Southbank Series: Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

8.00 Southbank Series: Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment directed by Roderick Williams Photo: Mark Allan

The OAE opens its 2020-2021 season with baritone Roderick Williams directing and singing sacred solo cantatas by Telemann and Bach. They are joined in the second half by soprano Rowan Pierce for Handel's secular cantata 'Apollo e Dafne'.  In Handel's poignant and seductive setting of the tale from Ovid's Metamorphoses, passion and desire are succeeded by regret and penitence as Daphne fights off Apollo's insatiable lust and finds escape by transforming herself into a laurel tree, its branches forever watered by Apollo's remorseful tears.

Rowan Pierce Photo: Mark Allan

Programme:

TELEMANN: Die Stille Nacht TWV1:364;

BACH: Cantata No 82, Ich habe genug;

HANDEL: Apollo e Dafne

Rowan Pierce (soprano), Roderick Williams (baritone), Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment directed by Roderick Williams

Recorded in Royal Festival Hall, London by BBC