Three major concerts to watch live from Nuremberg

Chanticleer: from Renaissance to gospel

In San Francisco, it has long been known as “the orchestra of voices”. Named after the “clear-singing” rooster in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chanticleer, founded in 1978 by the tenor and musicologist Louis Botto, is today one of the most admired vocal ensembles in the world. Born from a desire to bring medieval and Renaissance polyphony, then rarely heard in concert, back to life, this all-male professional choir has gradually expanded its horizons to embrace nearly a thousand years of vocal music.

Made up of twelve singers – countertenors, tenors, baritones and basses – the ensemble impresses with the extraordinary homogeneity of its timbre and the flexibility of its forces, able to move from Josquin des Prez to Palestrina, from Purcell to gospel, from African-American spirituals to contemporary creations. Vocal virtuosity goes hand in hand with insatiable curiosity, making each programme a journey through styles, periods and traditions. In Nuremberg, audiences will also be able to discover vocal jazz, folk songs and barbershop.

• Chanticleer, ensemble
• Tim Keeler, direction

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Solomon’s Knot: two festive Bach cantatas

A call to Bach lovers: the London artists’ collective Solomon’s Knot is among Europe’s leading Baroque ensembles. Founded in London in 2008 by the British singer and conductor Jonathan Sells, Solomon’s Knot has established itself as one of the most inventive ensembles on the English early-music scene. Bringing together some of the finest British specialists in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century repertoire, Solomon’s Knot stands out for its performances from memory, with both singers and instrumentalists playing without scores, in an approach that renews the relationship with text, listening and stage presence.

The ensemble has made a particular name for itself in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose sacred cantatas it continues to explore in an ambitious performance project. Its readings, marked by great polyphonic clarity, are admired for their balance of stylistic rigour, expressive freedom and an almost chamber-like spontaneity. Solomon’s Knot appears in Nuremberg with the festive cantatas Gott fähret auf mit Jauchzen, BWV 43, and Es erhub sich ein Streit, BWV 19, interspersed with virtuoso arias and intimate chorales.

• Solomon’s Knot, ensemble
• Jonathan Sells, direction

Maayan Licht recital: Handel, Porpora and Vivaldi

The Israeli male soprano Maayan Licht has emerged as one of the most fascinating revelations of the younger operatic generation. Winner of the “Best Newcomer” prize at the 2025 Oper! Awards, he possesses that rare male soprano voice, capable of taking on a repertoire that few singers can perform with such technical ease and expressive intensity. His natural territory remains opera of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His singing combines dazzling virtuosity, inherited from the great castrato tradition, with a striking expressive fragility, far removed from any gratuitous display.

A genuine phenomenon on social media, followed by hundreds of thousands of subscribers, he is helping to renew the image of opera among younger generations. At just 33, he embodies a new way of being an artist, an exceptional personality whose trajectory reminds us that early music has never ceased to be an art of risk, invention and wonder. In collaboration with the Polish Baroque ensemble {oh!} Orkiestra, directed by violinist Martyna Pastuszka, he presents in Nuremberg a programme of energetic arias by George Frideric Handel, Nicola Antonio Porpora and Antonio Vivaldi.

• Maayan Licht, male soprano
• {Oh!} Orkiestra, ensemble
• Martyna Pastuszka, violin and direction