Tuesday 20 May, 7.30pm
St. John’s, Smith Square
| Maria Cristina Kiehr |
soprano
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| Concerto Soave |
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| Jean-Marc Aymes |
director |
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| Concerto Soave |
Maria Cristina Kiehr |
Et in terra pax
Motets and instrumental music by Monteverdi, Legrenzi, Mazzocchi and more
One of the most admired and individual voices in Baroque music today, Argentinian soprano Maria Cristina Kiehr makes a welcome return to the Lufthansa Festival with her Swiss-based ensemble Concerto Soave in repertoire they have made their own: music for soprano and string ensemble from seventeenth-century Italy. In this concert, they conjure up the convulsive conflicts of biblical times in Domenico Mazzocchi’s dramatic motets depicting the Passage of the Red Sea and Judith’s bloody slaying of Holofernes, and in instrumental battle music by Andrea Falconieri. More peaceful concerns are evoked in music for Holy Week by Frescobaldi, in hymns to Jesus by Legrenzi and Orazio Tarditi, and in Monteverdi’s delectably tuneful psalm-setting Confitebor tibi Domine.
‘Right from the first phrases, there is the sense that this [Lamentazioni per la Settimana Santa] is a disc to treasure. There is, at every point, simply something so right about the fusion of music and soloist … With superb work from Concerto Soave, this is a treat one feels that everyone should enjoy.’
Gramophone
Tickets £25, £20, £15, £10
Stay for Musica ad Rhenum and save 20% (see below)
Special Offer
• Buy 2 or more top or second price tickets before 1 April and get a free CD of Lamentazioni per la Settimana Santa
Tuesday 20 May, 10.00pm
St. John’s, Smith Square
| Musica ad Rhenum |
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| Jed Wentz |
flute & director |
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| Musica ad Rhenum |
Music from the Court of Frederick the Great
| Quantz |
Flute Sonata in D major, Op.1
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| JS Bach |
Trio Sonata in C minor, BWV1079 (Musical Offering) |
| Frederick the Great |
Flute Sonata in D minor |
| Telemann |
Suite in E minor (Nouveaux quatuors) |
Frederick II of Prussia is known above all for two things: his military campaigns, and his love of music. The former turned his country into one of Europe’s major powers, while the latter touched the careers of some of the leading German composers of the time, not least JS Bach, who visited the Berlin court in 1747 and ended up composing his great contrapuntal compendium Musical Offering on a theme by the King himself. Amsterdambased ensemble Musica ad Rhenum, directed by American flautist Jed Wentz, performs the luxurious Trio Sonata from that collection alongside flute sonatas by Frederick and by his favourite court musician, Johann Joachim Quantz, before ending with a work from one of the most delicious chamber collections of the eighteenth century, Telemann’s ‘Paris Quartets’.
‘There is not a hint here of the dull worthiness sometimes encountered; contrasts are really attacked, the fast second movement fairly bubbles with life, and the result is the most sheerly exciting performance of [Bach’s Trio Sonata] I have heard.’ Gramophone
Tickets £15, £12, £9, £6
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Musica ad Rhenum (Tuesday 20 May) is being recorded by BBC Radio 3 for broadcast in The Early Music Show at 1pm on Saturday 24 May
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