In honour of the Paris Olympics, Hannah French explores medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music associated with gold, silver and bronze across three episodes of The Early Music Show.

As the Games draw to a close, Hannah reaches the top spot on the podium, focusing on gold and its allure over composers and musicians across the centuries. Golden apples, the golden fleece, golden tresses, the golden ratio: gold glitters in musical treasures from the Tudor court in England to the opera stages of Baroque Venice.

Hannah French presents the second of two programmes of highlights from the 2023 London International Festival of Early Music, today focusing on their support of young, up-and-coming artists. The OAE Experience Ensemble offers students the chance to play alongside seasoned professionals, and you can hear them playing music by Haydn and Mozart, as well as students from Chethams School of Music in Manchester, and London's Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the Junior Royal Academy, performing music by Telemann, Purcell and van Eyck.

Hannah French presents the first of two programmes of highlights from the 2023 London International Festival of Early Music, including performances from harpsichordist Jane Chapman, recorder player Erik Bosgraaf, the Wroclaw Baroque Orchestra and Ensemble Pampinea.

Hannah French marks the 450th anniversary of the birth of John Wilbye, the most famous of the English madrigalists. Wilbye's fame rests almost entirely on the 64 works contained in two books of madrigals which were published in 1598 and 1608.

For their first visit to the Beverley and East Riding Early Music Festival, Ensemble Augelletti - the newly appointed BBC New Generation Baroque Ensemble focus their musical lens on a curious and well-connected local clergyman and musician – Edward Finch. Specialising in making musical arrangements of the most popular music of his time, including Henry Purcell’s wonderful ‘Golden Sonata’, Ensemble Augelletti tell Finch’s singular story and they perform some of his compositions and arrangements alongside music by his friends Purcell, Handel, and Geminiani.

As part of Radio 3’s programming around LGBTQ+ Pride, Hannah French is joined by musicologists Berta Joncus and Lola Salem to explore the life and career of Jean-Baptiste Lully, who shot to fame at the court of King Louis XIV.

Lully was an Italian violinist, guitarist and dancer, who caught the eye of the young King when they danced together in a ballet in 1653. Before long, he became an indispensable part of the Paris and Versailles music scenes, entertaining the royal family for the next thirty years and earning a very good salary from doing so. Lully was bisexual, and for many years his relationships with both men and women were never questioned – there was an implicit acceptance to same-sex desires among the upper echelons of 17th Century Parisian society.

But in 1683, Queen Marie-Thérèse died, and the king's secret marriage to Madame de Maintenon changed everything. Devotion came to the fore at court, the king's enthusiasm for opera dissipated, he became increasingly annoyed by what he now considered Lully's dissolute lifestyle, and everything began to unravel…

In honour of the Paris Olympics, Hannah French explores medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music associated with gold, silver and bronze across three episodes of The Early Music Show.

In second place, it's silver: from silver cymbals to South American silver mines, silver swans to Judas's 30 pieces of silver, Hannah considers the 'second best' metal and examines its connections with early music from Bach to Bolivia.

In honour of the Paris Olympics, Hannah French explores medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music associated with gold, silver and bronze across three episodes of The Early Music Show.

Starting in third place, Hannah considers music relating to bronze, from the extraordinary sound of Bronze Age horns to the magnificent music that would have floated over Bernini's famous bronze altar canopy in St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. She also showcases some of the composers who came in third - including Johann Sebastian Bach, third choice for the job of Thomaskantor in Leipzig.

Lucie Skeaping looks at the life and music of German organist and composer Matthias Weckmann, who died 350 years ago this month.

Mark Seow looks at 18thC Europe's fascination with the Orient, including music by Purcell and Couperin, and he explores the lives of certain musicians living in 18thC Beijing.

Plus an edition of The Early Music News.

From her home in North London, Hannah French presents a selection of medieval carols, plus Renaissance & Baroque music for Christmas Eve, including festive pieces by Corelli, Vivaldi, Charpentier, Manfredini, Byrd, Manchicourt & Handel.

Join Hannah in the French kitchen as she also tucks in to some Yuletide treats fit for a cosy Christmas Eve.