Highlights include:


Friday 14 September: Performative Encounters

Fallen: A Fantasy in Music, Drama and Film
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 7.30pm

Musica Secreta
Celestial Sirens
Laurie Stras director

This innovative programme fuses the arts of live theatre, live music and film to tell the story of a young 17th-century noblewoman forced to abandon the secular world for life as an enclosed nun in an Italian convent. The rich narrative of convent music-making, painstakingly researched and imaginatively presented by Musica Secreta, is explored through music associated with the courts of Mantua and Ferrara, including works by Monteverdi.
More info and tickets

Saturday 15 September: Cultural Encounters

Los Impossibles: Songs and Dances from the Old and New Worlds
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 7pm

L’Arpeggiata
The King’s Singers
Christina Pluhar director

A lively programme that explores the dynamic between art and traditional musics, from the Iberian Peninsula and the New World. Christina Pluhar’s fascination with multicultural mixtures and connections, and her search for common features and origins, results in an exciting and highly orignal musical journey across centuries and continents.
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Sunday 16 September: Musical Encounters

When Schütz met Gabrieli
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 2pm

His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts
Jeremy West director
The King’s Singers

When Heinrich Schütz went to study with Giovanni Gabrieli in Venice, he simply wanted to learn more about the art of composition. However, when the German composer returned to Dresden in 1612, the magnificently sonorous Venetian concerted idiom spread throughout Europe and a new musical era began.
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When Bach met Buxtehude
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 7.30pm

Choir of Clare College, Cambridge
Timothy Brown conductor
Fretwork

The young Johann Sebastian Bach was so keen to study with Buxtehude that he walked hundreds of miles to hear the organ playing of the revered older musician in the north German city of Lubeck. For Bach, both Buxtehude’s compositions and his playing were a revelation and the meeting made a profound impact on him. The 300th anniversary of Buxtehude’s death is marked by a performance by the superb Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, and the internationally renowned viol consort Fretwork, of his hauntingly beautiful sequence of cantatas Membra Jesu nostri together with two of Bach’s most expressive motets.
More info and tickets

For further information about other performances, film screenings and free talks taking place as part of Encounters and other Southbank Centre events please call 0871 663 2500 or visit www.southbankcentre.co.uk