London Handel Players
Saturday 14 June 2025, 7.30pm
Parish Church of St Peter & St Paul, Tonbridge
Flute and recorders – Rachel Brown
Violins – Adrian Butterfield, Oliver Webber
Viola – Rachel Byrt
Cello – Gavin Kibble
Harpsichord – Silas Wollston
‘Barbaric Beauty’
Many composers of the baroque period were fascinated by the music and culture of foreign lands and this programme brings together examples that demonstrate the huge variety of styles and influences available to them at that time
France and the fascination for lands afar
Polish bagpipes and Barbaric Beauty
Spices of the Orient, Spanish folly and curiosities from the Canaries
The far-flung corners of the Earth – the British Isles
“The London Handel Players are delighted to be celebrating 25 years of chamber music making in 2025. They will be bringing to Tonbridge a rather special programme which investigates the connection between folk and art music in the baroque period. Georg Philipp Telemann worked for a short time in Poland as a young man and was thrilled by the folk musicians he heard there and whose exhilarating playing he felt provided him with ‘enough ideas for a lifetime of composition’. LHP have brought together a fascinating mix of music with influences from across the globe.” (Adrian Butterfield, Violinist-Director, LHP)
London Handel Players ★★★★★
(Fiona Maddocks, The Observer – December 2023)
TMC Members are invited to a Pre-Concert Reception from 6.45pm
Doors will open at 7pm
Standard ticket £25 | Students & Under 18s £5
Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult
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About the London Handel Players
For over twenty years, since making their debut at Handel’s parish church, St. George’s Hanover Square, as part of the London Handel Festival in 2000, the London Handel Players have thrilled audiences across the world with their performances and recordings. Praised by the New York Times for their “soulful depth” and their “consummate skill and musicianship”, the ensemble appears regularly at major venues and festivals both around the UK and internationally, specialising in baroque chamber music and concertos and collaborating with some of the world’s leading singers.
Recent tours have taken the London Handel Players to Northern Ireland, Spain, Turkey, Canada and the USA. The ensemble is particularly active in North America, where they have performed at venues including the Frick Museum, Carnegie Hall and the Bourgie Hall in Montreal. In the 2023-24 season they will return to Wigmore Hall, London, with a selection of Bach Cantatas, multi-instrument concertos by Bach, Vivaldi and Telemann, and a Handel/Vivaldi programme with the exciting young countertenor, Alexander Chance.
Two new recordings, one of Bach Sonatas for keyboard and violin and one of Handel aria arrangements called ‘Total Eclipse’, were released by Somm Recordings in 2023. The group’s highly acclaimed discography also includes four editions of Handel chamber music: his two sets of trio sonatas Op.2 and Op.5, his complete works for solo violin and a disc entitled ‘Handel at Home’. Additionally, they have recorded the complete Op.1 sonatas of Francesco Geminiani, and a two-disc set of J.S. Bach’s flute sonatas interspersed with some flute arias from his cantatas, sung by Elizabeth Cragg, Charles Daniels and Peter Harvey. Future releases will include a recording of Vivaldi flute and recorder concertos.
The members of the group pursue busy solo, directing and conducting careers, work with many of the major early-instrument ensembles in the UK and abroad, and are professors at the conservatoires in London. Committed educators at every level, the London Handel Players also give numerous masterclasses and workshops for students, keen amateurs and children.
