BREMF Preview 2025

Brighton Early Music Festival (BREMF), never shy of a challenge, has chosen this year the theme of LOVE. So what’s new? Well, the Co-Artistic Directors, Hannah Ely and Olwen Foulkes, have taken the Classical view of how humans express love, which means exploring the four ancient Greek categories of love: Philia, Xenia, Agapé and Eros.

An academic approach like this could easily prove stuffily high-brow but BREMF has a proven track record of making the music of past eras readily accessible to any of today’s audiences.

The pre-festival events extol love in the form of Philia: friendship & community, starting with the PALESTRINA CRAWL on Saturday 20 September when BREMF Consort of Voices mark Palestrina’s 500th anniversary year by taking a short, free concert of works by this pre-eminent Renaissance master to a number of churches around the city. They always enjoy visiting new venues and bringing their music to fresh ears.

A week later distinguished tenor and conductor, Ben Vonberg-Clark, will celebrate Palestrina again in a CHORAL WORKSHOP at St George’s Church, Saturday 27 September. The engaging BREMF workshops aim to cultivate a deeper understanding and appreciation of the intricacies of early music repertoire and performance.

Possibly less intense but no less musical or fun will be the EARLY MUSIC OPEN MIC at The Rose Hill Tavern on Thursday 2 October, 8pm, when Emily Baines will encourage folk to share songs and tunes in relaxed, friendly surroundings.

Young children can join in BREMF too, on Saturday 4 October at both 10.30am & 12 noon in the Brighton Unitarian Church, when jolly members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment delight in presenting PUZZLE TOTS, with music and dance for the under 12s, and in the afternoon there is a LANTERN MAKING WORKSHOP crafting luminous sea creatures for the Baroque Odyssey later in the month.

On Sunday 5 October The Dance Space hosts two events, an INSTRUMENTAL WORKSHOP led by Sam Stadlen and a BAROQUE DANCE WORKSHOP led by BREMF Co-Artistic Director Olwen Foulkes which will prepare folk for the first big event of the Festival the following weekend.

Xenia: love expressed as hospitality and honouring guests (xenophobic people lack this quality). On Friday 10 October, 7.30pm in St Martin’s Church John Hancorn will conduct a host of BREMF stalwarts in LES CARACTÈRES DE L’AMOUR, the UK premiere of a 1736 French baroque opera. Satoko Doi-Luck has orchestrated the score. Soloists from the BREMF Emerging Artists will sing the lead rôles supported by the Baroque Collective Singers with Ensemble Molière providing the continuo and accompanied by Alison Bury and the impeccable BREMF Players. With such a talented cast it promises to be a very special evening.

The next day, soprano Nardus Williams and Elizabeth Kenny (lute) will perform IN THE SHADOW OF THE TOWER, songs by composers who had to flee England in the 17th century to find safety as refugees in Denmark and the Netherlands – St Nicholas Church Saturday 11 October, 1pm.

Later that day Ayres Extemporae will present FINE COMPANION, a programme with wine and music around tables (always a popular combination!) in St George’s Church, 7.30pm. Last year this ensemble won the York Young Artists Competition so they can expect a very warm welcome in Brighton.

With QUEEN OF HEARTS, BREMF favourites The Gesualdo Six will woo us (on Sunday 12 October, 7.30pm in St Martin’s Church) with their lustrous polyphony, this time sung in devotion to queens, both earthly and divine, from some of the most extravagant courts of Europe. Two years ago their collaboration with Fretwork, ‘Secret Byrd’, was musically wonderful but compromised by all the effort and fuss of costumes, candles and a large dining table. These euphonious magicians don’t need any props to conjure up the wonders of lush hospitality – their golden voices suffice.

The second Festival weekend presents Agapé: a love for nature and the divine, often translated as charity and good works.

