The London Ripieno Society was founded in 1962 by its present musical director Geoffrey Hanson, who is an established composer and organist.  For more about him, click here. 

The original aim was to supplement the London musical scene with both interesting and unexplored repertoire, performed by smaller forces than was customary in the 60s.  Hence the musical term Ripieno in the Society’s title, meaning ‘supplementary forces’. It was still the fashion in that era for Baroque and Renaissance music to be given in large scale performances.  Original instrument groups and small scale performances more truly reflecting composers’ intentions were yet to come.  The LRS was to play its part in this movement.  In 1968  the first London performance of  Telemann’s St Matthew Passion of 1732 was given by the London Ripieno Society, as part of the Camden Festival.  The Guardian’s reviewer thought  ‘the  performance was admirably conceived…the chorus was fresh and bright toned’. The Society’s next concert, at the Wigmore Hall in 1969, was of mainly Baroque music, but it also included a contemporary composer’s work -  ‘Lament for a Sparrow’  by Alan Rawsthorne - and this was to be the shape of things to come; a reliance on both old and new music in programming.