The programme of the 2026 Cape Town Baroque Festival has a strong focus on musical instruments and instrumental repertoire from the baroque. Both explore the colours and expressive nuances offered by historical instruments.
The festival opens on 19 September 2026 with a Baroque Woodwind study day (Event 1: Baroque Woodwind Study Day) that includes lecture presentations on a variety of period woodwind instruments, as well as masterclasses and performances by student ensembles. Folk/baroque crossover ensemble Here Be Dragons will present a concert of instrumental transcriptions of vocal music ranging from Guillaume de Machaut to JS Bach on the afternoon of 20 September (Event 2: Motet & Madrigal). On 24 September (Event 1: continued), the educational aspect of the festival continues: Visiting Dutch recorder virtuoso Erik Bosgraaf presents recorder masterclasses to advanced students.
The centrepiece of the 2026 Cape Town Baroque Festival takes place on 26 September (Event 3: The Road to the Symphony), where the Cape Town Baroque Orchestra will present, in collaboration with the Cape Town Concert Series, a programme of early Classical orchestral repertoire on period-appropriate instruments – a boundary-pushing production for the players of the CTBO!
On 27 September the final two concerts of the festival takes place at the Sufi Temple in Newlands, with a duo recital (Event 4: Consort of Two) for viola da gamba and voice (Lutesong Consort) and a contemplative journey through sound from the Middle Ages to the baroque (Event 5: Meditatio Sonorum) featuring nyckelharpa, viola da gamba and baroque violin, by the newly formed Adamastor Consort. These two concerts will be interspersed with a relaxed social event, celebrating the valuable audience base that supports and gives meaning to the work of Cape Town-based Historical Performance practitioners.
Event 1: Baroque Woodwind Study Day
The 2026 Cape Town Baroque Festival, in collaboration with the annual Recorder Symposium, presents a study day focusing on woodwind instruments from the baroque period. Presenters will include Anna Stoddard with a lecture on the flute and recorder in baroque art, Ingo Müller (baroque oboe), Marion Treupel-Franck and Bridget Rennie-Salonen (traverso), and David Cyster (chalumeau).
Date: Saturday, 19 September 2026
Time: 09:00-14:00
Venue: Imbewu Music Centre, Westerford High School, Rondebosch
Tickets: R200, R150 (pensioners), R100 (scholars/students)*, via Quicket.
*Also included in this ticket is Event 1 – continued: Advanced Recorder Masterclasses by Erik Bosgraaf, taking place on Thursday, 24 September, 10:00-13:00 at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, De Waterkant. See below for more information.
Event 2: Motet & Madrigal
Motet & Madrigal explores the evolution of two of Western music’s most enduring vocal forms through the lens of instrumental performance. Beginning with the Trecento madrigals of Francesco Landini and the isorhythmic motets of Guillaume de Machaut, the programme traces a rich lineage that culminates in the expressive madrigals of Claudio Monteverdi and the architectural brilliance of Johann Sebastian Bach‘s motets.
Performed by Here Be Dragons, each work is carefully deconstructed and reimagined for an ensemble of historical instruments. Rather than treating these masterpieces as untouchable monuments, the programme returns them to a creative process of listening, adaptation, and discovery. Original texts remain present through projection, preserving the rhetorical and poetic worlds from which the music emerged while inviting audiences to experience the relationship between word and sound in a new way.
By revealing the shared musical language that connects sacred and secular repertoire across four centuries, Motet & Madrigal invites listeners to hear history not as a sequence of fixed artefacts, but as a living tradition continually remade through performance.
This concert will be followed by a short panel discussion about the concert with members of Here Be Dragons, led by Anna Stoddard.
With Here Be Dragons: Joshua Frank (recorders), Annien Shaw & Odile Burden (violin, viola), Jan-Hendrik Harley (plucked strings, Artistic Director), Mariechen Meyer (double bass), and John Pringle (percussion)
Date: Sunday, 20 September 2026
Time: 15:00-16:00. Panel discussion: 16:10-16:30
Venue: St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, De Waterkant
Tickets: R280, R240 (pensioners), R100 via Quicket.
Event 1 – continued: Advanced Recorder Master Classes by Erik Bosgraaf
Visiting recorder virtuoso Erik Bosgraaf presents recorder masterclasses to advanced students.
Date: Thursday, 24 September 2026
Time: 10:00-13:00
Venue: St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, De Waterkant
Tickets: R200, R150 (pensioners), R100 (scholars/students)*, via Quicket.
Also included in this ticket is Event 1: Baroque Woodwind Study Day on Saturday, 19 September, 09:00-14:00 at Imbewu Music Centre, Westerford High School, Rondebosch.
