The English Concert – Handel: The Philanthropist

The English Concert is an outstanding orchestra, renowned for the quality, ambition and variety of its live and recorded output; and unwavering in its desire to connect with its audience the world over.

Under the artistic direction of Harry Bicket and principal guest Kristian Bezuidenhout, The English Concert has earned a reputation for combining urgency, passion and fire with precision, delicacy and beauty.

The artistic partners with which it collaborates reflect and enhance its pursuit for new ways to bring repertoire to life. These include Joyce DiDonato, Dame Sarah Connolly, Iestyn Davies, Alison Balsom, Trevor Pinnock, Dominic Dromgoole and Tom Morris, among many others, all of whom have not only brought their skills to individual projects but continue to help shape the way the ensemble performs.

One cornerstone of the orchestra’s annual cycle is its international Handel Opera tour. Blossoming from an ongoing relationship with Carnegie Hall, the itinerary now regularly takes in the Theater an der Wien, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and Barbican Hall, and the roster of great halls continues to grow. Meanwhile, its regular London series allows it to explore a radically different path, presenting programmes designed to challenge and inspire.

The English Concert is associate orchestra at Garsington Opera.

In 2023, the orchestra launched Handel for All, a landmark project to film and make freely available all of Handel’s works. www.englishconcert.co.uk/handel-for-all

The English Concert would like to acknowledge an anonymous donation in memory of and with thanks to David Craig, a former trustee of the orchestra, given in generous support of this project.

Internationally renowned as an opera and concert conductor of distinction, Harry Bicket is especially noted for his interpretation of Baroque and Classical repertoire and since 2007 has been Artistic Director of The English Concert. In 2013, following regular guest appearances for Santa Fe Opera, he became its Chief Conductor and in 2018 assumed the Music Directorship.

Born in Liverpool, he studied at the Royal College of Music and Oxford University.

This season’s projects with The English Concert include, in addition to their London season and recordings, tours to Europe and the USA with Solomon and performances of Ariodante at the Palais Garnier. Harry Bicket also returns to the Chicago Symphony for a collaboration with the Joffrey Ballet, Orchestra of St Luke’s, Canadian Opera Company and Santa Fe Opera.

Following the success in earlier seasons of Rinaldo and Ariodante, last spring The English Concert continued its Handel opera series with performances of Serse in Europe and the United States.

In addition to his regular Santa Fe productions, recent North American seasons have included performances at the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera and Canadian Opera Company. In the concert hall he has conducted leading orchestras, including the Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati and San Francisco Symphony orchestras and the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras, among many others. He has also led masterclasses with the Juilliard School.

European conducting has ranged from opera for Liceu Barcelona, Opéra de Bordeaux and Theater an der Wien to concert projects with Prague Philharmonia, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the Monte-Carlo, Oslo, Rotterdam, Royal Liverpool and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic orchestras, Royal Northern Sinfonia, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Bayerische Rundfunk and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Earlier work outside Europe included his Japanese debut with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and Israel Philharmonic.

Recordings to date with The English Concert include releases on a range of labels featuring Elizabeth Watts, David Daniels, Lucy Crowe, Sarah Connolly and Rosemary Joshua and, most recently, a disc of Baroque concertos. His discography also includes five recordings with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, among them collections of Handel opera arias with Renée Fleming and Ian Bostridge, as well as a Grammy-nominated disc with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. His Gramophone Award-nominated CDs include Sento Amor with David Daniels and Il tenero momento with Susan Graham.

Mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg studied at the National College of Operatic Art in Stockholm.

She regularly appears at the world’s leading opera houses and festivals, including the Bavarian State Opera, Berlin State Opera, La Fenice, Venice, La Scala, Milan, the Netherlands Opera, Opéra de Lyon, Opéra National de Paris, Royal Swedish Opera, Semperoper Dresden, Teatro Real, Madrid, Theater an der Wien, La Monnaie, Brussels, Zurich Opera, BBC Proms and the Salzburg, Vienna and Halle Handel festivals.