St Paul’s Church is the venue for MUSIC DIVINE: GIBBONS 400. Our local ambassadors for polyphony BREMF Consort of Voices are joining with the Cavillum Consort of Viols to present The Malcolm Rose Memorial Concert, in memory of the dedicated craftsman who provided BREMF with such excellent harpsichords for so many years. This event marks 400 years since the death of the Jacobean keyboard master and organist of Westminster Abbey. Although he died at only 41, Orlando Gibbons left us wonderful church music that will make a most enjoyable concert (Thursday 16 October, 7.30pm). In the inclusive spirit of BREMF there is also a FREE pre-concert event at 6.15pm featuring young musicians from BHASVIC.

BREMF working its wonders in the community will be apparent again in St George’s Church on Friday 17 October, 6pm, when BREMF alumni, (Ensemble Augelletti, Lowe Ensemble and singers from Fieri Consort) present BAROQUE ODYSSEY with pupils from Brighton Primary Schools and the BREMF Community Choir. What a way to introduce youngsters to the the works of Telemann and J.S. Bach! They may come along for the ‘immersive community performance’ and stories of sea spirits, gods and goddesses but they will leave with a lasting legacy of enthusiasm, concentration and musical understanding – ready to evolve into the BREMF audience of the future.

Sadly, I won’t be up to joining Joanna Harries and friends on her SONGPATH WALK around Stanmer Park on Saturday 18 October, 11am–1pm, but open-air performances can be wonderful. BREMF regulars will recall the blissfully bucolic serenades of 2021 when the musicians were accompanied by pigeons and blackbirds in the glades of Queen’s Park.

I will also have to forgo the BREMF CLUBNIGHT, 9pm at The Rose Hill on Saturday 18 October, but as usual I can’t wait to hear the same performers show off their talent earlier at 3.30pm in St Paul’s Church in the BREMF EMERGING ARTISTS SHOWCASE. This noble enterprise has nurtured some of the very best stars of the Early Music firmament. The 2025 crop promises to be outstanding. We can look forward to an afternoon of delights.

Perhaps the purest expression of charitable love will be heard in St Martin’s Church when the sublime Musica Secreta and Celestial Sirens, under the direction of Laurie Stras and Claire Williams, sing RICORDANZE: A RECORD OF LOVE, the music of Florentine nuns newly reconstructed from a 16th-century manuscript, Sunday 19 October, 7.30pm.

Eros: relates to romantic love, loss and desire, such as are expressed on Friday 24 October, 7.30pm in St Martin’s Church in by Vache Baroque, an community charity with aims similar to BREMF. Their production OUT OF THE DEEP blends songs by Purcell and settings of psalm 130 by Bach and Zelenka with the words of Oscar Wilde’s ‘de Profundis’. They present top-rate young soloists, a veteran narrator and a band of Baroque specialists.

At lunchtime the following day in St Nicholas Church, Per Sonat will recreate the pining of the Northern French trouvères, who agonised exquisitely over the pains of courtly love, in CONTRE LA DOUCE SAISON – this should have a heady erotic charge.

And in the evening, Saturday 25 October, 7.30pm in St Martin’s Church, the Italian virtuosi of La Fonte Musica return again to BREMF with LA SERA DEL COMBATTIMENTO, a production of Claudio Monteverdi’s passionate 1624 operatic scena ‘Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda’. I’ll want to swat up on my Italian but it should be easy to follow the plot as these musicians are so wonderfully expressive.

BREMF 2025 concludes on Sunday 26 October, 7.30pm, in the relatively intimate setting of St George’s Church, with ON THE WINGS OF A SONG. Mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston and Consone Quartet perform arrangements of Robert Schumann’s ‘Frauenliebe und -leben’ and works by Clara Schumann and Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn. This is stretching the scope of Early Music but I certainly am not complaining. Surely BREMF regulars still remember Helen’s compassionate rendering of ‘Dido’s Lament’ in the ‘Peace in Europe Concert’ in 2018. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house!

Twenty events, dozens of outstanding performers, a dedicated team of professional technicians, volunteers and administrators with an ever-growing family of supporters, aficionados and enthusiastic followers, old and young, will then have wrapped up another BREMF season – We can expect another success.

Do check the BREMF 2025 website for full details of discounts, concessions and free tickets for under 12s and carers.

Andrew Connal
August 2025