The British ensemble Sixteen has performed early music for 30 years, and its contribution to the performance of the instrumental and vocal music of the Renaissance and the Baroque era, as well as early classical music, is invaluable. The ensemble’s repertoire features music by the greatest composers of the European classical pantheon: Palestrina, Monteverdi, Bach, Handel. For several years, the ensemble has worked on music that was created at the court of the Vasa dynasty. In 2013, in cooperation with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, they released an album entirely dedicated to the work of Bartłomiej Piękiela – an organist, vice-Kapellmeister of Marco Scacchi’s band and finally the first non-Italian to become maestro di capella of the Wawel Cathedral Band. A year later, the Sixteen recorded the album Italian Maestri in Poland, which featured compositions by Vincenz Bertolusci, Giovanni Francesco Aneri and Aprillio Pacelli – the Italian masters creating music at the Polish court.
At the Brighton Early Music Festival the Sixteen is to present works by Pękiela, Bertolusci, Aneri and Pacelli. The compositions created at the Vasa court are to be accompanied by Palestrina’s Pulchra es, amica mea. The concert programme is meant to demonstrate how the music created in Rome and Venice influenced the sounds created within the walls of Wawel Castle and the Royal Castle in Warsaw.
The Brighton Early Music Festival first took place in 2002. Concerts and workshops associated with mediaeval, Renaissance and baroque compositions, as well as folk music and music from the beginning of the nineteenth century, take place in Brighton and Hove. Some of the festival concerts will be broadcast by BBC 3 radio.
Source: press materials, ed. fl, transl. szm, October 2014