Live Concert – Castille to Samarkand
The 15th and 16th centuries have been described as “The Golden Age of Spanish music”, but they were also prolific periods for musicians in the Persian courts and throughout the...
The 15th and 16th centuries have been described as “The Golden Age of Spanish music”, but they were also prolific periods for musicians in the Persian courts and throughout the...
Chiara Margarita Cozzolani has been steadily receiving recognition in recent decades as one of the most skillful and expressive of a handful of published nun composers from seventeenth-century Italy. She took her vows at age 18, adopting “Chiara” as her religious name as she entered the Benedictine monastery of Santa Radegonda, where she would serve as maestra di cappella, abbess, and prioress.
This programme focuses on her 1648 collection of twelve motets for solo soprano, Scherzi di sacra melodia. No copy of the accompanying basso continuo partbook has been found, making the collection inaccessible to performers until now. The bass part for three of the motets was composed from scratch by lutenist Lucas Harris. The concert ends with Non tema nò di morte, a trio from the sole surviving collection of another Italian nun composer, Maria Francesca Nascinbeni. Of Nascinbeni’s life we know little, though in her publication’s preface she casually mentions being only sixteen years old.
This concert showcases the music of 18th-century female composers who, though forgotten or ignored by history, in their day shared the stage with and enjoyed the respect and friendship of...
This programme is a tribute to the Venetian composer and singer Barbara Strozzi, one of the most important composers of Italian cantatas and baroque arias. Her sensitivity to text and experimentation...
In this concert film, Servir Antico tell the story of Christine de Pizan (1364 – ca.1430), a revolutionary woman who questioned the treatment of women and their prescribed place and...
This concert showcases the music of 18th-century female composers who, though forgotten or ignored by history, in their day shared the stage with and enjoyed the respect and friendship of...
The works selected by Mélisande Corriveau and Eric Milnes for this evening present a vibrant array of French musical styles developed during the 18th century before the French Revolution. The origin and development of the pardessus de viole – known in France as “the woman’s violin”- coincided with the increasing prominence of the violin in French instrumental fashion. The crowning glory of the viola da gamba family, the pardessus – the smallest of the viola da gamba family of instruments – facilitated the instrument’s rise in popularity in France. Most of the works which will be performed were selected from the microfilm collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and few had been recorded until Mélisande’s recent recording. They are charming, playful, luminous and exquisitely elegant.
Profeti della Quinta has had to cancelled their tour due to the rising cases of Covid 19. We look forward to when they’ll be able to perform with us in...
In the late Renaissance Salomone Rossi, a young Jewish violinist, burst through the barriers of discrimination and became one of the most renowned composers and performers at the court of...
The Baroque ensemble Quicksilver has had to cancelled their tour due to the rising cases of Covid 19. We look forward to when they'll be able to perform with us...
Constantinople partners with the seminal Corsican polyphonic singing group A Filetta, to create an enchanting sonic tableau where light and shadow meet, through sacred and secular songs from the rich Corsican musical tradition. Polyphony by the prodigious vocalists of A Filetta, as well as songs and music orchestrated by Kiya Tabassian, will come together in a deeply moving concert.
Of J.S. Bach’s children that survived into adulthood, four became composers whose music we still perform. While their musical facility reflects their father’s influence, each son had a very different path of travel, employment, and development of their musical voice. Johann Christian’s Chromatic Fugue on B-A-C-H pays homage to the serious, contrapuntal style of the past, but usually the Bach sons write in the galant style of their own generation, characterized by simplicity and immediacy of appeal. The closeness of the Bachs sometimes complicates the attribution of their music. The Orchestral Suite in G minor, BWV 1070, once thought to be by father Johann Sebastian, was more likely written by Wilhelm Friedemann. The Cello Sonata in A Major of Johann Christoph Friedrich seems liberated, natural, and comprehensible when played on a cello fit with a fifth string whereas the Cello Concerto in A minor of his older brother, Carl Philipp Emanuel fits well on the more popular 4-string instrument. Each work demonstrates the language of Sensibility (Empfindsamkeit): intimate, sensitive, and subjective. In their music, emotions are fleeting and instantaneous and, above all, the beauty of melody is emphasized.
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