Brighton Early Music Festival: Leipzig – Bach’s Secret Addiction

The Old Market, Upper Market Street, Hove, Sunday, November 2

Hidden among JS Bach’s vast back catalogue of more than 300 sacred cantatas is an anomaly.

The Coffee Cantata is a comic piece for three singers based around a girl who refuses to give up her favourite drink.

Now the Little Baroque Company has teamed up with designer Elizabeth Gadsby to recreate an 18th century Leipzig coffee house, similar to one Bach would have frequented, as a backdrop to their Old Market performance.

“It is very unusual for Bach to create a comic work,” says director and violin player Helen Kruger, who originally put together the performance with Gadsby and double bass-player Jacqueline Dossor for last year’s London Handel Festival.

“The rest of the cantatas are so serious, deep and difficult to connect with unless you listen to them a lot. This is completely different.”

The programme, which also includes a contemporary Handel overture and Teleman’s comic instrumental Don Quixote, has been reimagined for the Brighton Early Music Festival (BREMF) ahead of further international shows.

“The costumes have been redesigned so they are even more over the top,” says Kruger.

“We have a couture milliner Jane Corbett who has made us a couple of spectacular headpieces to go on top of the wigs.”

Carla Blackwood’s English translation includes modern references to iPads and Facebook.

“We wanted to put our own spin on it,” says Kruger. “It’s like the 18th century on acid.”

There are more modern resonances as the girl at the centre of the story – played by soprano Elizabeth Weisberg – talks about her love of the coffee bean.

“She says she can’t do anything in the morning without a cup of coffee,” says Kruger.

“They must have already been aware of the addiction that coffee can create. But Bach is not trying to put us off coffee – the daughter is unconcerned until her father threatens that she won’t get married until she gives up coffee.”

The piece, which also stars tenor Andrew Glover and bass Francis Brett, is performed among the audience, who are sat at tables decorated with centrepieces created by Rebecca Glover following themes of decadence and obsession.

There will be Cafe Zimmermann cakes and drinks to snack on.

“One worry was that the music might become secondary,” admits Kruger. “But it all ties together so well into one.

“We would love to do it in a coffee house, but the problem is many of them are very small. We need to get a harpsichord, band and three singers in there. Hopefully people will still take away the up close and personal experience of having musicians and singers no more than a table away.”

Having formed at the Royal Academy Of Music, where they studied under conductor Laurence Cummings, the Little Baroque Company made their live debut at the Edinburgh Fringe.

They were one of the new ensembles supported by the BREMF Live programme in 2007.

“It’s essential for any new group to have people to help them along the way,” says Kruger, adding that since the BREMF shows they have performed in France, Spain, Ireland and Australia’s Sydney Opera House.

“[Artistic directors] Clare Norburn and Deborah Roberts couldn’t have been more supportive.”

Starts 11.30am, 2pm and 4.30pm, tickets £12/£10. Visit bremf.org.uk