BRANDENBURG CONCERT
SUNDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 2023
14:15 h
HET CONCERTGEBOUW
KLEINE ZAAL
AMSTERDAM

BRANDENBURG CONCERT
SUNDAY
26 FEBRUARY, 14:15 h

HET CONCERTGEBOUW
KLEINE ZAAL

Pearls in Baroque

Brandenburg concert

Sunday, 26 February 2023
14:15 h
Het Concertgebouw, Kleine zaal

Pearls in Baroque lead by artistic director Noriko Amano is staging a musically and visually varied programme including J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg concerto no. 5 and a part from Les Nation by François Couperin. By performing baroque dances, the 15-year-old Emily van Baaren will show the audience what this music was written for.

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J.S. Bach – Brandenburg Concerto no. 5
The Brandenburg Concertos derive their name from the fact that J.S. Bach had written them for Christian Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg. In his dedication – that incidentally reads like an application to a position at court – Bach himself had named them Six Concerts avec plusieurs instruments. With a playing time of over 20 minutes, the fifth Brandenburg Concerto is the longest of the six. It is special, because the harpsichord has a prominent solo part. In addition, there are solo parts for traverso (flute) and violin. Together the soloists of a baroque orchestra (or concerto grosso) form the concertino.

F. Couperin – La Piémontoise
In the beginning of the 18th century, Francois Couperin was composer and musical director at the Court of Louis XIV in Versailles. In his sumptuous masterpiece Les Nations from 1726, he brought together the Italian and French styles. It is noteworthy that Couperin’s Italian predecessor Lully had banned the Italian style from the French Court. The first part (Sonade, from the Italian Sonata) of La Piémontoise (originally from c. 1793 and named LÁstrée after a famous novel) is Italian; the following parts are typically French and bear the names of different court dances.

E.C. Jacquet de la Guerre – Le Sommeil d’Ulisse
The Cantata Françoise ‘Le Sommeil d’Ulisse’ (ca. 1715) is written bij Elisabeth Clause Jacquet de la Guerre, harpsichordist and composer at the court of Louis XIV. In the 17th century, only five composers received permission from the King to publish their harpsichord compositions, and she was one of them. This shows the recognition and appreciation she received from the King after she had been coming to play harpsichord and sing at the royal court as a child prodigy from the age of ten. As a composer, she was loyal to the French style required at court, but she was also sensitive to the Italian style that came into fashion around the turn of the century. Consequently, she was one of the first composers to combine these styles in her work.

J.J. Froberger – Lamentation for Ferdinand IV
Ferdinand IV was the eldest son of Ferdinand III, emperor (1637-1657) of the Holy Roman Empire (famously said to be neither holy, nor roman, nor an empire). As King of the Romans, Ferdinand IV was the elected heir of the emperor and thus destined to succeed his father upon his death. Unfortunately, Ferdinand IV untimely died of smallpox in 1654, leaving his father with the grief of this loss. Froberger, composer as well as diplomate, had close ties with Ferdinand III, who was a patron of music and a composer himself. On the death of Ferdinand III, a deeply grieved Froberger wrote another lamentation.

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