Thursday 9 January 2014

Spring at the Handel House museum

Susannah Cibber
Spring at the Handel House Museum includes Handel's birthday and the Stanley Sadie Memorial Lecture along with a variety of recitals many of which pair Handel's music up with that of his contemporaries and rivals. There is still chance to see the exhibition devoted to Handel's music for a series of musical clocks, as well as the new exhibition on Susannah Cibber.

Duo Dorado (Hazel Brooks, violin, and David Pollock, harpsichord) are revisiting the 1701 opera contest which saw Eccles, Weldon, Finger and Daniel Purcell all setting Congreve's The Judgement of Paris, and the duo perform music by all four composers (9 January).


Handel's Cellists are revisited by Nikolay Ginov and Kathleen Ross (baroque cellos), and Askako Ogawa (harpsichord) with music by the cellist Giacobbe Cervetto plus Nicola Haym (who wrote librettos for Handel as well as playing the cello), and the composer Giovanni Bononcini (who also played the cello). (24 January). Whilst Ibrahim Aziz (viola da gamba), Poppy Walshaw (baroque cello) and Katie de la Matter (harpsichord) look at the 18th century rivalry between cello and viola da gamba (6 February). Handel's relationship with the Opera of the Nobility in the years 1733 to 1737 is highlighted by the Ballo Baroque Ensemble (13 February). Handel and Bononcini's music crops up again in a recital by Emily Atkinson (soprano), Cathy Bell (mezzo-soprano), Nikolay Ginov (baroque cello) and Asako Ogawa (harpsichord) (8 March).


The Stanley Sadie Memorial Lecture will be given by Ellen Harris, Handel's Neighbours and Friends (5 February). And Handel's birthday (his 329th) is celebrated on Sunday 23 February with an open day. And the Original Collective are celebrating the live and works of composer Stephen Dodgson (1924-2013) with music for recorder, guitar and harpsichord (10 April 2013)

The current exhibition is The Triumph of Music Over Time: Handel and Charles Clay's Musical Clocks which looks at the series of musical clocks for which Handel provided music during the 1730's including viewing a clock normally in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, plus recording of music from a clock in a private collection. The exhibition runs until Sunday 23 February. From Wednesday 26 February the exhibition She was Despised Handel and Susannah Cibber celebrates the tercentenary of the birth of the singer Susannah Cibber who sang the aria He was despised at the premiere of Messiah in 1742.

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