For twenty-five years, since making their debut at Handel’s parish church, St. George’s Hanover Square, as part of the London Handel Festival in 2000, the London Handel Players have thrilled audiences across the world with their performances and recordings.  Praised by the New York Times for their “soulful depth” and their “consummate skill and musicianship”, the ensemble appears regularly at major venues and festivals both around the UK and internationally, specialising in baroque chamber music and concertos and collaborating with some of the world’s leading singers.

The ensemble has performed across North America, making their New York debut at the Frick Museum in 2012 and returning to perform at Carnegie Hall in 2014. Concerts have also included performances at Wigmore Hall, Internationale Händel-Festspiele Göttingen, Halle International Handel Festival and in France, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Serbia and Croatia. Committed educators at every level and holding professorships in Historical Performance at London’s Conservatoires, The London Handel Players give numerous masterclasses and workshops.

Recent tours have taken them to Madeira, Cyprus and Spain. In the 25-26 season they will return to Wigmore Hall to perform Bach Cantatas, French Baroque repertoire by Rameau, Leclair, Rebel and Corrette and a ‘Mozart in Mannheim’ programme and they will also perform at the Tilford Bach and London Handel Festivals and the Handel Institute. Their two most recent recordings are of Telemann’s Quadri and the first volume of Leclair Violin Concertos, both on the Somm label.

Their highly acclaimed discography also includes four discs of Handel chamber music; his two sets of trio sonatas Op.2 and Op.5, his complete works for solo violin and a disc entitled ‘Handel at Home’, which comprise chamber arrangements of arias. Other recent releases include Bach Sonatas for keyboard and violin and a second disc of Handel aria arrangements, ‘Total Eclipse’, also on the Somm label. Telemann’s Nouveaux Quatuors are due for release in 2026.

The members of the group pursue busy solo, directing and conducting careers, work with many of the major early-instrument ensembles in the UK and abroad, and are professors at the conservatoires in London.  Committed educators at every level, the London Handel Players also give numerous masterclasses and workshops for students, keen amateurs and children.

"The utter closeness of the duetting between [flautist] Brown and violinist Adrian Butterfield in Giulio Cesare’s ‘Se pietà’; the brightly fluid, rich-toned rhythmic buoyancy in the outer movements of the Corelli-breathed Sonata a 5, the closest Handel got to a violin concerto; and the emotively vocal quality that [Silas] Wollston’s slight whisper of rubato has reinfected into the circling lines of Handel’s own harpsichord arrangement of ‘Ombra cara’. All in all, an end-to-end pleasure."

Charlotte Gardner, Gramophone Magazine, January 2024

For individual biographies please click on the names in the side panel.

OUR MUSICIANS

Rachel Brown  flute and recorder 

Adrian Butterfield  violin 

Oliver Webber  violin

Rachel Byrt  viola

Sarah McMahon   cello

Gavin Kibble   cello and viola da gamba

Cecelia Bruggemeyer  double bass

Silas Wollston harpsichord and organ