Today’s festival features an eclectic mix of European and Latin American music from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries performed by internationally renowned ensembles. The opening concert on 16 September will be given by Konrad Junghänel’s Cantus Cölln and Concerto Palatino (Bruce Dickey and Charles Toet), who will perform Heinrich Schütz’s Symphoniarum sacrum tertia pars, op. 12, the third and last published collection of Symphoniae Sacrae.

This major work, a veritable hymn to peace, illustrates the musical revival that took place at the end of the Thirty Years’ War. On 29 September London Baroque and the outstanding soprano Lynne Dawson will combine lyricism, virtuosity and charm in a programme entitled “Amours Baroques”. Violinist Manfredo Kraemer will direct The Rare Fruits Council on 7 October. This ensemble, largely made up of Latin American musicians, has a distinctive character and sense of rhythm that is all its own.

Their concert, given with soprano Adrianna Fernandez, will explore the influence of the Spanish baroque on Latin American music. On 14 October, Paul van Nevel and the eighteen singers of the Huelgas Ensemble will bring the music of the inventive and sensitive Jacobus de Kerle to life. This Renaissance master, whose works, in the view of van Nevel, equal those of Orlando di Lasso and Philippe de Monte, will complete the impressive list of Franco-Flemish composers heard at the festival in recent years.

The 20 October performance of Pedro Memelsdorff and his Mala Punica ensemble, named after the Latin word for pomegranate, centres on 14th-century Neapolitan polyphony, and will feature popular Neapolitan song and court song. As Memelsdorff explained in an interview in Goldberg 8, this music demands a special ‘emotional explanation’: “It’s like a gothic cathedral, which is not designed for people to come in and begin taking measurements. Instead, the extremely complex proportions of the cathedral cause people to come in and feel dazzled.”

On 28 October La Chapelle Rhénane (Benoît Haller) and the Colmar Boys’ Choir (Arlette Steyer) will provide the festival’s closing event, performing Buxtehude’s “Jesu membra nostri” cycled of cantatas, which will be given in honour of the 300th anniversary of the composer’s death.

Details at: www.festival-ribeauville.com