Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s summer tour of Europe suffered a setback this week when the ensemble announced that Music Director Richard Egarr would not be able to lead the overseas performances. The English-born, Amsterdam-based Egarr was unavailable because of unspecified medical reasons.
The good news is that conducting duties will be taken over by John Butt, since 2003 the music director of Dunedin Consort, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Butt has led the group to two Gramophone Awards and one Grammy nomination. Now the Gardiner Chair of Music at the University of Glasgow (since 2001), Butt is a renowned Bach scholar who has also articulated pathbreaking ideas about historical performance and has experimented with those ideas in performance. Bay Area residents of a certain age will remember his tenure at UC Berkeley, where he was an engaging lecturer, held the position of university organist, and led the UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus, before decamping to Cambridge University, in 1997.
Philharmonia has a long relationship with Butt, beginning with the founding of the Philharmonia Chorale; Butt was its first director, in 1995. The conductor led the world-premiere productions of Errollyn Wallen’s Dido’s Ghost at the Barbican in London and at the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2021, a production co-produced by Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale, Dunedin Consort, Mahogany Opera, and Buxton International Festival.
Butt will lead PBO in performances at Yorkshire’s Ryedale Festival, London’s St. Martin in the Fields, and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, where he’ll be joined by a frequent Philharmonia guest artist, violinist Rachel Podger. Egarr’s former student at Juilliard, David Belkovski, who was recently announced as PBO’s assistant conductor, will take over for him at a candlelit recital on July 28.
The tour programming is ambitious, including Handel’s Dixit Dominus and the premiere of Ancestor, composed jointly by composer-in-residence Tarik O’Regan and his good friend and colleague, composer Errollyn Wallen. That is part of a concert titled “The Garden of Good and Evil,” about the creation myth and featuring countertenor Tim Mead. Although the upcoming PBO season shows the orchestra’s versatility, here’s hoping we get to hear “The Garden of Good and Evil” soon.
