Edinburgh’s own Dunedin Consort, under scholar and charismatic director John Butt, is fast becoming one of the UK’s most respected early music groups, renowned for its vivid, passionate performances that crackle with energy.

They bring a sense of enormous excitement to the launch of the 2017 Queen’s Hall concerts – with the modern-day premiere of a recently rediscovered work by Claudio Monteverdi and Heinrich Schütz.

Combattimento is German composer Schütz’s transcription of Monteverdi’s bewitching Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, a remarkably expressive mini-opera in which a Christian knight from the Crusades mistakenly kills the Saracen woman he loves.

Joined by two masterful young soloists, Butt and the Dunedin players pair this electrifying new discovery with scintillating gems by Monteverdi, Schütz and Buxtehude.