Her operatic repertoire includes works by Bizet, Gluck, Handel, Massenet, and Monteverdi, Mozart, Rossini and Vivaldi. Equally at home on the concert platform, she frequently appears at venues and festivals throughout Europe and North America. She has built an unusually large concert repertoire that spans music from the early 17th to the late 20th centuries.

She works regularly with many of the world’s foremost conductors, including Ivor Bolton, William Christie, Teodor Currentzis, Patrick Fournillier, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Emmanuelle Haïm, Daniel Harding, Paavo Järvi, Louis Langrée, Andrea Marcon, Cornelius Meister, Marc Minkowski, Riccardo Muti, Kent Nagano, Sir Roger Norrington, Sir Antonio Pappano, Christophe Rousset and Alberto Zedda, among many others.

She has made more than 45 CD and DVD recordings of works by Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Mozart, Haydn, Gluck, Rossini, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Bruckner. Two of her solo CDs have won the category of Best Operatic Recital at the International Opera Awards in London.

Internationally renowned Swedish soprano Miah Persson has worked all over the world as a recitalist and concert artist, as well as on the operatic stage.

Highlights in the opera house have included Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), Gretel (Hansel and Gretel) and Pamina (The Magic Flute) at the Metropolitan Opera; Susanna (The Marriage of Figaro) and Zerlina (Don Giovanni) at Covent Garden; the title-role in L’incoronazione di Poppea and Governess (The Turn of the Screw) at Teatro alla Scala; Fiordiligi, Sophie and Susanna at the Vienna State Opera; Governess, Fiordiligi, Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni) and Anne Trulove (The Rake’s Progress) at the Glyndebourne Festival; Donna Elvira at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Liceu Barcelona; Fiordiligi at the Bavarian and Hamburg State Opera, New National Theatre Tokyo and for a recording at the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus; Iris (Michel van der Aa’s Sunken Garden) for Dallas Opera; L’Incoronazione di Poppea at Carnegie Hall; and van der Aa’s Blank Out, a chamber opera for solo soprano, for Netherlands Opera with performances in Amsterdam, Rome and New York.

Highlights of this season include the Governess with the Budapest Festival Orchestra; Countess (The Marriage of Figaro) at Opéra national de Paris; Haydn’s The Creation with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Verdi’s Requiem with the Oslo Philharmonic.

In concert her repertoire includes Bach’s B minor Mass and St Matthew Passion, Brahms’s German Requiem, Grieg’s Peer Gynt, Haydn’s Nelson Mass, The Creation and The Seasons, Mahler’s Symphonies Nos 2 and 4 and Des Knabens Wunderhorn, Mozart’s Requiem, Schumann’s Scenes from Faust and Strauss’s Four Last Songs. She has given recitals at leading venues, including Wigmore Hall, Wiener Konzerthaus, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin’s Boulezsaal, Vancouver Playhouse and Carnegie Hall.

Cuban-American soprano Elena Villalón is currently a third-year studio artist with Houston Grand Opera. A Grand Finals winner of the 2019 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, she most recently was awarded several prizes at the Hans Gabor Belvedere Competition.

Last season highlights included house and role debuts at Dallas Opera as Tina (Jonathan Dove’s Flight) and at Austin Opera as Susanna (The Marriage of Figaro), as well as ongoing collaborations with Houston Grand Opera, where she created the role of Amy in the world premiere of Joel Thompson’s The Snowy Day and made her role debut as Juliette (Roméo et Juliette). She also performed as a recitalist at the Kennedy Center, where she was named a Vocal Arts DC emerging artist, as well as in Poulenc’s Gloria with the Grand Rapids Symphony andin Handel’s Ode for St Cecilia’s Day with Boston Baroque.

Highlights of the 2020–21 season included digital collaborations with Houston Grand Opera in David T Little’s Vinkensport and Hansel and Gretel, as well as in HGO’s Studio Showcase as Sophie (Werther) and the title-roles in Lulu and L’incoronazione di Poppea. She also appeared with Cincinnati Song Initiative and at the Rienzi Museum of Fine Arts as part of the studio recital series, and was featured in a concert of Baroque cantatas and arias with the Mercury Chamber Orchestra.

