Join us each Sunday at 3.15pm for Choral Classics, 30 minutes of beautiful words and music, led by St Martin’s Voices. The music is introduced each week by a different member of the choir.
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Concerts
Every Thursday at 1pm in the church, we present Great Sacred Music, our 35-minute lunchtime sequence of words and music. Led by St Martin’s Voices, directed by Andrew Earis, it explores, through song and readings, the great classical music of our religious heritage.
Great Sacred Music will be livestreamed on Youtube on @stmartin-in-the-fieldsmusic and our Facebook page each week. . Or via this link: https://stmartins.digital/
The Spirit of St Martin’s campaign for supporting this season of Great Sacred Music.
Join Jennifer Sterling for an afternoon workshop to rehearse extracts from Mozart’s Requiem
This will be followed by an informal performance at 4pm which is open for all to attend.
Timings
Doors open – 1pm
Workshop 1:30 – 3:30pm
Break
Informal performance – 4pm
Jennifer Sterling Director
Tickets £14, including music hire.
Participants are advised that the ability to read music and experience of singing in a choir is required. When booking your tickets, please inform us of your voice type (soprano, alto, tenor, bass).
An abridged performance of Handel’s timeless masterpiece, featuring some of the famous choruses and arias performed by St Martin’s Voices and Chamber Orchestra.
Passions run high as Ensemble l’Encyclopédie and soprano Sandrine Piau perform Pergolesi’s stunning Stabat Mater.
“A dazzling blend of wit and spontaneity from truly exceptional musicians” – that was how one critic hailed the playing of Ensemble L’Encyclopédie, before declaring them “utterly irresistible.” This exuberant new Franco-Swiss ensemble takes its inspiration from the Encylopedists: 18th century philosopher-artists driven by a mission to explore. Today, under its energising founder-director Florent Albrecht it does just that, playing the wonderfully dramatic music of Johann Adolph Hasse before joining the great Sandrine Piau and Stéphanie d’Oustrac in Pergolesi’s famous – and heart-rending – Stabat Mater. Prepare to be thrilled, and prepare to be moved: the age of enlightenment brought to passionate, vibrant life.
In Holy Week, Tenebrae creates its own retelling of an eternal story – singing music from five centuries, including the world premiere of Owain Park’s stunning new Canticles for a Passion.
For believers, the Passion stands at the centre of time itself – a drama of fear, suffering, sacrifice and hope whose significance extends through all ages. So Owain Park’s Canticles for a Passion is the latest chapter in a timeless story; inspired by the composer’s own experience of singing as a member of Tenebrae, and shaped to the expressive power and ravishing sound of this extraordinary chamber choir. Tonight, he interleaves it with Poulenc’s impassioned Lenten Motets, while reflections by composers as varied as William Byrd and Max Richter create their own musical path to the Cross, both sacred and profane.
Haydn’s Seven Last Words from the Cross: deep faith and even deeper emotion, brought to life today by the superb Quartet XII, musicians from The 12 Ensemble.
A darkened church, seven anguished words…and the musical challenge of a lifetime. In 1786, Joseph Haydn was asked to write seven wordless meditations for the most profound moment in the Christian calendar, and his imagination caught fire. The Seven Last Words from the Cross are charged with pity, tenderness and intense emotion. Haydn thought they were his masterpiece and there’s something profoundly moving about hearing them played live in a great church at this time of year. This is music to light up the soul, and Quartet XII – four members of the dynamic 12 Ensemble – keep the flame today.
The Tallis Scholars perform Victoria’s Tenebrae Responsories. The musical soul of Passiontide, sounding more urgent than ever across five centuries.
Few renaissance composers felt their religious faith more passionately than Tomás Luis de Victoria. As the Christian year sinks to its darkest moment, his Tenebrae Responsories follow the spiritual drama in music of haunting power, and few living performers understand the path to their heart better than Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars – for more than half a century, some of the world’s pre-eminent performers of early vocal music. Now, on Maundy Thursday, they perform Victoria’s sequence alongside works by Gesualdo, Palestrina and Tallis: four renaissance masters, united in faith and sorrow. Come and hear what they have to say to each other.
This Easter, experience the power, the drama and the undimmed glory of Bach’s St Matthew Passion in one of London’s great churches – performed by Masaaki Suzuki and the Monteverdi Choir.
“My heart swims in tears…” Bach’s St Matthew Passion is more than one of the greatest of all sacred works. It’s a profound human drama; a heartbreaking musical exploration of eternal hopes and sorrows. As director of the Bach Collegium Japan, Masaaki Suzuki has built a worldwide reputation in baroque sacred music. Now he shares all his insight and devotion with another legendary name in Bach performance, the Monteverdi Choir: a one-off meeting of musical hearts and minds, united in their devotion to a masterwork that transcends any one performance. Still, this one should be rather special…
To celebrate International Women’s Day, Echo Vocal Ensemble performs the bold, sensuous music of the 17th century abbess Chiara Margarita Cozzolani – along with specially-commissioned responses by three powerful contemporary voices.
Meet Chiara Margarita Cozzolani – singer, nun and composer of genius. Born in Milan and a contemporary of Monteverdi, Cozzolani spent her life in a convent, but her music soared free, creating sounds and sacred dramas of intimate beauty and blazing imaginative power. Cozzolani Unbound! interleaves her music (including the striking Vespers of 1650) with three electrifying modern responses to her work, specially commissioned from Héloise Werner, Shruthi Rajasekar and Anna Rocławska-Musiałczyk. Voices call out to each other across centuries in this passionate celebration of women’s creativity from Echo Vocal Ensemble under their director Sarah Latto.