Handel's Salon with Tabea Debus
Jun 2024
"Lessons from the Master"
Virtuosic recorder player, Tabea Debus, presents a programme that delves into Handel and JS Bach’s roles as teachers during their multifaceted careers. This role inspired them to write pieces to the benefit of their students - all in the hope that, as Bach puts it, his pupils would go on to influence “the minds of other good students who are not satisfied with the ordinary lirum-larum.”
Tabea Debus
Described by The Times as a charismatic virtuoso Tabea Debus is constantly exploring the horizons of music for recorder and has performed widely in Europe, Asia, and the USA. Highlights include concerts at Wigmore Hall, Early Music Series in London and San Francisco, Spoleto Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and collaborations with La Serenissima and The English Concert. Her keen interest in contemporary music for recorder has led to many prize-winning commissions and premieres including at LSO Soundhub, the Barbican’s Sound Unbound, nightmusic in Cardiff, working with composers Gareth Moorcraft, Freya Waley-Cohen, Alex Nante and many others. Tabea has been awarded numerous prizes such as the Soloists Prize at the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and 1st prize at the SRP/Moeck International Solo Recorder Competition. In 2023 Tabea joined the recorder quartet Palisander, whose theatrical concerts are devised for audiences of all ages. Passionate about outreach work, Tabea teaches recorder at Wells Cathedral School, delivers workshops to schoolchildren in the UK and further afield, and has lead masterclasses at the mdw Vienna, the Royal Academy and Royal College of Music and Gstaad Baroque Academy. Tabea is a frequent guest on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune and WDR 3’s Tonart and has released six solo discs to date.
Tom Foster
Praised for his “dazzling virtuosity” (The Spectator), Tom Foster has a busy career as a continuo player on organ and harpsichord and as a harpsichord soloist. Respected for his sensitive and inventive continuo playing, Tom is the principal keyboard player of the English Concert and is a regular guest with The Academy of Ancient Music, Arcangelo, The Dunedin Consort, Early Opera Company, The Mahler Chamber Orchestra, The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The Scottish Ensemble and The Sixteen. These collaborations have taken him to concert halls throughout Europe, the United States, Australia, Russia and South Korea. He has performed concertos at the Edinburgh International Festival and makes his US solo-debut in recital at the Carnegie Hall in February 2020. Tom began his musical education as a choirboy at Manchester Cathedral, then as a pianist and harpsichordist at Chetham’s School of Music. He holds a first-class degree in Music (BA) from St. Catherine’s College, Oxford and gained a Distinction in Performance (MA) from the Royal Academy of Music under the tutelage of Trevor Pinnock.