Requiem for an Empress
Gabrieli Consort, Paul McCreesh
Burgos Cathedral, Capilla del Condestable
One of the chief glories of Burgos Cathedral is the octagonal Constable’s Chapel (1482–94). Here the Gabrieli Consort perform Victoria’s Requiem.

Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548–1611) was one of the greatest of Renaissance composers, and his Requiem is one of the pinnacles of Spanish culture. First performed at the solemn obsequies for the death of Empress Maria of Austria in 1603, we hear it in the year marking the 400th-anniversary of the death of Victoria.

The Gabrieli Consort and Players, founded by Paul McCreesh in 1982, is one of the world’s leading chamber choirs and chamber orchestras specialising in historically informed performance. In recent years their repertoire has expanded from Renaissance and Baroque to encompass Classical, Romantic and twentieth-century music. Their conductor and artistic director Paul McCreesh is not only recognised as one of the most authoritative and exciting conductors of the earlier repertoire on the concert platform and in the opera house, but is also much sought after across Europe as a guest conductor for later music.

La Batalla
His Majesty’s Sagbutts & Cornetts, His Majesty’s Consort, Jeremy West (director)
Casa del Cordón
The residence of kings for three centuries, the Casa del Cordón was where Columbus received the royal charter for his 1492 voyage.Here, in the arcaded courtyard (restored and roofed), His Majesty’s Sagbutts and Cornetts, together with His Majesty’s Consort, perform pieces based on Clément Janequin’s chanson ‘La guerre, ou la bataille’.

Full of vivid word-painting and onomatopoeic effects, Janequin’s chanson was a remarkably popular work that became the model for an astonishing number of parodies in the sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, especially in Spain. This afternoon’s programme includes works by Guerrero, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, Ximénez and Cabezón.

Founded in 1982, His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts has achieved world-wide recognition through tours and numerous recordings. Activities over the group’s near thirty-year history have been diverse, ranging from sound and vision recordings for the BBC comedy The Two Ronnies, to appearances at the Salzburg Festival, St Mark’s, Venice, and the Sydney Opera House.

Today they are formed of eight wind players joined by five voices from His Majesty’s Consort, directed by Jeremy West.

The Golden Age
Orphénica Lyra, José Miguel Moreno (director), Soledad Cardoso (soprano)
Iglesia de San Nicolás
The Gothic church of San Nicolás has a magnificent retable by Francis of Cologne (1505). Grouped in front of this, the ensemble Orphénica Lyra celebrates Spain’s Golden Age performing works by a wide range of composers including Fuenllana, Morales, Vázquez, Ortiz, Mudarra, Hidalgo, Marín, Martín y Coll and Sanz.

Orphénica Lyra is dedicated to historically informed performance of Renaissance and Baroque Spanish music. Their founder and director, José Miguel Moreno, is Spain’s leading player of the vihuela (the courtly predecessor of the guitar), and one of the world’s leading performers of historical plucked instruments. Together they have made several award-winning recordings on the Glossa label and toured throughout Europe and beyond.

Soprano Soledad Cardoso began her training in Argentina before moving to Madrid. She has performed in opera houses across Europe and has extensive Spanish repertoire.

A Renaissance Festival in Lerma
Lerma is built on a steep escarpment with panoramic views of the countryside. Off the beaten track and wonderfully unassuming, it is yet one of the finest remaining Renaissance towns in Europe.

Its creator, the Duke of Lerma (1553–1625), was the most powerful man in Spain during the reign of King Philip III. He spent vast sums of New World gold and silver on frivolities and spectacles. Now charged with bringing about long-term damage to the Spanish economy and body politic, artists and musicians nevertheless owed much to his patronage. The King visited Lerma several times, and from the music in the archives it is possible to reconstruct something of the musical glories with which he was welcomed.

In 1601 the Duke decided to rebuild his natal village as an ideal courtly and Christian community. The project included his palace, six new monasteries and the Collegiate Church of San Pedro, venue for all three parts of today’s concert.

The Gabrieli Consort and Players number thirty today.

The organs of San Pedro
San Pedro has two fabulous organs, both recently restored back to their seventeenth-century specification. The concert begins exploring the music of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish school including compositions by the most famous organist of them all, Antonio de Cabezón.

Vespers for the Duke of Lerma & King Philip III
A recreation of a magnificent service as it might have been celebrated in October 1617: Psalms, motets and Magnificat by Cabezón, Victoria, Lobo, Guerrero and Romero, performed with instrumental music from the famous Lerma manuscript, a polychoral extravaganza to entertain a king.

Salve for the Duke & his King
Break for refreshments then return to San Pedro. The Salve service was a hugely popular Spanish devotion throughout the Renaissance and Baroque periods. After the fireworks of the Vespers, this programme – culminating in Victoria’s sublime Salve Regina  – gently brings us back to contemplative quietude.

The spirit of Spain
Carlos Bonell (guitar)
Teatro de Burgos, Salón Rojo
As elsewhere in relatively oppressed Europe, Spain in the late-nineteenth century saw a surge of Neo-Romantic nationalism, liberalism and interest in regional identity. The simultaneous development of a Spanish school of music was inspired both by a revival of interest in the Spanish Golden Age and by studies of folk music. Dances such as the jota, fandango and seguidilla entered the concert hall.

The celebrated guitarist Carlos Bonell performs music by Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, Joaquín Rodrigo, Francisco Tarrega and Manuel de Falla, the most prominent of the Spanish nationalist school. The arrangements of works of Albéniz are particularly evocative of the spirit of Spain, incorporating many of the rhythms and harmonies of ancient bucolic traditions.

Songs of Farewell
Gabrieli Consort, Paul McCreesh
Burgos Cathedral
This evening’s concert turns to British composers of the sixteenth to the late-twentieth centuries with a programme exploring responses to loss and sorrow in the powerful setting of Burgos Cathedral.
Works by Gibbons, Walton, White, MacMillan, Sheppard, Dove, Morley, Parry and Elgar are built around Howell’s Requiem, a work of real emotional magnitude, and performed in front of the extravagantly gilded, sixteenth-century high altar in the main nave of the Cathedral.

The Gabrieli Consort and Players are world-renowned interpreters of great choral repertoire encompassing major works from the oratorio tradition and virtuosic a cappella programmes. Recent recordings with Deutsche Grammophon include Haydn’s Creation, recipient of a Gramophone Award for Best Choral Recording, and A Spotless Rose, nominated for a Grammy Award in 2010. This evening’s choir numbers nineteen.

A Spanish Carnival
Soloists of the Gabrieli Consort & Players
Palacio de Avellaneda
A programme of songs, madrigals, wind and harp music performed by members of the Gabrieli Consort and Players. The glorious arcaded courtyard of the sixteenth-century palace is the principal venue for the concert, with the halls on the piano nobile as additional spaces.