Determined to return – even if it's not quite the same as it was all those years ago pre-COVID – the Woodend Winter Arts Festival will take place over the Queen's Birthday Weekend with four fabulous concerts for patient post-lockdown music lovers.
It's been a tough period for the Festival which was established to support the arts and artists – but by far those hit hardest by the pandemic were the performers and artists themselves.
This abbreviated concert series aims to be a part of breathing life back into the joy of gathering to experience music for both artists and loyal Festival audiences.
Ensemble Gombert – Anniversaries: Festival favourites perform two daytime a cappella concerts of Anniversaries, including music by Josquin des Prez, Michael Praetorius, Stravinsky and Vaughan Williams' Mass in G minor—delighting audiences with their unique polyphonic style. Two concerts – Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 June
Ensemble 642 – À modo italiano: Douo Hannah Lane and Nicholas Pollock perform one of the most ground-breaking periods of musical creation, the seventeenth century in Italy, where new genres such as the earliest operas brought new (but now rarely seen) instruments such as the arpa doppia (Italian baroque triple harp) and the tiorba or chitarrone (theorbo). Monday 14 June
John O'Donnell – Bach's The Art of Fugue: A very special world premiere event for 2021 with the first performance of O'Donnell's edition of the original version of Bach's Art of Fugue. Published in December 2020 by the new European imprint Lyrebird Music, this is the first-ever publication of the first version of this work, of which Bach made a fair copy in 1742. At this stage it was a complete work in twelve movements, lasting a little under an hour. Monday 14 June
Please check the website for updates about COVID-related impacts on scheduled events as restrictions change in response to the pandemic.
