In the lead up to the festive season, we present 'Christmas in Leipzig' , a programme centered around Bach's ever-popular Magnificat with music from the three composers who were successive cantors at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig: Schelle, Kuhnau and Bach. Come to our concert at the beginning of Advent on Saturday 1 December at St Mary's Church in Nottingham or on Monday 10 December at Milton Court in London.

Here a little taste of Johann's Schelle's Advent cantata Machet die Tore weit

Writing in The Times, Anna Picard described our performance of motets by JS Bach and his father's cousin, Johann Christoph, as 'dazzling':

Virtuosic fioritura and vivid articulation of text and musical texture were combined in a performance of prayerfulness, playfulness and uninhibited, unmediated expressiveness from eight singers and the organist Michael Papadopoulos.  Read the full article here (£).

We were moved by the very warm response from the capacity audience at St Giles Cripplegate, and are especially grateful to Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who invited us to perform as part of his Bach Weekend at the Barbican in the first place.

Solomon's Knot turns 10 years old in 2018.  What began a decade ago as an experiment between friends to buck the routine of the classical music treadmill has changed and evolved into "the most interesting group currently on the oratorio scene" (Neumarkter Nachrichten, 2017). 

But what we do includes far more than oratorio: from the multimedia jungle of Gesualdo and his contemporaries in The Discovery of Bomarzo, to the zany, anonymous 17th-century opera l'Ospedale, the collective's flexibility, daring, and willingness to collaborate has propelled us through the last 10 years, and promises exciting things for the future.

We have three projects lined up for the first half of this year: see Next Performances.  We're also planning big things for the end of the year and beyond - watch this space!

 We're hitting St Mary's Nottingham and St John's Smith Square with the Mass in B minor in December.

We are thrilled to announce that tickets are now on sale for our Nottingham performance of the Mass in B minor by JS Bach at St Mary's Church, Lace Market, Nottingham on 16 December.  Get your tickets HERE from Lakeside Arts.

electrifying from beginning to end Westmoreland Gazette
more info under Next Performances

Performances
Saturday 16 December 2017, 19:00. St Mary's in the Lace Market, Nottingham, UK Tickets from Lakeside Arts
Monday 18 December 2017, 19:30. St John's Smith Square, London. SJSS Christmas Festival. Tickets

We've also uploaded an excerpt from our performance at Spitalfields Music Winter Festival last year:

despite all the perfection of modern baroque performance, there can often be something missing - Solomon's Knot have perhaps found the answer Stephen Pritchard in The Observer

J.S. Bach Mass in B minor BWV 232
16 December 2017, 7pm. St Mary's Church, Lace Market, Nottingham, UK. Tickets from Lakeside Arts (booking opens ca. 29 September)
18 December 2017, 7.30pm. St John's Smith Square, London, UK (booking open)

We are very much looking forward to reviving our Mass in B minor in Nottingham and London.  Booking is open for our performance in the St John's Smith Square Christmas Festival, where we return after our "Christmas in Leipzig" performance there in 2015.   We are also very excited to make our debut in Nottingham, where we bring the piece to the wonderful medieval church of St Mary in the Lace Market. 

Stephen Pritchard of the The Observer gave our Spitalfields performance (December 2016) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
"organic music-making at its most sophisticated"
"great musicianship allied to unaffected communication made everyone in the hall feel included"
Read the review in full here.

We would love to see you at one of our performances, and share the power of this astonishing music with you.

We are very grateful for the support of the RHL Foundation for our UK Mass in B minor performances.

Our two most recent projects, JS Bach's Johannes-Passion in Arnstadt and Snape, and Handel's Messiah in Halle and Regensburg, drew very strong responses from the audiences in Germany and the UK.

After Snape John Passion, Libby Purves  mentioned us in a comment piece in The Times, describing the performance as "dramatic and thrilling".  The Thüringer Allgemeine chose the words "refreshing and virtuosic" for their review of the Arnstadt performance - read the full article in German here.

Is was very interesting for us to explore the Dublin version of Messiah for the first time, taking it to the Händel-Festspiele in Halle (in the Dom, where Handel was organist for a year) and returning to the wonderful Dreieinigskeitskirche (Holy Trinity Church) in Regensburg as part of the Tage Alter Musik.  The full-length 12/8 version of "Rejoice greatly" was a pleasure to discover, and some unfamiliar cuts and truncations, as well as a complete new chorus ("Break forth into joy") kept us on our toes with this old favourite.  Below is the press response (links all to the german reviews):

"the level of dramatic tension, dance-like elegance, and emotional colour that Solomon's Knot drew out of the venerable oratorio was un-heard of in the truest sense" Süddeutsche Zeitung

"a great benchmark performance" Mittelbayerische Zeitung

"Heaven opens over Regensburg" Onetz.de

The Barbican Centre has today announced exciting plans for a celebratory Bach Weekend in June 2018. We are delighted to share our news that we will be performing in the festival, in a programme of Motets by Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Christoph Bach at St Giles' Cripplegate on Saturday, 16 June 2018.

Solomon's Knot will feature alongside world-class Bach interpreters: Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists will perform three programmes of Bach Cantatas across the weekend, and Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Jean Rondeau will each present solo recitals. 

We are thrilled to form part of this celebratory weekend! General booking will go on sale on Friday, 3 February 2018. 

Find out more about Solomon's Knot's performance in Bach Weekend 2018