Brighton Early Music Festival Launch Concert, October 1, 2006

THE SEAL of BBC radio 3 approval was slapped onto the Brighton Early Music Festival, which will occupy the weekends of October and also explore Iberian and Latin American themes. The classical music station's Early Music Show broadcast live the launch event, hosted by Andrew Manze, himself a director of early music ensembles. And the audience transmitted their lively enthusiasm for the whole subject.

Virtuoso Bar-oque quartet Red Priest flared in with Dario Castello's Sonata Decima and their own wild and totally inimitable, Pirates of the Baroque take on Vivaldi's familiar Sea Storm Concerto in G. Their Sonata Decima decimated any preconceptions that this music has stuffiness, or mould growing on its paper. The Vivaldi was typically tempestuous and bordering on the furious, crazed state that Red Priest validly touch at the climaxes of their varios interpretations of this repertoire.

The group comprises recorders - the brilliant Piers Adams - violin, cello and harpsicord, each played with an often openly violent and blazing fire.

The soprano voice of Festival co-director Clare Norburn brought to life three 13th century songs of coastal female love, longing and loss by Galician troubadour Martin Codax in an absorbing performance by her ensemble Mediva. The music had not been discovered until 1913 in Madrid. This cycle exhibited and emphasised the Festival's cross-barrier reach to embrace folk as well as classical and world music. The members play fiddle, gitterns, percussion, shawn, recorder, harps and there is a narrating female dancer.

The music, framing interviews with directors of the Festival, concluded with Retrospect, a three-piece this time featuring percussion behind the guitar, psaltery and voice of Harvey Brough, and the gittern, baroque and soprano of Clara Sanabras, who also a lutenist, from Barcelona. This was an informal, free-breathing pair of songs, rhythmical, spontaneous, ancient and modern.

The unusual and exploratory scope of this year's Brighton Early Music Festival keeps it alongside York at the forefront of its kind in the world.

The full listings can be found on www.bremf.org.uk with tickets obtainable from Dome Box Offic (01273 709709. information and full brochure from 01273 833746.

Richard Amey