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Hespèrion XXI dazzle us with virtuosity as they celebrate musical Europe in the heart of Westminster.

Those happy to brand the British Isles as the "land without music" for the time between Purcell and Britten might have cause to rethink if they audited the vintage of London of the late 1760s. Johann Christian Bach, the youngest of Johann Sebastian's sons, moved to England in 1765, helped along by the expatriated Carl Friedrich Abel, with whom he shared a house on Meard Street in Soho.

Compared to the venue for this concert, the eighteenth century Baroque music in the programme is relatively modern. Beverley Minster was built between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. Sitting in the ancient Quire where generations of musicians have sat before, listening to the Historically Informed Performance, the audience was transported into the world of the past.

Parrainé la Neue Bachgesellschaft de Leipzig, l'incontournable festival dirigé par Vincent Morel a connu deux premières journées intéressantes, dotées d'une belle programmation mais inégales dans la réalisation.