SATURDAY, 6 MAY 2023
14:00 h
HET CONCERTGEBOUW
KLEINE ZAAL
AMSTERDAM

SATURDAY
6 MAY 2023, 14:00 h

HET CONCERTGEBOUW
KLEINE ZAAL

Pearls in Baroque

Saturday, 6 May 2023
14:00 h
Het Concertgebouw, Kleine Zaal

Pearls in Baroque led by artistic director and harpsichordist Noriko Amano is presenting a sequel to the successful concert of 26 February. Again, the programme is centred around masterpieces by two of the greatest composers of the baroque period: J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos and François Couperin’s Les Nations. Incidentally, these two musical giants corresponded with one another upon the publication of Couperin’s four volumes of harpsichord music that were greatly admired by Bach. Unfortunately, this correspondence did not survive.

Brandenburg Concertos
The Brandenburg Concertos are a collection of six instrumental works assembled in 1721 by J.S. Bach (1685-1750) for Christian Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg, but probably written earlier. In his dedication Bach himself called them Six Concerts avec plusieurs instruments. They are regarded as some of the best orchestral compositions of the baroque period. Concerto no. 4 in G major (BWV 1049) has prominent roles for the violin and two echoing recorders (fiauti d’echo).

Les Nations
François Couperin (1668-1733) was composer and musical director at the Court of Louis XIV in Versailles in the beginning of the 18^th century. In Les Nations, a collection of four instrumental works that was first published in 1726, but largely composed as early as 1693, Couperin combines the French and Italian styles (les gouts réunis). The four pieces have the same structure. Each piece opens with a trio sonata in the Italian style and is followed by a sequence of dances as in a French suite. A baroque dancer will show the audience what it must have looked like in court.

Vivaldi’s Recorder (blokfluit) Concerto
In 1729, the Amsterdam music publisher Michel-Charles le Cène published six concertos “a Flauto traverso, violino primo, violino secondo, alto e violoncello” by Antonio Vivaldi. Vivaldi composed these flute concertos for the orphan girls of the Pio Ospedale della pietà in Venice, where from 1713 he was in charge of all musical activities. Although the publisher indicates the Flauto traverso (transverse flute) on the title page, we suspect that some of these six concertos, composed many years earlier, are intended for recorder. The instruction to use sordines on the strings gives the 5th concerto a mild, intimate and pastoral character, an atmosphere that fits the recorder (Flauto dolce in Italian) very well.

FOR TICKETS

© Lila Poppy Geurts

Previous concert: “A musical feast!”

“I’d had the pleasure of seeing Noriko perform on a few occasions, but never before with her entire Pearls in Baroque Chamber Orchestra – an ensemble of top musicians. Tokyo-born Noriko Amano is the artistic director of Pearls in Baroque, a platform she founded for baroque music and art. In the revered Recital Hall of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, they staged a superb programme on Sunday afternoon to a large, appreciative audience and I was among them. What an inspiring atmosphere! In Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 5, Noriko’s harpsichord solo part was completely enthralling. I felt mesmerized by the 18th century music, imagining the grandeur of the courts of Louis XIV in Versailles! Noriko plays her harpsichord built in Paris in 1998 – a copy of a French 18th century harpsichord. The icing on the cake was when 15-year-old Emily van Baaren, herself a talented violinist, joined on stage, showing us what this music was written for as she danced a graceful baroque gigue during the movement from Les Nations by François Couperin. The entire concert, musically and visually, was truly an uplifting experience.”