Ispirazione barocca

La Cetra’s 26/27 season kicks off with a multifaceted instrumental program of concertos and overtures that highlights the connections and mutual inspiration among key Baroque composers: Bach and Handel, for example, who were both born in eastern Germany in the spring of 1685, just a few weeks apart. As is well known, Handel soon moved to London, while Bach remained loyal to the Thuringian and Saxon regions for the rest of his life. Both were familiar with each other’s music, though they never actually met. Bach had more points of contact with Jan Dismas Zelenka, who was six years his senior and worked in Dresden for a long time—as Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach later reported, his father and Zelenka knew and respected one another. Bach also held in high regard his contemporary Johann Friedrich Fasch, who had studied under Johann Kuhnau, Bach’s predecessor at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. Bach and Fasch both applied to succeed Kuhnau as Thomaskantor. Bach, Handel, Zelenka, and Fasch all shared a common admiration for and inspiration from 17th- and 18th-century Italian music. And so, to conclude this instrumental evening marking the start of La Cetra’s season, Vivaldi’s Concerto in B minor, RV 580, for four violins will be performed. First published in Amsterdam in 1711, it inspired Bach, among others, to such an extent that he arranged it for four harpsichords a few years later. The season opener is led by the two concertmasters, Katharina Heutjer and Eva Saladin, who also play the solo violins.

Artists
La Cetra Baroque Orchestra Basel
Katharina Heutjer & Eva Saladin, violins & conductors


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