Polyphonische Begegnungen – Polyphonic Encounters

The Phantasm Viol Consort invites you to polyphonic encounters in Berlin’s St Elisabeth Church: four composer portraits under the sign of polyphony.

From mid-March 2025, the Ensemble Phantasm, a viol consort, will be hosting its own concert series at St Elisabeth’s Church in Berlin-Mitte. The concerts are dedicated entirely to polyphony and will each focus on a composer who is particularly prominent in this compositional technique.

Under the title The Well-Tempered Consort, the opening concert on 14 March 2025 was dedicated to Johann Sebastian Bach. The concert also presents the ensemble’s latest recording, The Art of Fugue, which will be released on the same day by Linn Records/Outhere Music.

The concerts of the 2025/26 season offer the Berlin audience opportunities to explore new compositional territory. While the English composers Orlando Gibbons, Henry Purcell, and William Lawes are well known in their homeland, they remain relatively unfamiliar on the European mainland. With its own concert series, Phantasm not only aims to promote the English polyphonic repertoire, which is rarely performed in Berlin, but also to foster direct engagement with the audience. After the concerts, the ensemble warmly invites attendees to an informal conversation at the bar—an opportunity to ask anything one has ever wanted to know about viols, consort music, and more.

POLYPHONISCHE BEGEGNUNGEN – POLYPHONIC ENCOUNTERS
Save the date – concerts season 2025/26
Sunday, 12 October 2025, 05.00 p.m, St. Elisabeth – Tickets
Sunday, 11 January 2026, 05.00 p.m, St. Elisabeth – Tickets
Sunday, 8 March 2026, 05.00 p.m, St. Elisabeth – Tickets

The concerts take place in the church St Elisabeth, Invalidenstraße 4a, 10115 Berlin.

Phantasm Viol Consort
The multi-award-winning Phantasm Viol Consort was founded by Laurence Dreyfus in 1994 and soon established itself as one of the world’s leading viol ensembles. It has distinguished itself through its excellent technique, rooted in the great traditions of chamber music, as well as through its dramaturgically sophisticated and musically captivating programs.

Laurence Dreyfus, treble viol, conception and artistic direction / Emilia Benjamin, treble viol / Jonathan Manson, alto viol / Heidi Gröger, bass viol and violone / Markku Luolajan-Mikkola, bass viol

If you would like to get to know this wonderful ensemble better: In December 2024, WDR3 published the wonderful programme Klangreden der Besonnnenheit – Laurence Dreyfus und sein Gambenensemble, which you can listen to in the media library.

Past concerts
The Well-Tempered Consort: Music by Johann Sebastian Bach
Works by Johann Sebastian Bach, transcribed for viol consort
Friday, 14 March 2025, 6.00 p.m.

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