FIGURE: My Heart Swims in Blood

LSO St Luke's Guest Artist

Period-performance ensemble FIGURE (‘unequivocally impressive’ – The Guardian) with Artistic Director Frederick Waxman and mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean perform baroque and contemporary music: Bach’s ravishing cantata Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut and world premieres from Alex Paxton, Lara Agar and Oliver Leith.

Historically-informed performance ensemble FIGURE is joined by Australian mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean in the first in a series of concerts of early and contemporary music led by its Artistic Director Frederick Waxman. Centred around Bach’s cantata Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut, BWV 199, the concert will feature three world premieres, commissioned by FIGURE, from Alex Paxton, Lara Agar, and Oliver Leith.

FIGURE reimagines historical work in the spirit of its original context, and its performances and collaborations have been praised widely in the national press: their recomposition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons as a percussion concerto was called ‘high-risk, high reward’ in The Times, and their previous performances of baroque and contemporary music had the ensemble described in The Guardian as ‘unequivocally impressive, its sound invigorating, its commitment absolute’. Soloist Lotte Betts-Dean won the 2024 Young Artist Award at the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, and has been described by The Guardian as ‘a singer of rich and fearless versatility’.

Programme: Lara Agar · New Work (Commissioned by FIGURE) · Alex Paxton · New Work (Commissioned by FIGURE) · Oliver Leith · A different fantasie after Locke (Commissioned by FIGURE) · Johann Sebastian Bach · Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut BWV 199 — Frederick Waxman conductor · Lotte Betts-Dean mezzo soprano · FIGURE