From Eisenach to Venice to London to Scotland: Rachel Podger & Friends in an engagingly eclectic programme at Highgate International Chamber Music Festival

Rachel Podger, Charlotte Spruit - Highgate International Chamber Music Festival, St Anne's Church, Highgate (Photo: Hannah Lovell)

Rachel Podger & Friends: Johann Bernhard Bach, Vivaldi, Bach, Nicola Matteis, Marcello, Purcell, arrangements of Scots airs; Rachel Podger, Charlotte Spruit, Jane Rogers, Jonathan Byers, Edward Mead, Ashok Klouda, Tom Foster, Sergio Bucheli; Highgate International Chamber Music Festival at St Anne's Church
Reviewed 6 December 2025

Rachel Podger and Friends in an engaging and eclectic Baroque programme that moved from Eisenach to Venice to London to Scotland, all bookended by music from Bach's older cousin Johann Bernhard Bach

Under artistic directors Natalie Klouda (composer and violin), Irina Botan (cello) and Ashok Klouda (cello) the 13th Highgate International Chamber Music Festival, which ran from 3 to 7 December 2025 at St Anne's Church, Highgate, explored everything from folklore, silent films, Schubert in song and chamber music and the art of the cello, ending with a finale featuring Shostakovich, Beethoven, Dvorak and Brahms. The festival's basis is a group of performers coming together with guest artists for each concert.

On Saturday 6 December 2025 focus shifted to the Baroque as violinist Rachel Podger made a welcome return visit to the Festival along with a group of friends, Charlotte Spruit (violin), Jane Rogers (viola), Jonathan Byers (cello), Edward Mead (cello), Tom Foster (harpsichord) and Sergio Bucheli (lute), and they were joined by Festival co-director Ashok Klouda, playing a Baroque cello borrowed from the Royal Academy of Music. The programme was an eclectic mix of both the known and the relatively unknown with works by Johann Bernhard Bach, Vivaldi, Bach, Nicola Matteis, Marcello, and Purcell plus arrangements of Scots airs.

Ashok Klouda, Sergio Bucheli - Highgate International Chamber Music Festival, St Anne's Church, Highgate (Photo: Hannah Lovell)

We began with the first movement of the Ouverture Suite No. 3 by Bach's second cousin, Johann Bernhard Bach (1676-1749). Most of JBB's music has been lost but four orchestral suites survive, and we know that JSB admired them: he had four transcribed for his Collegium Musicum in Leipzig. From 1708 to 1712. JBB worked in Eisenach with Telemann, and you felt that man's influence in the Ouverture from the suite. This began with an elegant bounce before becoming more crisply busy, yet always the textures and music interestingly varied.

In complete contrast, Vivaldi's Sonata No. 3 in A minor for cello and continuo followed, with Ashok Klouda playing the solo part and Jonathan Byers continuo cello. Published in 1739 the work probably dates from around ten years earlier. Vivaldi's experiments in writing cello sonatas were hardly continued, and it would not be until Beethoven that the genre took off again. For the slow opening movement, Vivaldi writes for the cello's two registers, creating a dialogue between singing upper and gruff lower. The second movement was fast and vivid, with Klouda giving us plenty of energetic passagework. The third movement began plangently but the thoughtful music gradually developed in intensity. We ended with plenty of rhythmic vigour in the final Allegro.

Johann Sebastian Bach's Prelude BWV 998 for solo lute gave lutenist Sergio Bucheli a chance to leave the continuo configuration and step into the spotlight. Bach wrote his Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E flat BWV 998 in around 1735. There is some discussion about how lute-oriented Bach's lute music is, as he probably wrote it for a keyboard instrument sounding like a lute. Bucheli took advantage of the relatively intimate acoustic at St Anne's Church to make his instrument take centre stage with a delicate yet clear sound. The prelude featured a wandering plucked line over a drone created from the lower strings. And at one point some strange interference as the church clock struck!

Nicola Matteis (c1650-after 1713) is one of the earliest Italian violinists to come to London to make his fortune. He enjoyed artistic and commercial success, publishing four books of Ayres. Writing for amateurs, his books include copious instructions, which have proved helpful to modern performers aiming to recreate Matteis's style. Violinist Charlotte Spruitt with continuo from Tom Foster, Jonathan Byers and Sergio Bucheli gave us a selection of Ayres from Matteis's first book from 1676. A freely rhapsodic, and very showy, prelude led to a movement based on a sweet, elegant melody. The final Ayre was over a ground bass, with lively divisions getting progressively faster and Spruitt demonstrating an infectious energy.

The first half ended with Bach, JSB: five of his two-part inventions played with lucidity and clarity by Rachel Podger and Jane Rogers. We could appreciate the contrast between the two instruments, the two lines standing out yet the two players interacting. The music was largely busy, moving from fragments of memorable motifs in the first Invention, to a second that had an elegant swing. The third was all busy scurrying, with the two players clearly enjoying their interactions. The fourth was in the minor mode, and we ended in more upbeat fashion with the perky eighth Invention.

After the interval, focus moved to Venice for the Sonata for two cellos in A major Op. 2 No.4 by Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739), played by Jonathan Byers and Ashok Klouda with continue from Tom Foster, Edward Mead and Sergio Bucheli. Marcello was a younger contemporary of Vivaldi and influenced by the older composer; we can imagine Marcello's sonata being inspired by Vivaldi's cello sonatas. The work began with the two solo cellos in elegant civilised dialogue, leading to an Allegro second movement full of energy with the two soloists enjoying playing off each other. The third movement, Largo, was quite short but featured a soulful intertwining of the two soloists. The finale, Allegro again, that proved an engaging mix of perky rhythms and lyrical motifs.

Rachel Podger and Charlotte Spruitt were joined by the continuo of Tom Foster, Jonathan Byers and Sergio Bucheli for Purcell's Sonata in Four Parts No. 6 in G minor. This sonata is cast as a single movement, a grand Chacony where the two violins intertwined over the ever circling bass, the harmonies and divisions created displaying wonderful invention. There was virtuosity and bravura here, but what really told was the performers' sense of enjoyment in the music. The ensemble was then joined by Jane Rogers for a selection of Scots airs in arrangements by contemporary composers Francesco Barsanti, James Oswald, Purcell and Geminiani. The different airs were played by differing combinations of instruments from everyone to just Tom Foster to Jonathan Byers and Sergio Bucheli to Rachel Podger and continuo. These included a wonderfully lamenting solo for Byers. By turns elegant and vigorous, we ended with some violin playing that was a lot closer to Scots fiddling than is usual in Baroque music.

The concert ended with the remaining movements from JBB's Ouverture suite. There was quite a selection of movements, Air, Les Plaisirs, two Menuets, another Air, Rigaudon and Courante, Gavotte and Rondeau. The music was by turns elegant, graceful and vigorous, with some attractive sonorities and always a feeling that JBB was keen to keep the textures and material lively. There was, perhaps, something a little old-fashioned about the music, particularly when compared to JSB's suites, but it brought things to an engaging close.

Charlotte Spruit, Tom Foster, Jonathan Byers, Sergio Bucheli - Highgate International Chamber Music Festival, St Anne's Church, Highgate (Photo: Hannah Lovell)

Except there was one further item. The chorale, Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern from the cantata BWV 1 by JSB written in 1735. The chorale melody is also familiar from Peter Cornelius's The Three Kings where Cornelius added a solo line to the chorale. For this performance, the audience formed the choir!

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