I performed the Inspiring Bach programme with Spiritato and the vocal ensemble, The Marian Consort, at the Wiltshire Music Centre in Bradford-on-Avon on Saturday 29th October 2022. I led the section of four natural trumpet players (Russell Gilmour, Katie Hodges, Gareth Hoddinott and William Russell). We played natural trumpets without finger holes, with Keith Price on timpani. 

Once again the combination of the final two pieces in the programme had an incredible effect. The intimate forces of Buxtehude's sublime Sonata a 2, played by Kinga Ujszászi (violin) and Jonathan Rees (viola da gamba), worked in stunning contrast to the all-guns-blazing tutti of Johann Christoph Bach's Es erhub sich ein Streit. That said, I still went home whistling the tunes from Johann Sebastian Bach's Christ Lag in Todesbanden, but perhaps that is because there are two opportunities to hear those tunes with Pachelbel's very own setting of that melody also in the programme. The trumpets played in another piece by Pachelbel, Gott sei uns gnädig (which opens the programme), and in Sebastian Knüpfer's Die Turteltaube lässt sich hören which is a truly remarkable, yet largely unknown, piece that includes highly virtuosic natural trumpet parts. It is a very well-constructed programme.

Sadly, I will be unable to join Spiritato for their final performance of this programme in York in December 2022—but I wish them well. They will be in extremely capable hands as one of the leading experts, Jean-François Madeuf, will be performing in my place.