Binchois Consort
The Birmingham début of this award-winning Hyperion-label ensemble and of its director, Professor Andrew Kirkman (the new Heard of the Music Department). This newly devised programme is inspired by a beautiful Midlands alabaster sculpture in the Barber Institute.
Carved alabaster panels with religious imagery were one of England’s greatest exports during the late Medieval period. The Barber Institute possesses a particularly large and fine single panel, depicting the Coronation of the Virgin, still with traces of paint and gilding. A short pre-concert talk at 6.30pm by Robert Wenley, Deputy Director of the Barber and Head of Collections, will discuss this masterpiece and provide some sense of its cultural context.