This year’s festival includes no fewer than 15 events, of which seven are lunchtime concerts held at 1 pm (13:00). As usual a number of large scale works are included, headed by the opening concert, a performance of the oratorio Joshua conducted by the festival’s musical director Laurence Cummings.

The soloists include Katherine Manley (soprano), Alexandra Gibson (mezzo), Allan Clayton (tenor) and George Humphreys (bass), with the festival’s own London Handel Singers and Orchestra. On Good Friday (21 March) the festival turns to Bach for the annual St. Matthew Passion. Conducted by Cummings and featuring the St. George’s Choir, the soloists will be Nicholas Mulroy (Evangelist/tenor solos), Derek Welton (Christus/bass solos), Anna Devin (soprano) and Christopher Ainslie (alto).

Handel returns to the spotlight on 31 March, when a semi-staged performance of his early Italian work Aci, Galatea & Polifemo will be given by Gilliam Ramm (Aci), Clare Wilkinson (Galatea) and Lukasz Jakobczyk (Polifemo). The conductor is again Cummings, who will also conduct a fully-staged production of the rarely heard opera Atalanta to be given at the Britten Theatre at the Royal College of Music by students of the college’s Benjamin Britten International Opera School. The production will be given on 21, 23 and 24 April.

The RCO is also involved in a performance of La Resurrezione on 10 April, when its Baroque School will provide both the soloists and orchestra. Handel can be heard in juxtaposition with some of his contemporaries on 5 April, when Michael Berman conducts the Southbank Sinfonia Baroque in a concert including Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus, RV 594 alongside works by Campra and Mondonville.

The smaller- scale Handel is represented in two concerts, the first on 17 March when soprano Ana-Maria Rincon, accompanied by Cummings on the harpsichord, presents a programme entitled “Love, the cruel tyrant”, which includes the cantata Crudel tiranno Amor in a recently discovered version with solo keyboard. Then on 11 April there is a programme of chamber works appropriately entitled “Handel at Home” given by the London Handel Players.

Space precludes individual mention of the lunchtime concerts, but full details of the festival can be found at: www.handel.cswebsites.org