Originally founded 15 years ago by friends all now living in Cholsey, The Band of Music, formed of Frances Norbury (oboe and oboe d'amore), Nia Lewis and Daniel Edgar (violins), Rose Redgrave (viola), Jonathan Manson (’cello and viola da gamba), and Christopher Bucknall (harpsichord), have busy careers which take them all over the world, performing in and directing opera, concerts and recordings. Now they make a welcome return to Wallingford with a programme of chamber music focussing on JS Bach, with contributions from Corelli and Telemann. All pieces are performed on copies of period instruments, allowing us to enter the sound world that Bach and his contemporaries inhabited.

Bach was an inveterate arranger of his own music as well as that of his contemporaries. At the heart of this programme are arrangements of some of the tuneful two- and three-part inventions (sinfonias) that he wrote to encourage his children and students in their keyboard playing. As well as overtures and sonatas by Bach, The Band of Music will perform a trio sonata by Arcangelo Corelli who established this form as one of the major genres of the Baroque Era with his acclaimed publications of four collections of trio sonatas. There is also an Oboe Concerto by Bach’s friend and colleague, the prolific George Philipp Telemann.