The Music Faculty is delighted to be contributing several exciting events to this year's Cambridge Festival, taking place in March 2024:
7 and 8 March: Bach’s St John Passion. Experience two very different performances of the St John Passion ! On 7 March, renowned tenor Nicholas Mulroy will lead a stellar ensemble, including Prof Margaret Faultless and members of the Orchestra of the Age of Elightenment, in a performance of Bach’s oratorio in St John’s College Chapel. Then on 8 March, the musicians will relocate to the Great Hall at Girton College for a performance of St John Passion that will offer an historically-informed immersive experience, based on Prof Bettina Varwig’s research. Performed in the round, the concert is designed to bring the audience into direct contact with the bodily enactment of this affective journey.
14 March: electro//acoustic day at the Faculty of Music and West Road Concert Hall. In this celebration of electro-acoustic music, four concerts staged throughout the day will bring classical repertoire into dialogue with cutting-edge electronic music, inviting audiences to discover new musics, and new ways of listening. The event will also feature a sound-visual installation created through a collaboration between composition and visual art students from the Faculty of Music and the Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts (CSVPA). Highlights of the day include George Benjamin in conversation with Richard Causton and Marta Gentilucci, ahead of a performance of his music by Italian pianist Erik Bertch. We are also delighted to be welcoming the SOUND/IMAGE Research Centre from the University of Greenwich, as part of their Spring tour, Intersections for this event.
23 March: PhD Candidate Nicholas Ong (Clare College), will lead a lecture recital celebrating the life and work of Russian composer Valentia Serova (1846-1924). Serova’s first opera Uriel Acosta (1885), was the first opera by a woman to be performed at the Bolshoi theatre in Moscow - Russia’s biggest operatic stage. But despite the opera's initial success, Serova has suffered a plight all too familiar to creative female figures of the nineteenth century, largely consigned to the footnotes of history. This lecture-recital will introduce audiences to the socio-political and personal events that impacted Russia’s musical world and Serova’s life, alongside the performance of extracts from Uriel Acosta, which has not been performed since 1892 and never beyond the territories of the Russian Empire.