ADRIAN BUTTERFIELD
VIOLINIST | DIRECTOR | CONDUCTOR
B minor Mass review - London Handel Players and Butterfield deliver Bach like no others.
An intimate and hugely enjoyable performance of Bach's great legacy work at Wigmore Hall.
"This was a truly intimate account (any more and the Wigmore Hall stage would have been unnavigable) that was tight and perfectly co-ordinated. ‘One to a part’ was the watchphrase – there were only as many performers as needed to cover each line of Bach’s writing – and while this often made for a profoundly personal listening experience, it somehow didn’t prevent the work from breathing its greater majesty at moments of ‘trumpets and glory’.
Of the instrumentalists, there is little to say other than that here, on a slightly larger scale, was the kind of synergy that one hears in a top-notch string quartet."
London Handel Players ★★★★★
Barry Creasy, Music OHM, 5th February 2025
Adrian Butterfield has gained an international reputation as a violinist, director and conductor who specialises in period performance of music from about 1600-1900. He is Musical Director of the Tilford Bach Festival and was Associate Music Director of the London Handel Festival for 25 years. He is Professor of Baroque Violin at the Royal College of Music in London and teaches on numerous baroque music courses.
He leads and directs The London Handel Players and The Revolutionary Drawing Room and conducted The London Handel Orchestra for many years as well as being invited to work as a guest with many other ensembles in Europe and North America.
His world premiere recording of Leclair's Third Book of violin sonatas Op.5 in 3 volumes was released in 2022 on Naxos Records and was recorded with the wonderful team of Sarah McMahon, cello, and Silas Wollston, harpsichord.
Two further recordings were released in 2023: JS Bach's sonatas for keyboard and violin and London Handel Players' 'Total Eclipse' ('Handel at Home, Vol. 2') and Telemann 'Paris' Quartets and Leclair Violin Concertos are due for release in 2025 all on the SOMM label.
Further reviews
"On a bill that began with three Advent or Christmas cantatas and finished with a Magnificat that sounded, well, magnificent, characterful solo parts for singers and instrumentalists combined with blazing ensemble climaxes that gave the impression of a stage populated by far more than five voices and 15 players. The outfit led by violinist-director Adrian Butterfield featured plenty of Handel specialists, but this never felt like a coterie gathering. Butterfield’s forces wrapped us all in a powerful celebratory hug....In the following “Gloria in excelsis deo”, which Bach would later evolve into a section of the B minor Mass, the trumpet trio glinted and soared for the first time as this small-but-mighty choir blended punch and precision into a cathedral-strength sound. More splendid flute-playing, from Rachel Brown and Katy Bircher, added to the jubilation while Adrian Butterfield ensured that the whole caravan moved along with a magisterial tread, purposive but never frantic."
Boyd Tonkin, The Arts Desk, 19th December 2023
"At Wigmore Hall, director-violinist Adrian Butterfield led his London Handel Players in works for Advent and Christmas written by JS Bach, from 1715 to the 1740s. Five terrific singers – sopranos Hilary Cronin and Jessica Cale, countertenor Hugh Cutting, tenor Charles Daniels and bass Jerome Knox – moved seamlessly between solos, duets and ambitious choruses. From the sorrowful Süsser Trost, mein Jesus kommt, BWV 151, a lullaby-like plea for comfort with flute obbligato (Rachel Brown), to the exultant Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV 191, this first half of the programme was rich in itself.
Then came the Magnificat in D, BWV 243, complete with the four interpolations for Christmas Day (Butterfield combined elements of the two versions Bach wrote; the work has a complicated backstory). Impossible to imagine what the congregation in Leipzig must have felt on first hearing this masterly song of praise. Explosive from the start, rampant in its word painting, bristling with cryptograms, codes and harmonic symmetry, racing from low to high, high to low, the entire work is a summation of joy. It does draw breath, as in the tender alto-tenor duet, beautifully sung by the youthful, expansive Cutting and the experienced, rock-like Daniels. Violins, violas and flutes spun a softly undulating web around them. All ends with a triumph of trumpets and drums, singers and players projecting for dear life, with a jubilation that spread to the cheering audience."
London Handel Players ★★★★★
Fiona Maddocks, The Observer, 23rd December 2023
'...and all with a neat dexterity and range of colouristic detail to the shaping that suggests that for Butterfield it's all as effortless as falling off a log.'
Charlotte Gardner, Gramophone Magazine, Leclair Sonatas, June 2022
'Equally fascinating is Butterfield's one-to-a-part version of Handel's Sonata a 5; the shading and textures he brings to his line, and the Corellian lashings which he and the others apply to their parts, are their invention.'
Berta Joncus, BBC Music Magazine, 'Total Eclipse', December 2023
'[Adrian Butterfield's] synergy with harpsichordist Silas Wollston is at its best in the brilliant fast movements, performed with invigorating rhythmic drive and inner clarity. The duo also offers some sublime moments of musical poetry...'
Robin Stowell, The Strad Magazine, June 2023
'Butterfield here does an exceptionally stylish job of capturing Leclair’s tasteful elegance, and with a nice spring to the dance rhythms; likewise the Frenchman’s famed neatness and sweetness.'
Charlotte Gardner, Gramophone Magazine, Leclair Sonatas, March 2022
'Adrian Butterfield and his various musical partners are gradually establishing themselves as the acknowledged champions of Leclair’s violin sonatas...[He] seems totally at ease with the more adventurous technical challenges of these sonatas...his tempos are largely spot-on, allowing for clarity of articulation...His crystal-clear tone rings out sweetly in the lyrical, sensitively phrased slow movements...The recording, with Butterfield slightly to the fore in the balance, is top drawer.'
Robin Stowell, Strad Magazine, Leclair Sonatas, June 2022
A recording of some of Handel’s Chandos works, his Chandos Te Deum and Chandos Anthem No.8, was released in 2018 having been recorded for the first time in St. Lawrence, Whitchurch, the beautiful church for which they were written and for the same sort of forces the composer had at his disposal.
'Butterfield's slimline performing forces fit the music like a glove. The single voices combine harmoniously in contrapuntal choruses, and unaccompanied passages are shaded poignantly. Charles Daniels’s deft navigation of a stratospheric register interweaves deftly with Nicholas Mulroy’s soaring on the highest tenor parts, Benedict Hymas delivers the lowest tenor line articulately, and Edward Grint and Grace Davidson sing the outer parts with intelligent precision. Their conversational transparency is matched by expertly stylish playing… Butterfield’s decisions make much better musical sense, and the relaxed sincerity of his musicians yields revelatory new insights.'
David Vickers, Gramophone Magazine, Handel Chandos works, February 2019
'The result is a long way from larger-scale choral interpretations of this music, and the whole disc pulses with an engaging, intimate vitality.… Adrian Butterfield has chosen a fine group of soloists…. The style is crisp and vivid, with Butterfield clearly relishing the bite which his small ensemble is able to bring to the pieces…. I for one hope that Adrian Butterfield and his forces give us more.’
Planet Hugill, Handel Chandos works, January 2019
