Cambridge Society for Early Music is back!
In its first public concert since 2023, the Cambridge Society for Early Music presents a program of Elizabethan keyboard music featuring the renowned harpsichordists Peter Sykes and Peter Watchorn. The concert is presented in honor of the late James S. Nicolson, who served as President and Artistic Director for CSEM until his passing in 2024 and whose rare mother-and-child double virginal is featured in the performances. Both Peter Sykes and Peter Watchorn are winners of CSEM’s Erwin Bodky prize, Sykes in 1993 and Watchorn in 1985, which over three decades until 2009 was presented to over sixty young performers, many of whom went on to become luminaries in the field of early music. They have chosen a selection of works by Giles Farnaby, William Byrd, J. P. Sweelinck, Thomas Morley, William Tisdale and John Bull that represent highlights from the Elizabethan Era considered the Golden Age of English music. In addition to the virginal, which gained in popularity in England during this period, they perform on a two-manual William Dowd 17-century aligned Ruckers harpsichord.
