Praised by the New York Times for their “soulful depth” and their “consummate skill and musicianship”, The London Handel Players have thrilled audiences across the world with their performances and recordings. Established in 2000, the Players appear regularly at leading venues and festivals in the UK, Europe and North America, performing baroque chamber music and concertos and collaborating with the world’s leading singers and celebrate their 25th anniversary this season.
The ensemble has performed across North America, making their New York debut at the Frick Museum in 2012 and returning to perform at Carnegie Hall in 2014. Concerts have also included performances at Wigmore Hall, Internationale Händel-Festspiele Göttingen, Halle International Handel Festival and in France, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Serbia and Croatia. Committed educators at every level and holding professorships in Historical Performance at London’s Conservatoires, The London Handel Players give numerous masterclasses and workshops.
Recent tours have taken them to France, Ireland, Scotland and Turkey. In the 24-25 season they will return to Wigmore Hall to perform Bach’s B minor Mass and Cantatas as well as programmes of Handel and Telemann and they will make tours to Madeira, Cyprus and Spain. Two recordings, one of Bach Sonatas for keyboard and violin and one of Handel aria arrangements called ‘Total Eclipse’, were released by Somm Recordings in 2023 to great acclaim and discs of Telemann Paris Quartets and Leclair Violin Concertos will appear in 2025.
Their highly acclaimed discography also includes four discs of Handel chamber music; his two sets of trio sonatas Op.2 and Op.5, his complete works for solo violin and a disc entitled ‘Handel at Home’ all on the Somm label. They have recorded Geminiani’s complete Op.1 sonatas and a two-disc set of JS Bach’s flute sonatas interspersed with some flute arias from his cantatas sung by Elizabeth Cragg, Charles Daniels and Peter Harvey. Future releases include recordings of Vivaldi flute and recorder concertos.
The utter closeness of the duetting between [flautist] Brown and violinist Adrian Butterfield in Giulio Cesare’s ‘Se pietà’; the brightly fluid, rich-toned rhythmic buoyancy in the outer movements of the Corelli-breathed Sonata a 5, the closest Handel got to a violin concerto; and the emotively vocal quality that [Silas] Wollston’s slight whisper of rubato has reinfected into the circling lines of Handel’s own harpsichord arrangement of ‘Ombra cara’. All in all, an end-to-end pleasure.
Charlotte Gardner, Gramophone Magazine, January 2024
