Live RSNO Presents: Dunedin Consort & Hebrides Ensemble Sun 27 October

Dunedin Consort is one of the world’s leading Baroque ensembles, recognised for its vivid and insightful performances and recordings. Formed in 1995 and named after Din Eidyn, the ancient Celtic name for Edinburgh Castle, Dunedin Consort’s ambition is to allow listeners to hear early music afresh, and to couple an inquisitive approach to historical performance with a commitment to commissioning and performing new music. Under the direction of John Butt, the ensemble has earned two coveted Gramophone Awards – for the 2007 recording of Handel’s Messiah and the 2014 recording of Mozart’s Requiem – and a Grammy nomination.

Dunedin Consort performs regularly at major festivals and venues across the UK, including the BBC Proms, Edinburgh International Festival and Lammermuir Festival, with whom it enjoys close associations. In 2017, Dunedin Consort announced its first residency at London’s Wigmore Hall, which continues to this day and complements its regular series of events at home in Scotland, as well as throughout Europe and beyond. The group’s growing discography on Linn Records includes Handel’s Acis and Galatea and Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, both nominated for Gramophone Awards. Other Bach recordings include Mass in B Minor, Violin Concertos, Magnificat, Christmas Oratorio, Matthew Passion and John Passion, which was nominated for a Recording of the Year award in both Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. A recording of Handel’s Samson, in its first version of 1743, was released in October 2019, receiving Editor’s Choice accolades across the board.

Alongside its performance and recording work, Dunedin Consort is committed to a wide-ranging education programme both in schools and in the wider community. In inspiring and encouraging musical participation, developing vocal skills and fostering a love of classical music, historical performance and new music, Dunedin Consort aims to develop and nurture its potential audience and to encourage the performers of the future.

While Dunedin Consort is committed to performing repertoire from the baroque and early classical periods, and to researching specific historical performance projects, it remains an enthusiastic champion of contemporary music. In recent years the ensemble has commissioned and premiered new music by composers including Stuart Macrae, Ailie Robertson, Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, William Sweeney, Nico Muhly, Peter Nelson, Stevie Wishart and Sally Beamish. In 2019 it premiered four new co-commissions with the BBC Proms, and in 2021 premiered Dido’s Ghost, a new opera by Errollyn Wallen, co-commissioned with the Barbican Centre, Edinburgh International Festival, Buxton International Festival, Mahogany Opera and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale.

With programmes that are diverse, imaginative and inspiring, Hebrides Ensemble has established itself as one of the foremost chamber music collectives in the UK.

Co-founded and led by its Artistic Director, the cellist and conductor William Conway, the Ensemble is renowned for its fresh and intelligent approach to programming, which places contemporary music at the heart of a diverse range of repertoire.

The Ensemble’s strength is its flexibility; it draws its performers from a pool of the most outstanding musicians in the UK and beyond, ensuring the exceptional performance standards for which it has become renowned. This is an international ensemble with its roots in Scottish culture, a collective which performs regularly at venues and festivals throughout the UK and Europe and is regularly featured in broadcasts for BBC Radio 3.

In recent years, the Ensemble has given premieres at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, at Kings Place and Wigmore Hall in London, at the Aldeburgh Festival and Edinburgh International Festival. In 2018, Hebrides Ensemble made its debut appearance at the BBC Proms.

Hebrides Horizons supports the next generation of performers, composers, artistic directors and cultural leaders through its mentoring programme, and Hebrides Digital allows audiences around the world to be part of every performance the Ensemble gives, using livestreaming and cutting-edge digital technology.

Hebrides Ensemble recently released ‘Ursa Minor’, the fifth in a series of composer portrait albums in partnership with Delphian Records, focused on the chamber music of Stuart MacRae. Previous volumes featured music by Judith Weir, Nigel Osborne, Peter Maxwell Davies (EVM Award for New Music Recording of the Year at the 2018 Scottish Awards for New Music) and James MacMillan (the premiere recording of ‘Since it was the day of Preparation…’ which went straight to No.1 in the Specialist Classical Chart upon release in July 2016).

