Showcasing Nordic culture: the Northern Star Festival

The Marriage of the Northern Star at the Brighton Early Music Festival in 2018

The Northern Star Festival, which runs from 20 to 22 September 2019, is a new initiate which aims to be an annual showcase for Nordic culture, musical and beyond. This year presents a chance to experience lesser-known Nordic repertoire. Based at the Swedish Church in Marylebone, the festival is the brainchild of Yu-Wei Hu and Johan Löfving of the ensemble Flaugissimo, and this year they will be joined by the Consone Quartet, baroque dancer Steve Player and Finnish-Swedish soprano Andrea Eklund.

The centrepiece of this year's festival is The Marriage of the Northern Star, a programme focused around the 1744 Swedish royal wedding between Adolf Frederick of Sweden and Louisa Ulrika of Prussia, featuring music by the earthy songs of Bellman and the refined elegance of Roman (the "Swedish Handel", who indeed spent some six years studying in London with Handel and others) and Kraus (in his turn later nicknamed the "Swedish Mozart"). Another programme explores the flute music associated with Louisa Ulrika’s sister Anna Amalia and brother Frederick the Great who were both flautists, active musicians and passionate patrons of music and musicians such as Johann Joachim Quantz and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

Full details from the festival website, tickets from Ticket Source.