She has a particular interest in art song and concert repertoire, further exploring this at Tanglewood and at Songfest as a Colburn Fellow. At Tanglewood, performances have included the soprano solo in Mahler’s Symphony No 4 with conductor Giancarlo Guerrero, Max in Oliver Knussen’s Where the Wild Things Are, the world premiere of Michael Gandolfi’s In America, concerts of Bach cantatas conducted by John Harbison, and concerts and recitals curated by Dawn Upshaw, Stephanie Blythe, Margo Garrett and Sanford Sylvan.

American bass-baritone Brandon Cedel is a recent graduate of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, and was an ensemble member of Oper Frankfurt from 2016 to 2019.

Recent highlights include the title-role in The Marriage of Figaro for the Glyndebourne Festival; the title-role in Hercules for the Karlsruhe Handel Festival; Dan Brown in the world premiere of Kevin Puts’s The Hours with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Zuniga (Carmen) for the Chicago Opera Theater.

Elsewhere he has sung Masetto (Don Giovanni) for both the Metropolitan Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago; Leporello (Don Giovanni) and Argante (Rinaldo) for the Glyndebourne Festival; Collatinus (The Rape of Lucretia) for the Boston Lyric Opera; the title-role in The Marriage of Figaro for Opera Philadelphia and Colline (La bohème) and Basilio (The Barber of Seville) for the Canadian Opera Company.

His many roles for Oper Frankfurt include Masetto, the Speaker (The Magic Flute), Lieutenant Ratcliffe (Billy Budd), Argante, Ariodate (Xerxes), Cesare Angelotti (Tosca), Brander (La damnation de Faust) and Achior (Mozart’s La betulia liberata).

Future engagements include a return to the Metropolitan Opera and the Glyndebourne Festival.

Tenor James Way is fast gaining international recognition for the versatility of his voice and commanding stage presence. A former Britten–Pears Young Artist, he is also a laureate of William Christie’s Les Arts Florissants ‘Jardin des Voix’ and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s Rising Stars young artist programmes and was awarded an Independent Opera Voice Fellowship. He won second prize at the 62nd Kathleen Ferrier Awards at Wigmore Hall.

On the concert platform he has performed with leading international orchestras, enjoying a particularly close relationship with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

He has appeared with many of the finest early music ensembles across Europe, with highlights including Handel’s Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno with the Freiburger Barockorchester under René Jacobs; the title-role in Handel’s Samson with John Butt and the Dunedin Consort; Monteverdi’s Vespers with The English Concert under Laurence Cummings for Garsington Opera; and Acis (Acis and Galatea) with Les Arts Florissants. His recording of Purcell’s King Arthur with the Gabrieli Consort was named recording of the year by BBC Music Magazine, as well as winning the Opera category.

Since being selected for the inaugural Equilibrium Young Artists Programme, he has worked closely with Barbara Hannigan, including a widely praised worldwide tour of The Rake’s Progress.

Highlights of the forthcoming seasons include Flute (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) at the Glyndebourne Festival, Lurcanio (Ariodante) with Il Pomo d’Oro conducted by George Petrou, Bach’s St Matthew Passion with Les Talens Lyriques under Christophe Rousset and the Irish Baroque Orchestra under Peter Whelan and Pulcinella with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra under Barbara Hannigan.

He is also a keen recitalist and recently performed Wolf’s Italian Songbook with pianist Christopher Glynn and soloists including Rowan Pierce and Roderick Williams, as well as appearing at the Lammermuir Festival, St George’s Hall, Liverpool, St George’s Bristol and Wigmore Hall. Other recital engagements include Oxford Lieder, London Song Festival and Newbury Festival, as well as curating projects for the Devon Song Festival and SongSpiel.

