“I was just talking to one of the Proms team, and they were saying they can’t remember a more complicated set of stage moves. Well, we do like to be ambitious…” Jo Buckley, Dunedin Consort CEO, is at the Royal Albert Hall when we speak, immersed in preparations for the group’s Proms performance on 6 August. That might be a long way for Scotland-based listeners to travel in person, but the concert is live on Radio 3, and also televised on BBC4 later in the month.

But back to ambitiousness. The performance – set for 11am on a Sunday morning– opens with JS Bach, and closes with Mozart’s lavish, deeply felt C minor Mass. In between, however, comes the little-known Heilig ist Gott by CPE Bach, the piece that’s generating the complicated logistics. “It’s this extraordinary blast of music that only lasts about eight minutes,” Buckley explains. “CPE Bach thought it was the greatest piece he’d written – he called it his swansong. We’ve got two vocal choirs doubled by string choirs and wind choirs – it’s written for a chorus and orchestra of the people, and a chorus and orchestra of angels, and we’re spatially separating them so that the angels are above the people on the main stage.”

Discussions are well underway, too, Buckley explains, about capturing this ingenious staging for TV. It’s the Dunedins’ third Proms outing, and continues the ambitiousness of the two earlier events. First came Bach’s St John Passion in 2017 – “that was a recreation of a service with the audience as congregation singing the hymns – it was a big spectacle,” remembers Buckley. “Then in 2019 we performed the four Bach orchestral suites, interspersed with new works from four contemporary composers.”

Though they’ve been geographically far from their rich roster of performances in Scotland, the Dunedins’ Proms are also indicative of the group’s rapidly blossoming prominence both nationally and internationally. They are widely respected as one of the liveliest, most vibrant, most scholarly but also most outward-looking period-performance ensembles around – helped, of course, by the galvanising musical direction of John Butt.

That’s a reputation that’s grown rapidly since Buckley joined the group in 2018, becoming CEO the following year. “I genuinely felt like I was given a real gift,” she remembers. “The Consort was already in fantastic shape. But I’ve never wanted us to lose the sense that we’re Scottish. And I hope that when we perform nationally or internationally we represent Scotland, so that our audience at home feels proud of what we’re doing.”

Like CPE Bach’s choral blast, the Proms performance itself forms Buckley’s swansong with the Dunedins: she leaves to become CEO of IMPACT Scotland, managing the creation of Edinburgh’s new Dunard Centre musical hub in St Andrew Square. Scottish audiences will no doubt eagerly await developments on the city’s first purpose-built music space in more than a century – but that’s for another time.

For now, how does Buckley look back at her time at the helm of the Dunedin Consort? “Hopefully the most obvious thing we’ve done in the past four or five years is the coupling of early music and new music – I always felt that curiosity of spirit, that sense of daring and of wanting to push boundaries was always there in the group. And we’ve also done huge work around our learning programme, harnessing the skills of the musicians in the ensemble to nurture the next generation.”

Does she have any hopes for the Dunedins’ future? “For me, the most special thing about the group is that it genuinely feels like a family of musicians who love playing together. Whatever direction my successor takes things in, I hope that sense of community and collegiality remains, because it fosters really good music making – and John Butt, of course, is the spirit of that. I’d love to see that spirit continue: then, the sky’s the limit.”

The Dunedin Consort performs JS Bach, CPE Bach and Mozart at the Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall on 6 August, 11am, with a live broadcast on BBC Radio 3. The concert will also be broadcast on BBC4 on 27 August, 8pm. See https://www.dunedin-consort.org.uk/

The Dunedin Consort prepare for their most ambitious Proms appearance yet