Following a number of highly succesful projects for BBC Television and the Covent Garden and Spitalfields Festivals amongst others, Concordia now offers a growing range of larger-scale programmes, from concerts to fully-staged theatrical presentations.

Besides the classic repertoire of the English golden age from the Elizabethans to Henry Purcell, Concordia’s chamber programmes include colourful music from around renaissance and baroque Europe, as well as a range of specially commissioned contemporary music.  Here is a list of just of few of them: contact us for full details or with your own requirements!

Royal Fantasies

Featuring highlights from our acclaimed CD series of music by Orlando Gibbons. In his wonderful music the first sparks of the baroque aesthetic illuminate the great English choral tradition of Tallis and Byrd. Gibbons obviously loved instrumental music, and experimenting with textures and figuration in a way that no Englishman had previously dared to undertake.

Knock'd on the Head

with Robin Blaze countertenor

A programme celebrating the exceptional music of William Lawes, born 400 years ago in 1602 which won huge acclaim at the Wigmore Hall and which ties in with our CD release of the same title. [ more information, reviews ].

 

Fit for a Queen

with James Bowman countertenor

Previously a huge success at the Newbury and Greenwich Festivals, this is one of several programmes we offer to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 2003.  Featuring music from lavish masques and royal entertainments, Concordia’s richly resonant ensemble of viols, lutes and theorboes recreates the sounds that thrilled so many royal ears with the aid of one of the most individual voices of our time.

 

Music for Mary Queen of Scots

with Lorna Anderson soprano

A great hit at BBC Radio 3's lunchtime series in Glasgow and at St Cecilia's Hall in Edinburgh, amongst other places.  Haunting songs, tuneful and ingenious consorts by the music maisters of the Scotland of Mary Queen of Scots and her son James VI, crowned James I of England in 1603, including the rediscovered repertoire of the royal violers.

 

Lachrimae

with Robin Blaze or James Bowman countertenor

John Dowland’s exquisite and intriguing set of Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans cast such a spell over contemporary listeners that the Lachrimae theme became the best known tune in Europe for several decades.  This programme, first devised for the Radio 3 / Hazard Chase Easter Festival combines music by Dowland with penitential songs by William Byrd in a sequence particularly appropriate for Eastertide listening.

 

Arts of Fugue

A programme combining some of Bach’s greatest fugal music with an exciting cross-section of contemporary British responses to the challenge of contrapuntal invention. The medium is the viol consort: with its warmly coloured but transparent sound it is the ideal vehicle (after the human voice) for the expression of polyphonic ideas.

 

O My Clarissa!

with Emma Kirkby soprano

Another sell-out at the Wigmore Hall's Lawes Anniversary series, this programme delights in the more exotic sounds of the English baroque: the harp, the theorbo and the lyra viol, instruments associated with the Nine Muses and all that is celestial. They are joined by the violin in Lawes’s unique Harp Consorts, which explore a very special sound world inspired by the Irish harpers of the royal court, and by the voice of Emma Kirkby in love songs and masquing airs by the outstanding English songwriters from Dowland to Purcell.

 

Out of the Orient Crystal Skies

with Rachel Elliott soprano

English music for the Christmas season from an age before kitsch and commercialisation. As well as several of Byrd’s haunting Caroles, and the meditative ‘prayers without words’ of Byrd, Gibbons and Tye, this programme includes many of the foot-tapping dances with which Queen Elizabeth was ‘exceedingly pleased’.

 

Crye

Tears, meditations and exclamations: Concordia play spiritual music ranging from the earliest ‘prayers without words’ to a powerful baroque reinterpretation of the Lachrimae theme by William Lawes. Playwright and leading ‘New British Poet’ Glyn Maxwell reads his new cycle of poems Crye, which take their inspiration from the music to tell a story of loss, regret and disaster set in the time of the English Civil War [ more information, reviews and images ].

See some of our larger-scale programmes

For more small-scale ideas you might like to look at Mark Levy's solo programmes

Contact us for full details or with your own requirements!