” says festival administrative director Delma Tomlin, who admits to caution last year thanks to the financial and funding climate. “But this year I felt we couldn’t continue to go that way, so I’ve gone bit wild.”

Wild and international, in fact. “It’s my fault for thinking the Venezuelan harp might be interesting to hear,” says Delma.

“But we also realised that any border agency issues of securing visas should be easier in 2012 because of the London Olympics.”

At the heart of a festival that opens next Friday will be a celebration of “some of the world’s finest early music specialists from Europe and South America”.

This is epitomised by the return to the festival of Catalan viola da gamba player and musical director Jordi Savall. He is to be the fourth recipient of the biennial York Early Music Festival Lifetime Achieve-ment Award on July 8.

In the evening, Savall will direct Hesperion XXI in a 7.30pm programme entitled The Route Of The New World: From Spain To Mexico in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, when he will explore early music based on the Folia, a frenetic dance that uses a repeating sequence of chords.

“Jordi Savall is feted worldwide, and if you’re going to do a festival featuring early Mexican and Spanish music, you wouldn’t have a festival without Jordi,” says Delma.

Delma suggests there are many reasons to celebrate in York this summer “as we reflect the Olympic ideals of excellence, aspiration and international harmony, cross over European borders and explore the historical merging of musical cultures between Spain, Portugal, and the Americas”.

“Above all, we’re celebrating partnerships, between musicians, organisations, countries and audiences, reflecting collaborations that have enabled us to welcome musicians from Bolivia, Mexico and Spain, Sweden and Israel, alongside some of the world’s finest early music specialists from the UK and across Europe.”

The festival will open next Friday at 1pm in the National Centre for Early Music with the first of two concerts by the Arakaendar Bolivia Choir, who will be collaborating with singers outside Latin America for the first time.

Florilegium and their director, Ashley Solomon, have been working with Bolivian musicians since 2002 to promote the music held in the archives of the former Jesuit missions in Bolivia.

“Ashley has made links with the Bolivians, spending time there and setting up the choir, which has taken off like a rocket,” says Delma. “Now they are to play four or five dates over here.”

The music archives were discovered by Dr Piotr Nawrot, Polish priest, musicologist and director of the Association for Art and Culture in Bolivia.

Next Saturday, he will be in conversation with Ashley Solomon, chaired by Lindsay Kemp, in the Fountains Lecture Hall, University of York St John, at 11am.

Arakaendar Bolivia Choir members will work with 16 students from the University of York, culminating in the two choirs performing sacred Music From The Missions in Latin and Spanish in next Friday afternoon’s concert at the NCEM under the direction of Ashley Solomon.

The Arakaendar Bolivia Choir and Florilegium will then present Bolivian Baroque: Music from The Chiquitos & Moxos Indians next Saturday at 7.30pm at St Michael le Belfrey Church. This concert will include sacred and secular works from the “silver city”, La Plata.

The Swedish Ensemble Villancico, whose director, Peter Pontvik, was brought up in Ecuador, appear at 7.30pm on July 11 at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, in Una Tonadilla Nueva, a programme of Baroque music from Ecuador.

The festival centrepiece, two performances by I Fagiolini in York Minster’s Central Nave on July 12, has been commissioned by imove, the Cultural Olympiad programme in Yorkshire.

The focus will fall on the composer Striggio, who, in Delma Tomlin’s words crossed borders in 1561 by “wandering over the Alps in order to present his Mass in 40 Parts to his masters”.

In a promenade performance at 8.30pm, conductor Robert Hollingworth and I Fagiolini will be joined by the Rose Consort Of Viols, Fretwork, The City Musick and University of York Chamber Choir to perform works by Striggio, Thomas Tallis and Gabrieli.

The same musicians will re-gather at 10.15pm for a second prom performance of the same works but this time in “a union of music, creative lighting and architecture”, featuring lighting provided by the National Media Museum in Bradford.

If you have ever wondered what it would be like to lie on your back in an illuminated York Minster late at night and let the music take control, this concert is your chance.

“Robert Hollingworth will be positioned in the middle with a lit baton and his musicians arranged in a horseshoe in front of him, and the audience can sit, lie down or stand among the musicians,” says Delma.

The London Olympic Games have inspired another performance: the Yorkshire Baroque Soloists’ L’Olimpiade, An Opera, on July 13 at St Michael le Belfrey Church at 7.30pm, with music by Vivaldi, Caldara, Pergolesi and Jommelli.

Italian poet Pietro Metastasio’s opera libretto with an Olympic theme will be the subject of 10.30am lecture that morning at York Mansion House by Dr Graham Cummings.

This lecture is one of five sold-out events at the festival, the others being the BBC Radio 3 Early Music Show on July 8 at 1pm, presented by Catherine Bott at the NCEM with a live broadcast of 18th century Portuguese and Brazilian modinhas by L’Avventura London; plus Hesperion XXI; York Waits; and the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble’s 1pm recital, Ye Gods, What A man!, at St George’s Church, Peel Street, on July 11.

Amid all the crossing of borders, the festival will contribute to the York 800 celebrations by inviting The York Waits to explore popular music from 1212, through the early days of the original 14th century Waits, and up to the heyday of the York Mystery Plays in the 1500s.

Their 1pm concert, Mayors, Minstrels and Mysteries, with singer Deborah Catterall, takes place on July 9.

Further highlights include The Sixteen’s choral concert, The Earth Resounds, in York Minster next Friday at 7.30pm, and the festival will conclude with the return to the NCEM of last year’s winner of the York Early Music International Young Artists Competition, Profeti della Quinta.

They will perform Il Mantovano Hebreo: Music by the Italian-Jewish composer Salomone Rossi, at 1pm on July 14, and will stay on in York to record their debut album at the NCEM.

• Radio 3 will be recording the concerts by Florilegium; Gallicantus at the NCEM on July 9 (7.30pm); Ensemble Villancico; and Prfeti della Quinta for broadcast later this year.