Academy of Ancient Music

Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks

Academy of Ancient Music

Laurence Cummings, conductor; Lucy Crowe, soprano

Handel Music for the Royal Fireworks HWV351
Handel Silete venti HWV242
Handel Water Music HWV348–350

Let's party like it’s 1749! Music of pure celebration as Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music ignite their 50th anniversary season with Handel’s Fireworks Music and Water Music.

A royal court, a floating orchestra and a pyrotechnic display so dazzling that it brought London to a standstill. In early Georgian England, George Frideric Handel was the grand master of sonic pageantry, and his Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks are the sound of pure celebration: as fresh, as stirring and as gloriously tuneful now as they were three centuries ago.

But if you want to hear how Handel would actually have sounded back then: well, let’s just say that no period instrument orchestra has more of a history with these scores than the Academy of Ancient Music. Four decades ago, the AAM redefined the way we listen to Handel. Tonight, under the AAM’s ‘exhilarating’ (Evening Standard) music director Laurence Cummings, they’ll light up the sky all over again.

Wed, 18 October 2023
The Barbican, London
7:30pm
£50, £42, £35, £25, £15, £5 (under 35s – AAMplify)

Full Event Details

Handel Music for the Royal Fireworks HWV351
Handel Silete venti HWV242
Handel Water Music HWV348–350

Let's party like it’s 1749! Music of pure celebration as Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music ignite their 50th anniversary season with Handel’s Fireworks Music and Water Music.

A royal court, a floating orchestra and a pyrotechnic display so dazzling that it brought London to a standstill. In early Georgian England, George Frideric Handel was the grand master of sonic pageantry, and his Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks are the sound of pure celebration: as fresh, as stirring and as gloriously tuneful now as they were three centuries ago.

But if you want to hear how Handel would actually have sounded back then: well, let’s just say that no period instrument orchestra has more of a history with these scores than the Academy of Ancient Music. Four decades ago, the AAM redefined the way we listen to Handel. Tonight, under the AAM’s ‘exhilarating’ (Evening Standard) music director Laurence Cummings, they’ll light up the sky all over again.