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The English Baroque
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Musical tribute to Hogarth event
PREVIEW - EMMA KIRKBY
St John’s, Smith Square
EMMA Kirkby is one of Britain’s most celebrated sopranos who often appears at the best London concert halls.
And this week she is taking centre stage at what promises to be a wonderful event, a concert to celebrate the Hogarth exhibition at Tate Britain.
Joined by the ensemble, the English Baroque, including violinists Ingrid Seifert, Richard Gwilt and Irmard Schaller, cellist Charles Medlam and harpsichordist Terence Charlston, the programme is an entertaining collection by composers roughly contemporary with Hogarth.
There are excerpts from John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, a scene of which Hogarth once painted in around 1728.
It was a perfect foil for Hogarth, an opera which lampooned Robert Walpole, Britain’s first recognised Prime Minister, as well as the notorious criminals Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild.
Such an satire was first suggested by Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope – pretty mean satirists themselves – but it was Gay, their friend, who took the concept and put it in physical form in 1728.
The Beggar’s Opera became a stunning success and is still performed regularly today. In fact, it ran for 1,463 performances at the Lyric Hammersmith, from 1920.
The concert also includes Leclair’s Sonata in D, Arne’s Four Shakespeare Songs, Abel’s Sonata in A for Viola da Gamba and Handel’s Trio sonata in G Minor and Notte Placida e Cheta.
And at 7pm, before the concert, co-curator of the exhibition Christine Riding will give a pre-concert talk, giving a taster of Tate Britain’s first major exhibition of 2007.
For those particularly keen to get to the exhibition, ticket packages, including the concert, exhibition and a glass of wine, are available.
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