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WELCOME
A Season of Brandenburgs and More Tempesta di Mare’s 8th season gets underway soon, and we’ve got lots of good stuff in store: a new brochure, a season of old friends and new discoveries, a new CD project and some concerts around the country. Our new season brochure is out, with a fun, brand-spanking-new look. If you’re already on our mailing list, you’ll get yours in the mail very soon. If you don’t receive our mailings yet, you can get one with a phone call to the office or by sending us an email with this link. We’re really excited to perform Bach’s complete Brandenburg Concertos over the course of this coming season. The Brandenburgs are old friends to all musicians and music lovers, but it will be Tempesta’s first outing with these well-known pieces. It’s also an unusual opportunity to hear them in the context of other great music that inspired and surrounded them, much of which will probably be new to all of us. Go to our Series page for more details. The other big event on our series will be the complete Lamentations of Jeremiah by the Czech composer Jan Dismas Zelenka, a contemporary whom Bach held in the highest regard. These are off-the-charts gorgeous cantatas, reflective texts for Holy Week set to music that will—figuratively—lift you out of your seats. Remember, if you plan to attend the whole series—and with a lineup like this, who wouldn’t—the Season Pass or College Pass is your ticket. More details on those two discount programs below in this issue. In addition to our Greater Philadelphia Concert Series at home, we’ve got several concerts on the road, including Kendall-on-Hudson, NY (October 4), Cleveland, OH (October 14), Birmingham, AL (February 5) and Jackson, MS (February 6). We’ll get our calendar page updated soon so you’ll be able to find it all there, plus any new out-of-town engagements that come up.Finally, we’re thrilled that Chandos, the British label for which we record, has invited us to make a new CD of cantatas and instrumental music by Alessandro Scarlatti with soprano Clara Rottsolk and the Tempesta di Mare Chamber Players. If you attended Ain’t Love Grand two seasons ago, or our concert at the Frick Collection in New York City last season, then you already know how fantastic this CD will be. See you soon! |
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Table of contents
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PREVIEW
Bach’s Set
Bach doesn’t know it, but he was my first. The first classical music record I ever bought with my own money was a recording of the Bach Brandenburg Concertos and I just about wore it out. I’m not alone. The six Brandenburgs are among the most loved pieces in classical repertoire. They get played all the time and all different ways, from big romantic orchestra versions to Wendy Carlos’ analogue-synthesized Switched-On Bach in the 60’s and 70’s. A recording of Brandenburg Concerto #2, first movement, is floating in space on the Voyager spacecraft, representing the apex of Earth culture to interstellar aliens. Lucky aliens. Thank you Carl Sagan. As Baroque specialists, Tempesta di Mare’s musicians are in constant demand from other groups to play the Brandenburgs. They know them inside and out. Still, Tempesta di Mare as a group has never played the Brandenburgs before. Devoting Tempesta di Mare’s eighth season to all six Brandenburgs together makes it a real event. “To me, the Brandenburgs are a supremely well-considered conversation among instrumental voices,” says Gwyn Roberts, Tempesta di Mare Artistic Co-Director. “Playing these pieces with Tempesta, a group that’s always communicated well with each other musically and is just getting better and better at it each time we play—that’s exciting. I’m really looking forward to it.” But Tempesta is taking the Brandenburgs a step further. Instead of playing the six Brandenburgs as a block, Tempesta will examine each one in detail over the course of the season. “It’s a great chance to spring off the Brandenburgs and surround them with other music that relates to them,” says Richard Stone, Tempesta di Mare’s other Artistic Co-Director. Each concert will set one or two of the Brandenburgs alongside work earlier or contemporary to it, mixing familiar work with new discoveries. (FEATURE continues below) |
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2009-2010 SEASON PASS
Season Pass &
Join us this season for two monumental cycles in their entirety: Bach’s beloved Brandenburg Concertos—alongside some of the works that inspired their creation—and Zelenka’s Lamentations of Jeremiah. A Tempesta di Mare Season Pass is a bundle of good things rolled into one:
Get your Season Pass now for only $145 (a 30% savings over buying single tickets)! Use the order form below. A Tempesta di Mare College Pass gives the budget-minded full-time student these benefits:
College Passes for just $40 (a 30% savings over buying single tickets)! Use the order form below.
