I look forward to welcoming you to this year’s London Festival of Baroque Music at Smith Square Hall. Our 2026 season, titled ‘Refractions’, invites you to experience the brilliance of the baroque era through a lens of transformation, coloured both by the passage of time and the unique perspectives of the performers themselves. From the intimate relationships of solo recitals featuring Purcell and Dowland to the grand, almost architectural splendour of Bach’s choral and orchestral masterpieces I have no doubt our world-class artists will reveal hidden facets and some surprising revelations!

Our friends from Denmark, Concerto Copenhagen directed by Lars Ulrik Mortensen, kick off the week with Bach’s Orchestral Suites and we close with David Bates and his group La Nuova Musica in my favourite of Bach’s choral works, the matchless B Minor Mass. Along the way we have (to note a few) very exciting appearances by the likes of lutenist Thomas Dunford, soprano Nardus Williams, violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte, Stille Antico and UK debuts for France’s Ensemble Theodora and the lute wunderkind Yuli Bayeul with tenor Laurence Kilsby. A new arrangement of the Goldberg Variations will be given by resident orchestra Sinfonia Smith Square.

I was so happy to see such full houses for last year’s festival – it underlines my faith in it being the vital way in which we experience this period of musical ‘history’. I hope you will join us again to be part of seeing and hearing the Baroque anew.