The Irish mezzo-soprano Niamh O’Sullivan studied at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin under Veronica Dunne, subsequently joining the Opera Studio of Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper (2016–18). Her roles in Munich included Hansel (Hansel and Gretel), Kate Pinkerton (Madama Butterfly), the Secretary (Menotti’s The Consul), Flora (La traviata) and Barena (Jenůfa). She also travelled with the company to New York’s Carnegie Hall for a concert performance of Der Rosenkavalier conducted by Kirill Petrenko. Other appearances include Tisbe (La Cenerentola) and Third Maid (Elektra) with Irish National Opera and in Cousser’s The Universal Applause of Mount Parnassus at the Wigmore Hall with Ensemble Marsyas under Peter Whelan.

In concert, she has performed Elgar’s Sea Pictures at the 2019 Munich Festival and has sang Mozart’s Requiem and Messiah with the Müncher Hofkantorei. She also performed the main role of Cain in Alessandro Scarlatti’s oratorio Il primo omicidio with the Jakobsplatz Orchester under Daniel Grossmann.

Last season she made her Zurich Opera debut as Wellgunde (Das Rheingold), returning for Meg Page (Falstaff). She also made numerous appearances with Irish National Opera, including creating the role of Alva in the world premiere of The First Child, Asteria (Bajazet) at the Royal Opera’s Linbury Theatre, and across Ireland on tour singing Mercédès (Carmen). She also made her Wexford Festival Opera debut as Paulina (Goldmark’s Ein Wintermarchen).

This season’s highlights include Mercédès at ENO, Charlotte (Werther) for INO and Wellgunde with the Royal Opera.

The Clarion Choir is one of the America’s leading professional vocal ensembles and has performed on some of the great stages of North America and Europe. It has recently released its fourth recording, Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil. The group’s recordings of Alexander Kastalsky’s Requiem and Memory Eternal were both nominated for Grammy Awards.

The Clarion Choir was founded by Artistic Director Steven Fox in 2006 and made its Lincoln Center debut in 2011, performing as part of the White Light Festival. In 2014 the choir gave the New York premiere of Passion Week by Maximilian Steinberg, which resulted in another Grammy-nominated recording.

The Clarion Choir has performed regularly in recent years as part of the MetLiveArts series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it has given presentations of large-scale works by Victoria, Palestrina, Taverner and Guerrero in the Medieval Sculpture Hall and the Met Cloisters. Last June it led a ‘Josquin Marathon’ at the Met Cloisters, performing the Flemish master’s instrumental and vocal works throughout the day in the different galleries of the museum.

The Clarion Choir first collaborated with The English Concert and Harry Bicket on a tour of Handel’s Semele in 2019. The group has also collaborated in recent years with Susan Graham, Angel Blue, Leonard Slatkin and the Orchestra of Saint Luke’s, The Knights annd Eric Jacobsen, and Madonna at the 2018 Met Gala.

Steven Fox is Artistic Director of the Clarion Choir and Orchestra in New York and Music Director of Cathedral Choral Society at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

This season he makes conducting debuts with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Atlanta Ballet. In previous seasons he has conducted the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Charleston, Québec and Tucson Symphony orchestras, Opéra de Québec, Chicago’s Music of the Baroque, San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, Juilliard415, Portland’s Cappella Romana, and Toronto’s Theatre of Early Music.

He received Grammy nominations for his first three recordings: Steinberg’s Passion Week and Kastalsky’s Memory Eternal and Requiem. He was also chorus master for the Grammy-winning recording of Ethel Smyth’s The Prison.

He studied at Dartmouth College and the Royal Academy of Music, becoming an associate of the latter in 2010. He founded Musica Antiqua St Petersburg, Russia’s first period-instrument orchestra, at the age of 21, and premiered several important Russian 18th-century symphonic and operatic works with the orchestra. From 2008 to 2013 he was an Associate Conductor at New York City Opera, and, in 2011, served as Assistant Conductor for the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artists Program and Juilliard Opera. He has given masterclasses at the Royal Academy of Music, Dartmouth College, the Juilliard School and Yale University.