Academy of Ancient Music

The wonderful soloists for our double set of French baroque opera in under two weeks' time. London is now SOLD OUT but there are still tickets available in Cambridge!

Find out more: https://bit.ly/AAMpygmalion

We've been thinking of our founder, Christopher Hogwood, who died ten years ago today.

‘Every piece of music should be looked at as a painting that dissolved off the wall when you closed the gallery door. If all the colours dripped down into a huge pot and you took this pot, along with a recipe of how to reassemble the colours back into Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers,’ you would be very careful to get all the reds and the yellows in the right places, and not to paint it bigger or smaller than it was. I think music carries with it this responsibility.’

Christopher Hogwood (10 September 1941 – 24 September 2014)

It's our birthday! AAM was founded 51 years ago today – here's to our 52nd year!

Why is French Baroque opera so neglected in the UK? Our Music Director, Laurence Cummings, talks to Opera Now.

'Although it requires elite performers, French Baroque opera is for all' - Laurence Cummings | opinion Music Director of the Academy of Ancient Music Laurence Cummings looks back on the history of French Baroque opera and considers why it is so neglected in the UK

More than 30 years in the making – The New York Times on Robert Levin and our series of "dazzling" recordings.

A Pianist Who’s Not Afraid to Improvise on Mozart Robert Levin has long argued that Mozart would have made up new material while performing, and he follows the master in a series of dazzling recordings.

‘Unlike any such series on record’

🎧 Listen to WWFM’s David Osenberg speak with Robert Levin about our Mozart series’ ‘triumphant conclusion’.

https://www.wwfm.org/show/cadenza-with-david-osenberg

Tickets are now available for concerts in our brand new season in Cambridge! There's so much to look forward to, whether it's two mini-masterpieces of French baroque, transatlantic classical masters, or an innovative new theatrical concert performance of Bach’s ‘The Art of Fugue’.

Find it all here: https://aam.co.uk/whats-on-cambridge/

We had a great time recording with The Choir of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge – music by Michael Haydn will be released next year!

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ‘The sense of freedom is infectious’ says Financial Times

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ‘The freshness of the music is delightfully brought out’ says BBC Music Magazine

Great reviews coming in for our final Mozart Piano Concerto recording! 🎧 Listen here: https://bit.ly/Mozart-Vol13

'Throughout, Cummings and AAM laid down a carpet of well-woven Baroque sound beneath the singers’ feet, punctuated with obbligato instrumental turns to relish, whether from Carter’s theorbo, the oboes of Leo Duarte and Robert de Bree, or the briefly-appearing first-act horns (Ursula Paludan Monberg, David Bentley).'

A lovely review of Orlando from theartsdesk.com!

‘We needed nothing more than the orchestral brilliance of the AAM, at the end of its 50th anniversary season, led well by Bojan Čičić and directed with clarity and suppleness from the harpsichord by Laurence Cummings. A packed Barbican Hall cheered. Handel is here to stay.’

Handel’s drama of madness and lust lights up the Barbican In this concert staging of Orlando, Iestyn Davies was peerless as the eponymous knight, surrounded by unhappy lovers and conniving magic-men

And that’s a wrap on our 50th Anniversary season! Thanks to everyone who missed the football to join us for Handel’s Orlando at the Barbican Centre last night!

Joining Iestyn Davies for our performance of Handel's Orlando on Sunday are four more outstanding soloists: Rachel Redmond, Anna Dennis, Matthew Brook and Sophie Rennert.

Final tickets available: https://bit.ly/AAM-Orlando

'This cycle has set new standards' – Financial Times

Today we release the final of AAM's thirteen-volume series of Mozart's complete works for keyboard and orchestra. Soloist Robert Levin writes that 'the completion of this cycle represents the successful realisation of a project of outstanding significance'.

You can listen to the final volume, released today, here: https://aam.co.uk/product/mozart-piano-concertos-nos-25-27/

Less than two weeks to go until Iestyn Davies stars as Handel's Orlando. A small number of seats in the auditorium circle remain – don't miss out!

https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2024/event/academy-of-ancient-music-handels-orlando

“This was AAM at its best … a diverse and thought-provoking journey through a mammoth canon, displaying huge talent as well as a love for all things Baroque.”

A lovely Bachtrack review from our Sons of England tour with the brilliant Reginald Mobley!

Sons of England: a fresh look at English Baroque from the AAM Countertenor Reginald Mobley and the Academy of Ancient Music shine in an alternative history of English Baroque, with a new work by Roderick Williams.

Stream, download or buy: https://lnk.to/HowAreTheMightyFallen

Bononcini was Handel’s main rival in London, and with little to separate the two in terms of public status and reputation, they were dubbed the Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee of London’s music scene in the 1720s.

Soon after his arrival in London, Bononcini was afforded the honour of writing a grand orchestral anthem – When Saul was King – for the magnificent funeral of the Duke of Marlborough. Bononcini’s music was particularly highly prized by members of London’s original Academy of Ancient Music. Given this reputation and the quality of his works for voices and orchestra, it is surprising that Bononcini sacred music has now fallen into obscurity. On this new recording with Choir of The Queen's College, Oxford is the first recording not only of 'Ave maris stella' and 'Laudate pueri' but also of the original D-major version of Bononcini’s Te Deum.

For Levin, risk-taking is by far the most important thing about his Mozart recordings.

“It does involve a reasonable readiness for some kind of disaster to happen, but one has to take that risk.”

Read the interview in the Financial Times, out this week: (£)

Pianist Robert Levin: ‘Mozart was restlessly creative, with a kind of attention deficit disorder’ His cycle of the composer’s piano concertos, with added improvisations, comes to a conclusion this month

Rehearsing at the beautiful ahead of our final performance with of ‘Sons of England’!

Don’t miss: this evening in about an hour on BBC Radio 3, Reginald Mobley and Kristiina Watt perform live on In Tune.

They’ll be performing music from our Sons of England concerts in London and Bristol tomorrow and Friday!

On Saturday we premiere our first commissioned work in many years: ‘From Ignatius Sancho’ by Roderick Williams is part of Sons of England – our exploration of the musical world of the first black person to vote in Britain.

AAM to premiere first commission in decades - AAM AAM will premiere a brand-new commissioned work for the first time in more than 20 years on Saturday 25 May, as part of Sons of England. Co-commissioned by AAM and countertenor Reginald Mobley, From Ignatius Sancho is by Roderick Williams, who sets to music text that is based on the writing of Ignat...

‘By placing Sancho’s music alongside composers such as Purcell and Handel, Mobley aims to enrich our view of Baroque culture through the inclusion of a figure in many ways ahead of his time.’

A Financial Times article on our Sons of England concerts, which start this week in Cambridge, before Liverpool, London and Bristol next week:

Composer, writer and abolitionist Ignatius Sancho celebrated with modern take on the Baroque Baritone Roderick Williams has written a new piece setting poems about Sancho, who was born into slavery

’A story of hope, loss and renewal, and a life’s work animated (despite everything) by a spirit of adventure.‘

Ahead of the release of the final volume of our groundbreaking complete Mozart piano concertos, meet the man at the centre of it all:

Meet the man who says improvisation is the key to Mozart In August 1993, the pianist Robert Levin sat down in Walthamstow Assembly Rooms with the conductor Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) to record the complete piano concertos of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart was big – the bicentenary celebrations of 1991 had made a global i...

‘If the sound is one delight, others include the deft playing, sprightly tempos, and dynamics that convey drama without ever being exaggerated.’

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ from Music Magazine & the Concerto Choice!

Read the review here: https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/mozart-piano-concertos-nos-6-8