Who doesn’t love a good story? Stories can distract, enlighten, entertain, baffle, and stimulate your senses. Stories transport you to another place, a welcome and necessary diversion from everyday life.Stories weave their way through love: Handel 2019, as The Brook Street Band guides you on a musical journey through Handel’s world
Acquaint yourself with Handel and his music, from his cradle in Halle, to his grave in Westminster Abbey. Meet young Handel, exploring early musical ideas in Halle, taking his influences from esteemed German musicians a generation older than him.Follow Handel on his travels to Italy, a young man in his twenties, eager to experience all that Rome, Florence, Naples and Venice had to offer, incorporating Italian fire and flair into his music. Hear the stories not just behind the composers, but about the music itself, about the instruments it was performed on, and the players who played them.
London forms the backdrop to some of our stories about Handel, the city he first visited in 1710, making it his permanent home from 1714 to his death in 1759. We also focus on music-making in East Anglia, highlighting some of Handel’s English contemporaries, and exploring how Handel’s music fitted in.
love: Handel 2019 brings in Stories of Handel’s friends and rivals too conjuring up the musical world of Bach’s Leipzig, a life that could never have suited headstrong Handel, unwilling to be tied to the constraints of church and state.
The Concerto Story features an expanded Brook Street Band performing wonderful music including Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.5, Orchestral Suite No.2 and Handel’s Sonata à Cinque. The brilliant Cambridgeshire-based Roots Baroque Orchestra (made up of aspiring young musicians who have been working with The Brook Street Band this year) sets the scene to the evening’s entertainment, with two short works by Purcell and Handel.
The Stories we weave through the music bring to life a complicated man, publically adored but highly private, scrupulously fair to working musicians but not above a bit of professional rivalry, financially astute and rich beyond most musicians’ dreams, an entrepreneur, an innovator, a loyal friend and generous benefactor. He remains above all one of our greatest composers, and we hope that the Stories we bring you in love: Handel 2019 will help you fall in love with Handel too.