Spiritato and the Marian Consort collaborated once again to perform the inventive programme entitled Inspiring Bach on Saturday 22nd October 2022. We performed at St Martin’s Church in Brighton to a large and very receptive audience.

Great cheers followed the rousing final work of the programme, Johann Christoph Bach’s Es erhub sich ein Streit. Will Russell, the organiser of the Inspiring Bach project and fourth trumpet player, struck a particularly heroic pose on the last note—his bell pointing skywards! This has been a fantastic opportunity for us to perform without using finger holes. An interesting passage from within his programme notes reads:

We’re using natural trumpets with large mouthpieces and no finger holes or valves to help us change the notes. The string players are using equal tension; each string being made from differing thicknesses of gut. The vocalists are confronting and musically negotiating these idiosyncrasies in many cases for the very first time. These methods call for big changes in how we approach not just our music but the very nature of working together as an ensemble.

As always, the balance of budget and artistic endeavour makes for an interesting challenge (and it is certainly not an exclusively modern problem). However, rather than play music we know, on instruments that give us the biggest degree of safety – for reputations are fragile, ‘time is money’ and no-one should be blamed for using any means available to guarantee that last high note... - we have chosen to look afresh at how we perform. This is not a route easily taken, and perhaps many feel need not be chosen at all. However, why should we always play it safe?

I look forward to performing this programme again next weekend in Bradford on Avon. It was great to hear Jonathan Rees’ stunning viola da gamba playing again too.

Thanks to everyone who came, we also had an amazing time tonight @BREMF! https://t.co/ZFlYkaS1Hy

— Spiritato (@Spiritato) October 22, 2022

I was delighted to see several familiar faces in the audience of our concert. I also bumped into the brass section of the London Philharmonic Orchestra on the train on the way home. They had been performing Beethoven and Sibelius at the Brighton Dome. The orchestra is celebrating its 90th anniversary, and as I arrived on the train they were enjoying cake made by the celebrity sackbutt player, Jürgen Krauss, of Great British Bake Off fame!

Jürgen baked an AMAZING cake for our 90th birthday and presented it to us before a performance of ‘Happy Birthday’. Jürgen is a musician himself and a regular LPO concert-goer at @brightdome, so who better to bake our birthday cake? 🍰 We can tell you, it was delicious! 😋 pic.twitter.com/hcCvZZOYAX

— London Philharmonic Orchestra (@LPOrchestra) October 23, 2022