Live RSNO Presents: Dunedin Consort Matthew Passion Sat 12 April

John Butt is Gardiner Professor of Music at the University of Glasgow, musical director of Edinburgh’s Dunedin Consort and a Principal Artist with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. His career as both musician and scholar centres on music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but he is also concerned with the implications of the past in our present culture. Author of five monographs, Butt has written extensively on Bach, the baroque, the historical performance revival (Playing with History, 2002) and issues of modernity (Bach’s Dialogue with Modernity, 2010). His subsequent work has centred on listening cultures and embodied musical experience, and frictions between Classical Music ideology and religious practice.

His discography includes eleven recordings on organ and harpsichord for Harmonia Mundi and thirteen recent recordings for Linn Records. Highlights, as conductor of Dunedin, include the Gramophone award-winning recordings of Handel’s Messiah and Mozart’s Requiem (the latter also nominated for a Grammy award), together with significant recordings of Bach’s Passions, Mass, Magnificat, Christmas Oratorio and Brandenburg Concertos, and Handel’s Acis and Esther. A recording of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 is released in September 2017. His performing career has taken him, over last two years, to the US, Mexico, Hong Kong, Germany, France, Holland, Belgium, Malta, Spain and Norway. As a guest conductor he has worked, or will shortly work with, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony, Halle Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, The Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, The English Concert, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Irish Baroque Orchestra and Ars Lyrica. He makes his London Proms debut with Dunedin Consort in August 2017, and opens the Queen’s Hall series with the same group at the Edinburgh Festival.

He has been appointed an FBA and FRSE, and has been awarded the Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Society, together with the RAM/Kohn Foundation’s Bach Prize. In 2013 he was awarded the medal of the Royal College of Organists, together with an OBE.

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.