Festivals

Early Music by Candlelight Summer Festival

Music and words in a collection of imaginative and scholarly programmes, performed by members of award-winning ensemble Charivari Agréable.

☀️Summer festival

When

☀️Summer festival

Next event:

Sun, 6 July 2025

About

'Every series consists of six or so different programmes, repeated several times each. Festival artistic director Kah-Ming Ng picks pieces to fit a theme, and then chooses ensembles from among his enormous pool of talented musicians, with readings or introductions which tie the pieces together. They're laid back and professional, irreverent yet learned, and make for an evening that's both calm and stimulating. It is a pleasing irony that these concerts are Oxford institutions, organised by someone with such an international background: Ng was born in Malaysia and came to Oxford by way of Melbourne and Frankfurt.… Just the kind of experience that affirms the supremacy of live music over its recorded form.' — Daily Info Oxford

Recognized as ‘one of the classiest baroque bands’ (The Observer), whose ‘musical intuitions are always captivating’ (Goldberg), Charivari Agréable is ‘one of the most versatile Early Music groups around at the moment, which, under its benign director, Kah-Ming Ng, appears to be infinitely adaptable, finding musicians who can fit into any of its many and varied programmes’ (International Record Review). The group has been hailed for its ‘thinking musicians who treat music of the past more creatively’ via their arrangements of music, ‘based on a greater knowledge of the historical and social contexts for the music’.

They represent ‘a new and very exciting phase of the early music revival, one that enriches the existing repertory and can bring us ever closer to the spirit of the original music’ (Gramophone). The ensemble specializes in the ingenious use of period instruments to produce ‘ravishing sonorities and full-bodied textures’ (Gramophone) with ‘their powerful cohesion, warm sound, and their eloquent authority’ (Diapason). The group has ‘carved something of a niche for itself in imaginative and well-thought-out programming’; ‘its work is the fruit of both scholarly research and charismatic musicianship, a combination that puts it at the forefront of period-instrument ensembles’ (BBC Music Magazine).