Ensemble Hesperi is a dynamic and innovative London-based period ensemble, with a passion for showcasing Early Music. through intelligent, distinctive programming. Since 2019, the ensemble has gained a strong reputation for championing rarely-heard music, bringing forgotten stories to life through original historical research.
The programme will include music from their 2025 album ‘A Gift for your Garden’ that celebrates Philipp Telemann’s botanical passion. His published correspondence shows that he often wrote to his musician friends abroad, asking them to send him plant specimens. Among these friends were George Frideric Handel and Johann Gottlieb Graun, each of whom is represented by a trio sonata, and there is also music by Telemann himself: one of his difficult ‘Paris Quartets’, a raucous sonata in G minor and a haunting fantasia for solo recorder.
In 2020, Hesperi was selected as Britten Pears Young Artists on the Chamber Music Residence scheme, and in November 2020, won first prize at the London International Festival of Early Music Young Ensemble Competition. In September 2021, the ensemble was delighted to win third prize at the prestigious International Van Wassenaer Competition in Utrecht, and released its debut album with EM Records, “Full of the Highland Humours”, later that year. In December, the ensemble was selected as City Music Foundation artists 2021. In late 2023, Hesperi launched its vocal ensemble, the “Hesperi Voices” , in a performance of Purcell and Blow, supported again by a grant from the Continuo Foundation.
Hesperi has appeared regularly on BBC Radio 3’s Early Music Show, recorded in studio for Classic FM, and has performed at leading festivals and venues across the United Kingdom and Europe, including St Magnus International Festival, Buxton International Festival, Brighton Early Music Festival, LIFEM, Petworth Festival, Lichfield Festival, King’s Lynn Festival, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Snape Maltings, Festival Alte Musik Knechtsteden, and Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht Fringe.
Tickets £30 – Book before 19th April and tickets are £25. Free admission for 21 and under. Tickets available online (click the button below) and also available at Sprout and Flower in Mere.
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