<img src='' title='Event Category: Masterworks' alt='' id='templ_icon_' width='' height='' /> Event Category: Masterworks

There is something quietly radical about hearing centuries-old melodies rise beneath the vaulted ceilings of St Martin-in-the-Fields, candlelight flickering against stone as an ancient musical tradition unfolds in real time, note by note, entirely unrehearsed.  

This is the setting for an evening led by Budhaditya Bhattacharyya, a singer of khayal, a form of Indian classical music built around live improvisation, where the performer explores a single melodic framework, or raga, in the moment, the way a jazz musician might improvise around a theme. Bhattacharyya has spent over fifteen years training under one of India’s most revered vocalists, Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty, and brings a scholar’s precision to his artistry: alongside performing, he holds a doctorate in music from Durham University and has spent years researching and reviving rare, little-heard melodies and rhythms from an endangered musical lineage, working alongside fellow musicologist Ustad Mehfooz Khokhar. 

He’s joined on stage by two musicians essential to this tradition: Siddhiie Kapshikarr on the harmonium, a small hand-pumped keyboard instrument that weaves a continuous melodic thread beneath the voice, and Janan Sathiendran on tabla, a pair of hand drums that provide the rhythmic pulse.  

You don’t need any background in Indian music to feel the pull of this evening; you simply need to be in the room, by candlelight, to witness this oldest living tradition live.  

For Beethoven, C minor was the key of high drama. It was the sound of struggle, defiance and determination – and nowhere is that more apparent than in his Piano Concerto No.3.

Written as Beethoven confronted the reality of his worsening hearing loss, the concerto marks a turning point in his career. The influence of Mozart is still there, but Beethoven’s darker and bolder voice own voice is beginning to emerge. Kristian Bezuidenhout joins London Mozart Players for this landmark work.

A generation later, Mendelssohn found inspiration not in personal turmoil but in travel. Packing his bags and donning his Birkenstocks, Mendelssohn set off on a grand tour of Italy where he documented his journey through sketches of music that would ultimately emerge as his Symphony No.4, AKA the ‘Italian’ Symphony. Filled with dance and folk references, Mendelssohn’s musical postcard transports us to Southern Europe with one of his best-loved compositions.

Do we control our fate, or does it control us?

That question lies at the heart of Beethoven’s Symphony No.5. Opening with perhaps the most famous four-note motif in classical music, the work occupied Beethoven for four years as he grappled with worsening hearing loss that would eventually leave him almost completely deaf. Dark, radical and relentlessly driven, it builds from a single idea into a journey from tension to resolution, culminating in a blazing finale that redefined what a symphony could be.

Framed by Florence Price’s heartfelt Adoration and Mendelssohn’s spirited Concerto for Violin and Piano (performed by Martin James Bartlett and Sebastian Bohren), London Mozart Players explore three composers finding expression in strikingly different ways.

Travelling across more than three centuries of music, London Mozart Players present a programme where the past is never quite left behind…

In 1906, Vaughan Williams stumbled across a melody that was already more than 300 years old. The tune, written by the Tudor composer Thomas Tallis for a 1567 psalter, was hiding in plain sight while Vaughan Williams was editing The English Hymnal. Several years later, he transformed it into the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, one of his most beloved works: a piece that blurs the boundaries between Renaissance England and the twentieth century.

Tallis’ influence continues to echo through David Knotts’ From Crystal Heav’ns Above, written for this concert’s soloist, Simon Blendis. Inspired by William Byrd’s elegy for his friend and mentor Thoams Tallis, the work traces a thread through centuries of English musical history, imagining Tallis’ spirit lingering long after his death.

Haydn completes this time traveller programme with his Symphony No.64, ‘Tempora mutantur’ (‘The times change, and we change with them’). As the master of musical surprise, Haydn plays around with our expectations, delaying and subverting time in ways you might not expect.

Following a string of 5-star reviews and sell-out performances, The Gesualdo Six return to St Martin’s with Death of Gesualdo. Reunited with director Bill Barclay, the ensemble brings this visceral theatrical experience to our stage once again following widespread international acclaim.

Six singers, six actors and a puppet enact a series of narrative tableaux which open on the composer’s deathbed and superimpose iconic moments from his life onto some of his most chilling music. The result, a Stations of the Cross for the composer’s tortured conscience, is the boldest look yet at how the life and music of this enigmatic prodigy must function together for the true Gesualdo to emerge from the shadows.

The madrigalist Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613) may be most famous for murdering his wife and her lover in bed, but among composers he is revered for anticipating chromaticism by 200 years. Gesualdo’s tortured mind led him into a life of violence and suffering, concluding in appalling tales of sorcery and flagellation. However shockingly macabre his biography, the Prince of Venosa’s malignant narcissism can be traced to key incidents from his upbringing in the zero-sum game of Catholic politics.

Commissioned by St Martin-in-the-Fields, The National Centre for Early Music in York, and Music Before 1800 in NYC.