Festival is weird, wonderful, but wildly entertaining

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Stour Music got under way this week but there is still time to book tickets for one of its unique concerts taking place in Boughton Aluph.

The weekend kicks off with Russian Treasures, a performance by award-winning choral ensemble Tenebrae featuring music by Rachmaninov, Chesnokov, Gretchaninov, Golovanov, Kalinnikov and Tchaikovsky.

The programme, on Friday evening, will include songs only usually sung in Russia.

Festival spokesman Sue Davison said: “Most Christian liturgies are strongly associated with singing but none more so than those of the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

“Tenebrae’s programme includes some little-known gems, rarely heard outside Russia, as well as familiar favourites from this vast choral repertoire.”

After Russian Treasures, which starts at 7.30pm, there will be a late night extra concert by The City Musick, an ensemble playing instruments including medieval cornett , recorder and a type of trombone from the Renaissance and Baroque eras called a sackbut.

Silver Sounds and Moody Food: Music in Shakespeare’s London aims to give an idea of the diversity of musical life in the capital in the early 1600s where music would have been found in churches, courts, playhouses, dance halls, alehouses and on the street.

Ms Davison said: “Songs and instrumental music by Londonbased composers and musicians are interspersed with anonymous ballad tunes and country dances.”

Vivaldi’s world famous The Four Seasons (Le Quattro Stagioni) is just one of the works that will be performed by orchestra La Serenissima when it makes a welcome return to the festival.

Featuring Adrian Chandler on violin and as director and Peter Whelan on bassoon, La Serenissima will also play a number of the Italian composer’s other concertos for strings and the bassoon.

Saturday’s late night extra concert is Project Palestrina by The Victoria Consort, which will see unpublished music by 16th century Italian composer Giovanni Pierluigi ‘da Palestrina’ performed for the first time thanks to co-founder Thomas Neal.

Sunday is all about the unusual when The Society of Strange and Ancient Instruments performs Nine Daies Wonder, a tale of Will Kempe’s nine-day morris dance from London to Norwich in 1599, on the stringed nyckelharpa and hurdy-gurdy among some other

quirky contraptions.

For the full programme and information on booking meals on certain days go to www.stourmusic.org.uk Alternatively, call 01233 812740 for a brochure.

Tenebrae, the award-winning choral ensemble whose concert Russian Treasures opens the main part of the Stour Music Festival on Friday, June 19