London Festival of Baroque Music Smith Square, a classical music venue originally built as a church in the Baroque period. Concerts also take place at Westminster Abbey. Other venues in the Westminster area have included St Margaret's Church, St Peter's Eaton Square, and Westminster School. The London Festival of Baroque Music presents concerts of music from the Baroque period, performed on period instruments. It specialises in inviting non-UK performers, often making their UK debut, as well as UK musicians. Ensembles who have appeared include Musica Antiqua Köln, Collegium Vocale Gent, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, the Bach Ensemble, Tafelmusik, Europa
Baroque violin choose fingerings which result in few shifts, or small "creeping" shifts. They choose their moments for shifting carefully, using open strings and points of articulation in the music where changes of position in the left hand can be made inaudibly. While in the Romantic period audible shifts are often used (portamento and glissando) these are absent from Baroque playing. Some Baroque sources indicate the deliberate use of a higher position on a lower string, typically for a piano or misterioso effect, but low positions are preferred on the whole for greater sonority. Vibrato is used much more sparingly in Baroque