The pieces have been composed by musicians from around the globe: Leonardo Coral from Mexico will perform his piece Aforismos on the clavichord, inspired by Finland and Ancient mythology. Marie-anne Hof from the Netherlands, American Max Young and Liu Qing from China will also premiere their works for the fortepiano and harpsichord.

The festival’s schedule also features smaller series of concerts: Masterful Bach will see a selection of J. S. Bach’s work performed on various instruments, including the clavichord and the baroque organ. The concerts will feature all of Bach’s cello suites and a selection of his preludes and fugues. Another smaller series from Austrian clavichordist Roman Chlada is entitled Music for the Emperor – presenting music from the European courts during the baroque period.

Other performances scheduled to take place are Estonian musicians Imbi and Raivo Tarum’s eighteenth-century costumed concert ‘Roman and Venetian Splendours’, featuring music from Corelli and Gabrieli; Joyce Lindorff’s concert ‘Music from Shakespeare’s England’, performed on virginal and spinet; and The English Concert’s Walter Reiter will play the baroque violin for the closing concert of the festival, ‘A String of Pearls’.

The Nordic Historical Keyboard Festival takes place in Kuopio, Finland (festival concert venue Kuopio Cathedral pictured). The festival runs from 14 to 23 August 2013. www.nordicclavichord.org

This month I have been working on preparing repertoire for the coming months. Arranging programmes and rehearsing with other artists is a large part of my fellowship and I have enjoyed having the opportunity to collaborate with talented artists that, without the fellowship’s help, would be very difficult to arrange.

Over the past few years I have been working with a Danish trumpeter called Niels Tilma. He and I have toured various programmes including Bach and Telemann cantatas, but our work has been predominantly in Denmark as the funding for small-scale concerts in churches is much better there than it is here; most of the larger churches put on regular concert series, often based around the (usually excellent) church organ, and soprano and trumpet is a popular format. With the fellowship’s help we have been able to bring these programmes here to England – but this time with full string band rather than just organ. The first is planned for York Early Music Christmas Festival on 13 December and I’ve been enjoying the experience of getting an instrumental ensemble together. I will let you know in the coming months when other performances of this will happen.

Another collaboration I have been working on is with a very talented recorder player, Ian Hoggart, who is based in York and studies with the excellent Pamela Thorby. Ian and I have been performing together in various ensembles and we are very excited to be planning concerts as a duo.

Recorder and soprano repertoire is very fertile especially in the early eighteenth century and many obbligato lines can be adapted for the recorder, so the programme ideas are endless. Composers were keen to sell their compositions and so often advertised their music as suitable for several treble instruments. Our upcoming performance in June will include Handel’s German arias and his passionate Italian cantata ‘Mi palpita il cor’. The recital is on 29 June at 11am at Kings Manor, York and is a promotional concert for the Rydale Festival, which begins in mid-July.

Part of the BBC PAF’s role is to guide us as young musicians in how to promote and market ourselves to potential employers, with the hope of giving us a platform to work upon. As Ian and I are both just emerging as soloists it is hard to know how to promote a programme, so the NCEM and the BBC PAF teams have been helping us with this.

The BBC PAF is run by some lovely ladies based at MediaCityUK in Salford and this year they’ve celebrated 10 years of supporting the arts. Over the years they have supported artists such as Adele and the very talented Kathryn Rudge. I was lucky enough to take part in the anniversary celebrations and gave a performance of Handel arias. As an early music singer I can usually be found singing in churches, cathedrals and concert halls but this performance was a little different; it was in the studio next to those used to film Jeremy Kyle. I was following a young rock band that I presume you would describe as ‘fierce’ so there was a marked difference in decibel levels between our performances! However, by far the most entertaining (and challenging) part of the performance was trying to sing while having waves of fake smoke blown in my face. I found that whenever I had a break in the music I was trying to blow the smoke out of my face; needless to say it was most entertaining to those watching – perhaps more so than my singing … at least I learnt that incense is not the worst thing to be wafted around you while singing!

