Good-Night to the Season! ‘tis over!
Gay dwellings no longer are gay;
The courtier, the gambler, the lover,
Are scatter’d like swallows away.

W. M. Praed

This has been a triumphant season for Arcangelo, crowned by a Holy Week tour of Bach’s St Matthew Passion. Many of you were with us at Barbican on 1 April for the London concert and shared in that memorable occasion. For our musicians the combined experience of five major concert halls, five huge audiences - and five St Matthew Passions – was always going to register deeply, but their heartfelt expressions of satisfaction after the project added extra golden harmonics to a fortnight of hard work and travel.  One wrote to us to say: “These were some of the best concerts of my career to date, so I thank you so much for this incredible opportunity.” Another found it “…so incredibly rewarding. It was amazing to feel that there was freedom while being directed which is rare! Listening to the other musicians was a great pleasure.” And a third said: “I loved the music making. This was one of the best musical experiences I have ever had. You take on projects for different reasons and this was definitely the absolute highlight of my career so far. So fulfilling - thank you.”

To hear more from our musicians and to get a sense of their experience of the tour, we invite you to enjoy our tour film by Thibault Blanchard, and a beautiful set of rehearsal and backstage photos captured at Barbican by Christopher Jonas.

Several years ago, a tour of this ambition and complexity would have been unthinkable for Arcangelo – and certainly in the same season as a major project devoted to another mighty work entirely. 2025-26 was of course also the year in which Arcangelo gave its first account in concert of Handel’s dramatic oratorio Saul, and our second residency at the heart of the London Handel Festival. Following the great success of our LHF debut last year at St George’s Hanover Square, a larger venue was agreed – and filled to capacity – for 2026. The audience and critical response was exceptional, with a full slate of five and four-star reviews.  As if that wasn’t enough, we then went on to record it, supported once again by your remarkable generosity. Sadly the intensity of the schedule meant that we couldn’t fully complete the sessions as planned in April. We are currently in the process of establishing a plan to complete the recording at the earliest opportunity and will share more news as soon as we are able to do so.

We have had two new releases to celebrate this season, starting with our triumphant first recording of Handel’s Chandos Anthems which actually came out at the very tail end of last season (June 2025). Throughout the autumn, the critical accolades and citations didn’t stop, with a BBC Music Magazine choice award in September, a GRAMMY pre-nomination (“for your consideration”) in October, and finally a 2026 BBC Music Magazine Award nomination in January. Silverware eluded us, but that’s perhaps appropriate for music composed for a palace which no longer exists – and the main thing is that people are listening to it! Indeed, on the basis of listeners, Chandos Anthems is an outright winner – after just over a year on release it’s already had more streams on Spotify than any other Arcangelo recording on Alpha Classics or Hyperion.

This season has also seen the release of our second studio film. Like the first film, which presented music by Telemann from the Wren Library in Cambridge, our new production once again celebrates a special combination of music and place. This time, an almost implausible series of coincidences and kindnesses saw us introduced to the 15th century Rosslyn Chapel outside Edinburgh, a building whose original mystique has been compounded by the centuries, and most recently by its starring role in the blockbuster Da Vinci Code book and film. Our quest was not for the Holy Grail but for something far less documented – the 18th century transcriptions of traditional Scottish folk tunes by the émigré musician Francesco Barsanti. Andy Staples' beautiful film is a hybrid of performance and documentary and reveals music and place quite beautifully, assisted by the modern-day Countess of Rosslyn herself.

Use the links below to (re)explore these beautiful new releases.

The Arcangelo team has grown this year with the welcome recruitment of Lydia Brookes and Ophelia Amar to new roles within our administration. Lydia and Ophelia have immediately established themselves as essential colleagues, with Lydia supporting a range of key business and administrative functions including our new base at Trinity Buoy Wharf, and Ophelia dedicating herself to everything to do with the Friends, including events and our refreshed monthly e-news. We have also welcomed a new trustee, Simon Maynard, bringing further expertise and oversight to our excellent Arcangelo board. And while we're on the subject of the team, not the least of the year’s achievements has been the commissioning of lovely new staff headshots for the Arcangelo website, meaning that Arcangelo Friends can now see our impeccably polite mechanicals.

Halcyon
Comes On.

Henry Carey

Season 2025-26 set quite the standard - but Season 2026-27 has plenty in store. Take a look at some of the highlights; if you'd like to know more about anything here or have any other questions about next season, you are always welcome to contact us.

Thank you for reading our Season Review, which we hope has given you pleasure. Our success is your success - we could not create any of our projects without your support, and the music we make would be meaningless without your audience. We don't take your support for granted - in fact, every year it becomes more remarkable to us just how fortunate we are to have a body of supporters committed to and passionate about our complex, curious world of music, musicians and musical culture. We look forward to sharing the coming 2026-27 Season with you.