Tag: Early Music

Music of the Baroque’s Theodora is free to view for a limited time

In the lead up to Music of the Baroque’s emerald anniversary season, they are making last season’s performances free to view for a limited time. This week, Handel’s Theodora is on offer.

Handel’s Theodora isn’t one of his most frequently performed works, but those who know it tend to hold it close. Premiered in 1750 and largely overlooked in its day, this oratorio trades the grandiosity of Messiah for something more poignant and intimate. It tells the story of a Christian martyr and her Roman lover, not with bombast, but with music of startling tenderness and quiet strength. Music of the Baroque’s performance invites a fresh hearing of a work that Handel himself considered one of his best.

Catch it while you can.

Hans-Jurgen Schnoor takes up St. Matthew Passion with OSSCS

Hans-Jurgen Schnoor

Orchestra Seattle will mount one of the classical music highlights of the spring – Bach’s epic St. Matthew Passion – this Sunday at First Free Methodist Church. As has been the case all season, a guest conductor will helm the orchestra. This week it is noted Bach specialist Hans-Jurgen Schnoor. Earlier in the week, I asked Schnoor about the piece and his approach to a large scale work like the Matthew Passion.
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Portland Baroque presents Bach’s St John Passion as part of Handel Festival

Monica Huggett. Photo Portland Monthly.

By Philippa Kiraly

We don’t often have the opportunity to hear either of the great Bach Passions, so we owe a big vote of thanks to the Early Music Guild for bringing us a stellar performance of the St. John Passion by Portland Baroque Orchestra, Les Voix Baroques, and Cappella Romana, Sunday afternoon at Town Hall.

Monica Huggett, violinist and artistic director of Portland Baroque, chose to perform it with a small orchestra of fourteen and small chorus of twelve.which included the soloists. While this Passion is shorter than the St. Matthew, two and a quarter hours including an intermission, this puts quite a burden on the singers who stood throughout, particularly tenor Charles Daniels, who sang all the chorales and choruses as well as the demanding role of the Evangelist.
Continue reading Portland Baroque presents Bach’s St John Passion as part of Handel Festival

Week in classical music: Alexander Bishop, Michael Nicolella, and Monteverdi

Stephen Stubbs. Photo courtesy Pacific Musicworks.

It’s been a busy week for Cornish College, the college’s faculty, and one of the school’s talented soon to be graduates. A new president was unveiled — a violist — Nancy Uscher. That evening student composer Alexander Bishop’s music for viola was the focus at Poncho Hall. Toward the end of the week — innovative guitarist and Cornish faculty member Michael Nicolella took to the Nordstrom Recital Hall stage as part of the Seattle Classical Guitar Series. Up the hill at St. James Cathedral, Steven Stubbs (who has been tasked with building an early music program at Cornish) led the first historically accurate performance of Monteverdi’s path blazing 1610 Vespers.
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The 2010-2011 concert season opens with I-90 Collective

By Philippa Kiraly

The fall concert season starts with a flurry this year, seemingly in a hurry to get going immediately after Labor Day. The Seattle Symphony has three Beethoven and Wine concerts this week and a gala on Saturday, Cappella Romana gives its first season performance Saturday, and the Early Music Guild got in first with one of its First Tuesday series, the I-90 Collective performing at Trinity Parish Church.

The audience was surprisingly good for an early Tuesday in September and, with its excellent acoustics, the Trinity Parish Hall is becoming known as a fine place to perform.
Continue reading The 2010-2011 concert season opens with I-90 Collective

Manze makes his SSO debut

By R.M. Campbell

Early in his distinguished career, Andrew Manze was known as a Baroque violinist. But not any violinist. He brought zeal, ebullience, intelligence and scholarship to everything he touched. Those qualities he brings to the podium, as his Seattle Symphony Orchestra debut testified to this weekend at Benaroya Hall. He has a small orchestra, not quite 30 musicians, all strings. The balance is at McCaw Hall doing its duty with Seattle Opera and the premiere of “Amelia.” In some ways it makes no difference because the English conductor can accomplish what he wants with whatever means he has as his disposal. What one did glimpse were his predilections toward the Baroque era, in which he has spent a good share of his career, and English music.
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Jordi Savall’s Jerusalem at Lincoln Center

By Gigi Yellen

With his characteristic blend of deep research and virtuosic performance, historical accuracy and jazzlike improvisation, Jordi Savall and his band have created in “Jerusalem: City of Heavenly and Earthly Peace” a mesmerizing and troubling contemporary performance piece. Maestro Savall, esteemed creator of over 160 honored recordings of early music, combines ancient instruments, chants, recitations of sacred texts, folk tunes and even a Sufi dance in this concert (based on his 2008 2-CD set of the same name), which I was privileged to see performed on May 5 as the focus of a three-day “Jerusalem” event at New York’s Lincoln Center. I wanted to share with you some impressions and some thoughts about this most unusual Savall project.

Silhouetted against a huge dawn-like screen, a robed man blows an immensely long, grandly twisted shofar, the flawless opening notes of a fanfare that expands to include half a dozen players of these beautiful ram’s horns and as many players of the equally long, impossibly slender Arabic trumpets called annafirs. The shofar, a wake-up call most associated in our time with synagogue High Holiday services, is played by the Israeli virtuoso Yagel Harel, one of a collection of multi-ethnic players Savall has carefully gathered to demonstrate how historic enemies can melt their differences in the warm light of their musical similarities.
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Portland Baroque comes to town

By R.M. Campbell

For more than a quarter of century, the Portland Baroque Orchestra has been an integral part of the early music scene on the West Coast. Any number of luminaries have been associated with the period orchestra. including Ton Koopman Richard Egarr, Andrew Manze and Monica Huggett, the ensemble’s artistic director for 15 years. At one time the orchestra attempted to create a base in Seattle. That was not successful, so we have to wait for special opportunities to hear this exemplary group of musicians.

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On Bach’s birthday: the gift of Suites for Solo Cello

Not quite sure how to celebrate Johann Sebastian Bach’s birthday this year? It’s coming up this weekend you know. And if somehow you’ve neglected to plan for the birth anniversary of this genius of Western Music, I understand the sense of guilt you carry. But really, there’s no need for panic or embarrassment. Here’s the solution.

For more than 20 years the cello playing community in Seattle and across Washington State has hosted a Bach birthday bash like no other. The party is open to all. It’s a casual affair that doesn’t cost any money. You can drop in at any time and leave when you need to. And instead of bringing the gifts, you receive them.
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Hesperion XXI: intriguing as always

By R. M. Campbell

It was founded in 1974, as Hesperion XX, by Jordi Savall and Montserrat Figueras as well as Lorenzo Alpert and Hopkinson Smith. The latter two have since left the quartet leaving Savall and Figueras as founding members. On this current tour are two excellent and well-established musicians — Pierre Hamon (ney, gaita and flute) and Dimitri Psonis (oud, santur and morisca), from France and Greece, respectively. The name was also altered to Hesperion XXI accommodate the 21st century. Other than those changes, the group remains the same, exploring with uncommon intelligence and thoroughness music of Europe particularly, and a subsection of that, the Iberian peninsula, as well as the Middle East and Far East. A few examples: the “Golden Age of Spain,” “Madrigals of Monteverdi” and the Creole Villancicos of Latin America.”

Continue reading Hesperion XXI: intriguing as always