LIFEM opening gala review – a showstopping harpischord, a musical chicken and Dowland’s tears

St Michael & All Angels, Blackheath, London
The annual festival of early music opened with a lively and virtuosic performance by Jane Chapman of works ranging from Bach and Byrd to Roxanna Panufnik

For its 50th anniversary gala, the London international festival of early music presented a couple of star turns. The first was Jane Chapman, professor of harpsichord at the Royal College of Music, a fleet-fingered performer with an agreeably chatty podium manner. The second was a brand-new double-manual harpsichord. Immaculately crafted by Italian makers Guido and Lorenzo Bizzi for the performance and festival exhibition, it’s based on an 18th-century instrument by Belgian maker Pascal Taskin who was born exactly 300 years ago. Perched on the platform, its ebony and scarlet tortoiseshell flanks shimmering with gilt and its innards festooned with paintings of birds and flowers, it nearly stole the show.

Fortunately, Chapman’s programme had enough showstoppers to hold its own, a smörgåsbord of keyboard music spanning a century and a half. Bach’s adventurous Chromatic Fantasia got things off to an intrepid start, Chapman impeccably stylish if not entirely flawless. The harpsichord shone, parading a silvery timbre in the upper register and a rich warmth down below.