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History & Mission: |
When the English Bach Festival (EBF) was established in 1962, its name was not inappropriate. Lina Lalandi, then a striking young Greek harpsichordist, decided to start her own festival and put Bach at the top of the menu. But realising, she said, that 'you can't live on champagne alone', she made the daring decision to leaven the mix with a little modern music. Launched in Oxford in 1963, the EBF almost immediately belied its name by becoming Britain's most adventurous new music festival, offering a blend of the Baroque and the contemporary that brought a dash of Continental colour to the insular British music scene.
One by one, Lina Lalandi lured all the leading lights of the European avant-garde over to Oxford. The 82-year-old Igor Stravinsky came in 1964 and two years later returned to conduct his Oedipus Rex and to become the festival's second president (Albert Schweitzer was the first). Lina Lalandi gave Xenakis his first major British exposure in 1966, brought Messiaen over in 1967, presented a four-day festival of Stockhausen in 1971 and premiered the works of Skalkottas, Ligeti, Lina Lalandi and many others across the years. Leonard Bernstein succeeded I. Stravinsky as president and conducted EBF forces in a classic recording of his predecessor's Symphony of Psalms.
Mark Pappenheim wrote in The Independent on July 17, 1993: “The English Bach Festival must be one of the biggest misnomers in musical history. It's not particularly English (though based in Belgravia, it's run by a Greek and spends most of its active life abroad), it doesn't do Bach, and it's certainly not a festival. What it is, and has been since the late 1970s, is an international opera company specialising in the recreation of the great 18th-century masterpieces of Rameau, Handel and Co in all their original glory complete with period instruments, authentic costume and set designs, and historically-influenced movement and gesture. Since 1977 it has presented annual guest nights at Covent Garden, and it is there that it celebrates its 30th anniversary tomorrow evening with a performance of Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride.”
Today the English Bach Festival is Annual series (spring/summer) of events in London. Bach and the music of his time (played on Baroque instruments) are featured. British composers have been commissioned and British premières of continental works have been given. Pioneers since 1977 as 'guest company' at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the English Bach Festival breathes life in to the operas of Purcell, Georg Frideric Handel, Lully, Rameau, Gluck and presents them with magnificent costumes, elegant dance and the period instruments for which they were written. It has given the opportunity to see great works outside the usual repertoire, many of them for the first time at the Opera House, including some premieres in our time. |