Event 3: The Road to the Symphony
Since 2015, the Cape Town Baroque Orchestra (CTBO) has presented all of its annual concerts on original baroque instruments (or copies of baroque instruments). Currently, the CTBO is the only ensemble in South Africa that plays all of its annual orchestral concerts on instruments appropriate to the baroque era.
For the The Road to the Symphony programme, the CTBO will expand their repertoire, and sonic horisons, into early Classical-style symphonies from the 1760s and 1770s, by CPE Bach (1714-1788), Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), and a 17-year-old WA Mozart (1756-1791), all presented on period-appropriate instruments. These early Classical works will be put in context of the late baroque by presenting the concerto for recorder and flute from 1740 by GP Telemann (1681-1767) with Erik Bosgraaf (recorder) and Marion Treupel-Franck (traverso) as soloists.
The Dutch recorder player and conductor, Erik Bosgraaf, will, in a third collaboration with the Cape Town Baroque Orchestra, conduct this concert. Bosgraaf has recently been appointed as the Artistic Director of The London International Festival of Early Music, and has a long-standing collaboration with the Wrocław Baroque Orchestra as guest conductor. Read more about Bosgraaf here: https://www.erikbosgraaf.com/
Do not miss this groundbreaking project of the Cape Town Baroque Orchestra!
With the Cape Town Baroque Orchestra, Erik Bosgraaf (conductor/recorder), and Marion Treupel-Franck (traverso) in collaboration with the Cape Town Concert Series.
Date: Saturday, 26 September
Time: 11:00-12:15
Venue: Baxter Concert Hall
Tickets: R280, R250 (pensioners), R100 (scholars/students), via Webtickets.
Event 4: Consort of Two
What happens when music conceived for many voices is reimagined as an intimate dialogue between voice and viol? And what new colours emerge when songs are paired with one of the most expressive instruments of the Renaissance and Baroque?
In Consort of Two, mezzo-soprano Lente Louw and viola da gamba player Rosamund Roth explore a rich musical landscape spanning the 16th and 17th centuries. Drawing on madrigals, chansons, lute songs, and early Baroque airs by composers including Caccini, Dowland, Monteverdi, Hume, and Purcell, the programme reflects a period in which music was remarkably fluid. Beloved melodies were continually reworked, adapted for different forces, and reshaped by performers, blurring the boundaries between composition, arrangement, and improvisation.
The title Consort of Two playfully reimagines the traditional consort, usually understood as a larger ensemble. Historically, the viola da gamba occupied a unique role as both a melodic and accompanying instrument, capable of sustaining intricate polyphony while engaging in expressive dialogue with the voice. This programme embraces that tradition, allowing two performers to evoke the richness of much larger textures while celebrating the remarkable expressive possibilities of just two musicians.
Blending the expressive warmth of the mezzo-soprano with the dusky resonance of the viola da gamba, Consort of Two celebrates the imagination, adaptability, and rhetorical power of early music, inviting audiences to experience this extraordinary repertoire through a fresh and deeply personal musical conversation.
With members of Lutesong Consort: Lente Louw (mezzo-soprano) and Rosamund Roth (viola da gamba)
Date: Sunday, 27 September
Time: 16:00-17:00
Venue: Sufi Temple, Newlands
Tickets: R280, R240 (pensioners), R100 via Quicket.
Event 5: Meditatio Sonorum
A contemplative journey through sound from the middle ages to the baroque featuring nyckelharpa, viola da gamba, and baroque violin.
Join the newly formed Adamastor Consort for an immersive meditative journey through the soundscapes of the middle ages, Renaissance, and early baroque. The Adamastor Consort is an early music ensemble playing an eclectic selection of period instruments, with Emile de Roubaix (nyckelharpa), Rosamund Roth (viola da gamba), and Ralitza Macheva (baroque violin). For its inaugural concert, the ensemble takes music from the middle ages through the early baroque out of its usual places of performance and invites you to experience it in a brand new way, in brand new surroundings. Be drawn into the sacred heart of the music of Hildegard von Bingen, Josquin des Prez, and frolic along with the many voices of William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, and Henry Purcell, to name a few, and together with the musicians, experience music as introspection, journeying, meditation, memory, and play!
With the Adamastor Consort: Emile de Roubaix (nyckelharpa), Rosamund Roth (viola da gamba), and Ralitza Macheva (baroque violin).
Date: Sunday, 27 September
Time: 18:30-19:30
Venue: Sufi Temple, Newlands
Tickets: R280, R240 (pensioners), R100 via Quicket: https://qkt.io/AOdEp3
Festival passes: There are a limited number of discounted festival passes, which include access to all of the festival events, except Event 1(Baroque Woodwind Study Day), which must be booked separately. These passes are: R850, R750 (pensioners), R300 (students). Bookings: here.
What: 2026 Cape Town Baroque Festival
Info: www.ctbaroque.co.za/festival
Enquiries: info@ctbaroque.co.za
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