Music Before 1800

Sunday, October 5, 4 pm

with members of the Phiharmonia Baroque Orchestra:

Elizabeth Blumenstock, Gonzalo Ruiz, Danny Bond

Phoebe Carrai, Charles Sherman

Vivaldi Recorder Concertos

Marion Verbruggen’s extraordinary musicality and virtuosity have kept her at the forefront of the early-music scene. We will hear her in Vivaldi’s recorder concertos such as La Pastorella, and in other lively works including a concerto from the Four Seasons. The San Francisco Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s superb performers play violin, oboe, bassoon, cello and harpsichord.

There will be a wine-and-cheese reception in the auditorium of Corpus Christi Church.

Sunday, October 19, 4 pm

Pomerium

Alexander Blachly, Director

Mannerist Music of the Renaissance

Pomerium, the vocal chamber choir (a returning favorite), will sing highly expressive renaissance works by Lassus, Rore, Wert and Gesualdo in which harmonic instability and chromaticism dramatize the extreme sentiments of the motet and madrigal texts. Director Alexander Blachly explores a unique musical idea in every program that he produces, and this one is no exception.

Sunday, November 2, 4 pm

Diabolus in Musica (American debut)

Antoine Guerber, Director

Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame

The renowned Diabolus in Musica, the French octet comprised of male voices, performs Guillaume de Machaut’s great fourteenth century Messe de Nostre Dame. In addition to its beauty, it is the first complete Mass Ordinary—possessing a Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei—written by a single composer. It is also one of the earliest polyphonic mass settings.

Sunday, November 23, 4 pm

Trio Mediæval

Anna Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth

Torunn Østrum Ossum

A Worcester Ladymass

The superb vocal trio from Norway offers an exclusive medieval English concert: a votive mass to the Virgin Mary assembled from the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century “Worcester Fragments.” She was so revered in Worcester that many of the manuscripts commemorate her feast days, thus enabling the group to create a mass that spans the entire chronology of the extant fragments.

Sunday, January 11, 4 pm

Bradley Brookshire, Harpsichord

Recital: Bach the Progressive

During his career, J.S. Bach moved with the times, on occasion composing groundbreaking music (Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue), or writing in the style of his sons (several preludes and fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier II). The brilliant New York harpsichordist Bradley Brookshire plays some of Bach’s more radical works alongside W.F. Bach’s polonaises and a Haydn sonata.

Sunday, January 25, 4 pm

REBEL

Jörg-Michael Schwartz, Director & Violin

Karen Marie Marmer, Director & Violin

Daniel Elyar, John Moran, Dongsok Shin, Daniel Swenberg

Al Santo Sepolcro

Vivaldi’s affecting Sonata al Santo Sepolcro RV130 for two violins, viola, and continuo is the piece selected to represent a program of strikingly original music by Legrenzi, Charpentier, Biber, Telemann, and others. Established in 1991, REBEL is one of New York’s most famous baroque ensembles with a busy international touring schedule and multiple recordings to its credit.

Sunday, February 15, 4 pm

Concerto Palatino

Bruce Dickey, Director & Cornetto

Charles Toet, Director & Baroque Trombone

A Magnificent Noise

Founded in 1987 by Bruce Dickey and Charles Toet, Concerto Palatino has brought about a revival of seventeenth-century wind and brass music. The sextet, playing cornettos, trombones and organ, will perform intradas, canzonas, sonatas and paduanas from Italy and Germany by the most famous composers of the day, including Viadana, Scheidt, and the English expatriate, Brade.

Sunday, April 19, 4 pm

Choir of Corpus Christi Church

Louise Basbas, Director

Regina Coeli: Easter, Pentecost, Corpus Christi

Music Before 1800’s resident ensemble, the superb Choir of Corpus Christi Church, winds up the season with sixteenth-century music by the Spanish composers Francisco Guerrero, Alonso Lobo, the peerless Tomás Luis de Victoria, and Manuel Cardoso of Portugal. The chant and motets commemorate Eastertide, and the succeeding Pentecost and Feast of Corpus Christi.