In the coming month I am working on some recordings for my website, for the BBC Radio 3 Early Music Show (airing on 7 July) and for a commercial recording in September. I will attach a sound bite to the next blog – it will be a well-known tune, but with a twist! So do watch out for it.

Leave a question for Bethany in the comments box below if you’d like to ask her anything about her experience so far.

(Image credit: Jim Poyner Photography – www.jimpoyner.co.uk)

This programme features entertaining, imaginative, and uncommonly beautiful music composed with these goals in mind. Included will be striking chamber works by Biagio Marini and Tarquinio Merula, haunting vocal monodies by Claudio Monteverdi, sprightly dances by Gasparo Zanetti and Santino Garsi, inspired improvisations on seventeenth-century grounds, and much more.

This programme features entertaining, imaginative, and uncommonly beautiful music composed with these goals in mind. Included will be striking chamber works by Biagio Marini and Tarquinio Merula, haunting vocal monodies by Claudio Monteverdi, sprightly dances by Gasparo Zanetti and Santino Garsi, inspired improvisations on seventeenth-century grounds, and much more.

Comical Operas from the 18th Century. All operas with picnic intervals. Fully staged in period costumes, baroque ensemble and partly by candlelight, authentic and atmospheric.

Gardens open from 3pm

Livietta e Tracollo
G.B.Pergolesi 
The Intermezzi (interludes) presented here were premiered in combination with Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s opera “Adriano in Siria” on the occasion of the festivities for the birthday of Queen Elizabeth of Spain in 1734 at the Teatro San Bartolo in Naples.

As was customary, the first intermezzo was given after the first act and the second intermezzo after the second act of the opera. The intermezzi had no connection with the plot of the opera seria, nor did the same singers perform.

Dressed as a French peasant boy, Livietta, with her friend Fluvia, plans to lure Tracollo into a trap and punish him because he has robbed Livietta’s brother and almost killed him. As Tracollo and his servant Faccenda, disguised as a pregnant Polish woman and a beggar, approach the women, Livietta pretends to be just waking up. She catches Tracollo trying to steal Fulvia’s jewelry. Livietta reveals herself and is determined to have Tracollo arrested, whereupon he pleads for mercy. He attempts to calm Livietta down and promises to marry her. Although this is Livietta’s greatest wish, she turns him down. Tracollo has disguised himself as an astrologer and pretends to be deranged in order to soften Livietta’s heart after all. To test his supposed unsoundness of mind, Livietta acts the part of one who will soon die. Tracollo proves to be very concerned at this new set of circumstances; he stirs Livietta in such a way, that she leaves off all deception. Both swear to marry, swear eternal love and faithfulness.

“Livietta and Tracollo” counts among the most popular intermezzi of the 18th century and was performed on numerous Italian stages and in other European countries for over 20 years.

La Dirindina
D. Scarlatti
The story of La Dirindina concerns a wily but gifted young singer, Dirindina, and her teacher Don Carissimo, whose interest in his pupil is more than a little untoward. Dirindina’s independent spirit and her ability to sing (when she wants to) annoy Don Carissimo, who is further vexed by the appearance of Liscione, a famous castrato who brings some surprising news: the Milan theatre wants to engage Dirindina as its prima donna. Don Carissimo flies into a rage, stammering his way through a highly amusing and forward-looking aria, only to see that his pretty pupil is now flirting openly with the castrato.

Part II opens with the unctuous Liscione plying Dirindina with a little minuet, which manages simultaneously to flatter the young singer’s ego while lampooning the fashionable but shamelessly sentimental manners of the aristocracy. Dirindina responds with perhaps the oddest aria in the work, full of syncopations and serpentine melodies that cheekily invoke various bodily fluids, with which she promises to seduce the Milanese public. The ensuing “play within a play”, a mock enactment of the tragic Dido’s rejection of the feckless Aeneas, is witnessed by Don Carissimo, who fails to get the joke and thinks that his ward is not only with child but ready to commit suicide. As with all good comedies, the joke’s on him: the finale is both outrageous and touching, as the capon and the hen are joined in hand by a thoroughly deceived old man.

La Dirindina: Angela Simkin
Liscione: Tai Oney
Don Carissimo: David Sean Fearn