Adrian Butterfield

ADRIAN BUTTERFIELD

LONDON HANDEL PLAYERS

Adrian Butterfield sang as a chorister at St. Paul’s Cathedral, read Music at Trinity College, Cambridge and studied at the Royal College of Music and has appeared on numerous stages across the world as a violinist, director and conductor who specialises in performing a wide range of music on period instruments. He is Musical Director of the Tilford Bach Festival and Associate Director of the London Handel Festival and regularly directs the London Handel Orchestra and London Handel Players as well as working as a guest soloist and director in Europe and North America. He has also led the gut-string quartet, The Revolutionary Drawing Room, for over 25 years.

His baroque ensemble, The London Handel Players, performs regularly at Wigmore Hall and throughout Europe and North America making their debut at Carnegie Hall in 2014. They have made a number of recordings of music by Handel and his contemporaries for Somm Records. Adrian’s world premiere complete recordings of Leclair’s first two Books of violin sonatas were released in 2009 and 2013 on Naxos Records and Book 3 was released on 3 discs to great acclaim in 2022. His latest solo recording, of Bach’s sonatas for harpsichord and violin with Silas Wollston, was released by Somm Records in early 2023 and LHP’s new Handel disc, ‘Total Eclipse’, was released on the same label in October ‘23.

Adrian is Professor of Baroque Violin at the Royal College of Music in London, gives masterclasses in Europe and North America and has taught at Dartington, at the Belgrade Baroque Academy and Pro Corda Baroque. He also directs an annual baroque project with the Southbank Sinfonia.

He has conducted all the major choral works of Bach and nearly a hundred of his cantatas as well as numerous works by Handel (Messiah, Esther, Alcina, Orlando, Parnasso in Festa, Israel in Egypt, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, La Resurrezione, Chandos Anthems) and their contemporaries. He has directed ensembles such as the London Mozart Players, the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, the European Union Chamber Orchestra and the Croatian Baroque Ensemble.

Plans for the 2023/24 season include directing programmes of Bach, Handel and Vivaldi Cantatas and multi-instrument concertos at Wigmore Hall, Handel’s Chapel Royal Anthems at the King’s Chapel of the Savoy in London, Handel’s Orlando at UK Festivals, Bach’s St. John Passion at the Winchfield and Tilford Bach Festival and Bach concertos at the Toronto Bach Festival.

“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.”

BBC Music Magazine, December 2023