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FEATURE (continued) Bach assembled the six pieces known as the Brandenburg Concertos to send to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg, in Berlin in 1721. Astonishingly diverse, they cram in an amazing number of influences—from sacred music to chamber music to national styles jostling each other, cheek to jowl with old and new types of composition and musical thinking—and a full spectrum of instrumental color. While the Brandenburgs are distinctive, they are not unique. “They have their own friends, neighbors, and family across the repertoire in terms of forms and relationships,” says Richard Stone. Stone and Roberts are betting that audiences will meet these new friends through the Brandenburgs and take them to heart. The October concert pairs Brandenburg #1, a “concerto-suite” which includes the instrumental novelties “piccolo violin” and hunting horns, with another concerto-suite by G. P. Telemann. Also: a concerto for orchestra by Tempesta-specialty Johann Friedrich Fasch and an orchestral suite by Georg Muffat, a Europe-trotter who brought the French dance craze to the north in the generation before Bach. December’s show features two big solos, harpsichordist Adam Pearl taking the spotlight in Brandenburg #5 and Richard Stone in a Fasch lute concerto, set against ensemble pieces by Johann Pachelbel, Christoph Graupner and Telemann in which virtuosos play off each other as “firsts among equals,” in Gwyn Roberts’ words. (FEATURE continues below) |
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IN THE MAIL New Season Brochure We love our new brochure, and we think you will too. If you aren’t already on our mailing list, now’s the time to join. Give us a call or send us an email and ask for the new 2009-2010 season brochure. |
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FEATURE (continued) January brings Brandenburgs #2 and #3 and some of the tempestuous repertoire by Venetian Antonio Vivaldi that fired Europe up in the 1710’s. Pro Musica Rara, Baltimore’s premier early music ensemble, joins Tempesta to swell the forces for Vivaldi-inspired works by J. D. Heinichen and J. G. Pisendel, along with two Vivaldi concertos, one featuring Gwyn Roberts on recorder and the other featuring Tempesta concertmaster Emlyn Ngai and principal cellist Eve Miller along with PMR violinist—and former Tempesta concertmistress—Cynthia Roberts, cellist Allen Whear and trumpeter John Thiessen. March breaks away from Bach with a special Holy Week program of cantatas by Bach’s contemporary Jan Dismas Zelenka, who is receiving increasing recognition for his highly individualistic and expressive compositions. Zelenka’s Lamentations of Jeremiah sets a somber text with hopefulness and even joy. “Really beautiful and varied—gorgeous!” says Richard Stone. With vocal soloists Lorie Gratis, Aaron Sheehan and David Newman. In May, Brandenburg #6, for low strings only (no violins) and #4, with double recorders and violin, are joined by an American premiere of Telemann’s Suite in G Minor and his Double Concerto for flute and violin. “This concert offers work that shows without question just why Telemann and Bach are famous,” says Roberts. It also includes Evaristo Felice Dall-Abaco’s double flute concerto, a “why-have-I-never-heard-of-this-guy-before” kind of discovery, according to Roberts. Remember that old Brandenburg LP that I was telling you about, the one I ground into oblivion on my Radio Shack turntable years ago? It turned out to be a starter drug. It sent me off on a journey looking for—and finding—music that I love as much as Bach’s magic six. I don’t know about you, but I’m tickled pink to have Tempesta di Mare introducing me to their special Brandenburg friends this year. I’m already making space for them on the shelf (and my hard drive and brain!).
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2009-2010 SINGLE TICKETS
Tickets à la Carte Single tickets are now available for mail-in and telephone orders. For mail-in orders, use the tear-off form on the new brochure—or download and print this PDF order form—and send it with your check. You can also call in your order with a credit card. Our phone number is 215-755-8776.
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REVIEW
“Joy of Discovery” International Handel Festival, GöttingenGöttinger Tageblatt, May 2009 by Matthias Schneider-Dominco GÖTTINGEN. It is the dream of every musicologist to discover important musical manuscripts in attics or on long-forgotten miles of shelves. So it happened in June 1999, when Harvard professor Christoph Wolff rediscovered the music archive of the Berlin Sing-Akademie in Kiev that went missing during the Second World War. Among it resided the bequest of Sara Levy (1761-1854), patroness, harpsichordist and great aunt of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who strongly influenced local musical life in her Berlin Salon and by granting composition commissions. Now this inventory is being made accessible once again for performance. The ensemble Tempesta di Mare from Philadelphia demonstrated how wonderful such dusted-off scores can sound to a sold-out audience in the Muthaus at Burg Hardegsen. One experienced the European modern premiere of Johann Gottlieb Janitsch’s (1708-1763) Sonata da Camera Op. 6 for flute, violin, viola and basso continuo. From the onset the crisp-playing musicians whisked away any preconceptions that the eighteenth century can only offer dry-sounding sonata fodder on which only moths would be happy to feed. Instead there was the joy of discovery, even though the qualitative difference to the following Trio Sonata in F by Georg Frideric Handel was easily heard. Masterfully shaped translation: Ulrike Shapiro |
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Tempesta di Mare • 1034 Carpenter St • Philadelphia PA 19147 • 215-755-8776 • www.tempestadimare.org