Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment: live concert

Step by step, live music is returning to the capital, with performances already at Wigmore Hall, Grange Park Opera, and scheduled at Fidelio Cafe.

Now, for the first time since lockdown, Kings Place will host a live performance behind closed doors, premiering at 11.30AM on Sunday 21 June, and available to watch for free on Kings Place own KPlayer and the Kings Place Facebook Live stream.

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment picks up where it left of with its entertaining and thought-provoking Sunday morning series that pairs work by JS Bach with scientific talks, in a special lockdown edition of Bach, the Universe & Everything.

In this edition, The Importance of Human Contact, Dr Dickon Bevington of the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families considers social distancing restrictions. For most of us, he observes, the pandemic and social distancing have changed everything. But for those most excluded and vulnerable, very little has changed at all.

One of the things that affects everyone is our awareness of how dependent we are on each other. We are bound together, just as an orchestra is bound to its audience. But deprived of so much contact, our imaginations have been highly active. Dr Bevington discusses what it might mean when we return to ‘normal service’ – can we extend our curiosity relentlessly?

The complementing cantata, Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot, BWV 39, is about offering food to your hungry neighbours and offering shelter to those without a home.

Listen out for the chorus which starts with a step-motif that suggests the poor are staggering along in exhaustion, but then evolves to an intensely emotional, rapid fugue in two parts, depicting the warm welcome of shelter.

The choice of this work is especially meaningful as this concert is the first time that the OAE has been able to return to its home venue of Kings Place, London since the lockdown began, taking its own steps back to normal.

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Bach, the Universe and Everything is streamed on KPlayer. Click here for more information and for other streamed performances, including concerts by Aurora Orchestra