Matthew Brook is known for his honest and open portrayal of characters whether on the opera or concert stage. He leapt to fame with his 2007 Gramophone Award-winning recording of Handel’s Messiah with the Dunedin Consort, followed by equally critically acclaimed recordings of Acis and Galatea and St Matthew Passion. He has appeared as a soloist throughout Europe, Australia, North and South America and the Far East, and has worked with many of the world’s leading conductors. He has developed a world-wide reputation for his interpretation of the music of J.S Bach and George Frederic Handel but his musical tastes stretch far beyond this, often performing new commissions.

Other concert repertoire he performs regularly include pieces such as Beethoven Ninth Symphony and Missa Solemnis, Berlioz L’Enfance du Christ, Brahms’ Requiem, Elgar Dream of Gerontius, Haydn Die Schöpfung and Die Jahreszeiten, Mendelssohn Elijah, Tippett A Child of Our Time and Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast.

Matthew has enjoyed long collaborations with conductors including Sir Andrew Davis, Harry Bicket, Bernhard Labadie, Christophe Rousset, John Nelson, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Philippe Herreweghe, John Butt, Harry Christophers, Paul McCreesh and the late Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Roger Norrington and Richard Hickox. He has also collaborated with Richard Tognetti, Sir Mark Elder, Emmanuelle Haïm, Laurence Equilbey, Maxim Emelyanchev, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and Christian Curnyn.

In 2023 Matthew made his Opéra national de Paris debut performing the role of Il Re di Scozia in a new Robert Carsen production of Ariodante under Harry Bicket. He has performed roles at Staatstheater Stuttgart, Opera Comique, Göttingen International Handel Festival, The Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg and at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Some of Matthew’s roles have included Polyphemus Acis and Galatea, Aeneas Dido and Aeneas, Papageno Die Zauberflöte, Figaro Le nozze di Figaro, Leporello Don Giovanni, Kouno Der Freischütz, Garibaldo Rodelinda, Ned Keene Peter Grimes, Vicar Albert Herring, Noye Noye’s Fludde, John Bunyan and Lord Hategood in Vaughan Williams’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, Melchior in Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, Jupiter in Rameau’s Castor et Pollux, Starek and Mayor Jenufa, Antenor and Calkas in Walton’s Troilus and Cressida, Zuniga Carmen, Argenio Imeneo, Claudio Agrippina and Seneca in L’incoronazione di Poppea. He assumed the roles of Don Alfonso and Bartolo under Sir John Elliott Gardiner as part of a big European tour including at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Salle Pleyel, Paris, Teatro Real, Madrid and Giuseppe Verdi Opera House, Pisa.

Matthew has an extensive discography resulting in many nominations and awards including several Gramophone awards for the music of Handel and Bach and a Grammy nomination for the Mozart Requiem. His recent recording Bach: Ich habe genug with the Dunedin Consort for the Linn label won the choral award in the 2022 BBC Music Magazine Awards. Some other recording highlights include, Handel’s Ariodante with Joyce DiDonato and Il Complesso Barocco for the Erato label under Alan Curtis, Idomeneo with the late Sir Charles Mackerras for EMI, and Counsel Trial By Jury and Friar Tuck in Sullivan’s Ivanhoe with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for Chandos records. He is also soloist for a BBC television recording of Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ under the late Richard Hickox.

Future releases will include a new recording of Handel’s Messiah with John Nelson, the English Concert and Choir and a recording of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with David Bates and La Nuova Musica.

Recent highlights include the role of Aeneas in the world premiere of Errollyn Wallen’s Dido’s Ghost co-commissioned by the Dunedin Consort with the Barbican Centre, Edinburgh International Festival, Buxton International Festival and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale, a return to the Edinburgh International Festival for a special performance of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with Maxim Emelyanchev and the SCO, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Royal Philharmonic under Vasily Petrenko.

This season, Matthew makes his debut with Opera North in David Poutney’s “Masque of Might”, music by Purcell, conducted by Harry Bicket, returns to Grange Park Opera, and gives performances with the Czech Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Philharmonia Baroque, Handel and Haydn Society Boston and closer to home with the Academy of Ancient Music, English Concert, Dunedin Consort, The Hallé and Royal Northern Sinfonia to name a few.