Renowned period instrument orchestra The Hanover Band returns to Kings Place with acclaimed director Robert Howarth, a top-flight team of soloists and the hand-picked professional voices of the Hanover Band Chorus to perform Handel’s timeless Messiah. There’s no finer way to start Christmas!

Handel’s Messiah takes us from the tenderness of the Christmas story to the blazing magnificence of the final Amen chorus, through some of his most exquisite arias for solo voices and the rousing brass and timpani of music’s most famous Hallelujah (sorry, Leonard Cohen!) It’s easy to see how this oratorio, written in just 24 days in the summer of 1741, grew from its modest Dublin premiere to become the smash hit of the Georgian age.

The Hanover Band has always felt a special affinity for Handel, an early-Hanoverian giant whose music continued to resound throughout the era, and it is delighted that this tour marks its first collaboration with Robert Howarth, one of the country’s leading directors of Handel’s music. The Hanover Band joins forces with a stellar line-up of soloists and The Hanover Band Chorus – its hand-picked ensemble of professional voices – to make this the Messiah to hear this Christmas.

Programme:
GF Handel Messiah, HWV 56

Performers:
Phillipa Hyde soprano
Tom Lilburn alto, countertenor
Bradley Smith tenor
TBA bass
The Hanover Band and Chorus
Robert Howarth director