A glorious diversity: Temple Music Foundations 2024/25 season with everything from medieval French song & Arabic poetry to Benjamin Britten & James MacMillan

Temple Church

The Temple Music Foundation’s 2024/25 season offers the opportunity to hear a diverse range of music in a variety of spaces in and around Temple. Things kick off with Siren Duo (Claire Wickes, flute and Tomos Xerri, harp) in the intimate confines of Middle Temple Library with an imaginative programme themed around fire and water including music by Mozart (from the flute and harp concerto), Debussy, Piazzolla (from Histoire du Tango), William Alwyn (evoking the rivers and reedbeds of Suffolk), Toru Takemitsu (inspired by Melville’s Moby Dick), David Watkins, and Adina Izarra. We move to the glorious spaces of Temple Church for a performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 with Harry Christophers conducting the Sixteen.

One highlight of the season must be tenor James Way’s recital with pianist Julius Drake and horn player Richard Watkins. Their exploration of music for tenor, horn and piano includes Schubert’s wonderful, and relatively little done, Auf dem Strom, Britten’s The Heart of the Matter (his expansion of his Edith Sitwell setting, Still falls the rain) and the premiere of James MacMillan’s Duet for Horn and Piano, along with music by Schumann, and Poulenc.

Using the Round Church rather than the regular nave of Temple Church, Siglo de Oro, director Patrick Allies, will be collaborating with actors and readers, and scholars from the UKRI-funded Musical Lives project to bring together performance of medieval French songs, Arabic poetry and Latin charters with narration evoking the world of medieval knight, William Marshal (d.1219 and buried in Temple Church).

Thomas Allery will be direction the Temple Youth Choir which consists of young singers from across London, including choral scholars and former choristers of the Temple Church, coming together for their annual concert for Remembrance. This year they are performing Fauré’s Requiem in the year of the centenary of his death.

At the beginning of December, music at Temple is devoted to the Winter Festival which features a variety of events including Mark Padmore and Julius Drake in Schubert’s Winterreise, Onyx Brass in music from Monteverdi and Bach to Imogen Holst and Emily Hall, an organ recital from Danish organist Hanne Kuhlman in music from Bach and Krebs to Karg-Elert and more, the Sacconi Quartet in Ravel, Mendelssohn and Roxanna Panufnik, the choir of Merton College in carols and anthems for Advent, and Thomas Allery directing Temple Church Choir and Temple Players in Handel’s Messiah with soloists Jessica Cale, Rebecca Leggett, Stuart Jackson and Christopher Purves.

Full details from the Temple Music website.