Reviews

“Friday night heard the East Coast premiere of the complete Italian-language version of George Frideric Handel’s cantata, Aci, Galatea & Polifemo. Tempesta di Mare, with an 18-member period instrument orchestra and three vocal soloists, glittered with baroque ornamentation, shimmered with imaginative scoring, sparkled with vocal pyrotechnics, bristled with pulsating rhythmic vitality, and throbbed with heightened emotional […]

“Amid the graciousness-from-centuries-past environs of the Frick Collection on the Upper East Side, Philadelphia baroque music group Tempesta di Mare was having its New York debut Sunday in a prestigious, mainstream concert series, and playing in top form. It was time. Individual members surface periodically in early-music concerts and even opera productions here. Also, Time Out […]

“The [Handel] B minor trio sonata (Opus 2, No. 1) has a melancholy beauty that is immediately memorable, but more importantly, the fabric of the music

—its counterpoint, its melodies, its harmonic structure—breathes with an irresistible inner life. In their performance of this sonata, the four Tempesta players breathed, too; there was a richness and expansiveness to their […]

“What chance does a composer like Johann Friedrich Fasch have in a world like ours? It turns out that he has a pretty good one. What makes Fasch’s music most enjoyable is his willingness to dance. Try the final movement of the Concerto in D and see if its bubbling nature doesn’t make you want […]

“This seriously addictive disc should make New Yorkers envy Philadelphia for its sparkling early-music orchestra, Tempesta di Mare. Here, the group’s five expert core players pay handsome tribute to Handel. Soprano Julianne Baird joins them for the Nine German Arias. Highly recommended for lazy Sunday mornings. Four Stars.” Time Out New York, October 4, 2007. “Several other […]

“The ensemble Tempesta di Mare performed an all Vivaldi concert last Saturday evening, presented by Early Music Now. The five-member ensemble of two violins, recorder, cello and lute plays with wonderfully tight ensemble, divining one another’s direction in changes of tempo, an important feature of Vivaldi’s style. I appreciated the attentive avoidance of the Baroque […]

“Sunday’s concert at the National Gallery of Art was a survey of 16th- and 17th-century Italian music, allowing Drew Minter and the accomplished musicians of Tempesta di Mare to showcase the style, ornamentation and improvisation of that era. Minter’s performance of Sigismondo d’India’s “Listen to the Nightingale” was a tour de force, the melody perfectly […]

“Tempesta di Mare, Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra, closed out its 2005-06 season with the third and final installment of its series entitled “The Grand Orchestra” in Swarthmore College’s Lang Concert Hall. The most impressive and memorable aspect of Tempesta’s performances of all five scores was the fullness of its overall orchestral tone. Like it or not, […]

“In Tempesta di Mare’s program, you glimpsed Handel in one of his few creative outings with his native language. And with musicians like those in this Philadelphia-based baroque orchestra, not to mention soprano Julianne Baird, you’re going to be able to hear the difference of Handel in his most comfortable zone. All elements, vocal and […]

“In a time when all good things seem to be contracting, Tempesta di Mare, the Philadelphia baroque-music orchestra, swelled to a record-high 22 players on Friday at Lang Concert Hall in Swarthmore, and will stay that way for two future programs, collectively titled The Grand Orchestra. That’s six more players than in the past. “It’s about […]