The birth of an orchestra. A journey through Italy

PERFORMERS:
The Barocco Concertato and Alta Capella ensembles

Soloists:
Maria Krestinskaya (viola d'amore, baroque violin)
Sergey Filchenko (baroque violin)
Konstantin Schenikov-Arkharov (lute)
Rust Pozyumskiy (viola da gamba)
Jedediah Allen (cornett)
Konstantin Yakovlev (baroque oboe)
Denis Bystrov (baroque oboe)
Evgeny Yatsuk (natural trumpet)
Daria Telyatnikova (mezzo-soprano)
Featuring Mirco Mungari (percussion)

PROGRAMME:
Claudio Monteverdi
Sinfonia to Act III of the opera L'Orfeo

Biagio Marini
Romanesca per Violino solo e Basso se piace

Dario Castello
Quarta Sonata à due soprani (from the Sonate concertate in stil moderno, libro secondo)

Anonymous
Aria di Ruggiero

Passacaglia (improvisation)

Giovanni Gabrieli
Canzon à 8

Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi Mealli
Violin Sonata Op. 4 No 6, La Vinciolina

Biagio Marini
Sonata à quattro tromboni

Antonio Bertali
Sonata for two soprano instruments and basso continuo

Cristofano Malvezzi
Two Sinfonias from Intermedi della Pellegrina (I, V)

Giovanni Gabrieli
Canzon XVI à 12, Ch. 209

Emilio de' Cavalieri
Ballo del Granduca from Intermedi della Pellegrina ("O che nuovo miracolo")

Antonio Vivaldi
Concerto for viola d'amore and lute in D Minor, RV 540
Concerto for two oboes in D Minor, RV 535
Cessate, omai cessate, cantata for alto solo, strings and basso continuo RV 684

Giuseppe Torelli
Sinfonia for trumpet solo and strings in D Major, G. 9

About the Concert

At the dawn of the baroque era in Italy, any vocal works could be called cantatas. By the end of the 17^th century the word "cantata" had come to be used to refer to the "younger sister" of opera – a work consisting of several arias and recitatives for one, two or three soloists.
Antonio Vivaldi produced some forty cantatas, almost thirty of them for soprano, the others for alto. The latter include the cantata Cessate, omai cessate – the confession of a shepherd spurned by his beloved. It is hard to say which of the two arias of this cantata is better – the inspired lament Ah, ch’infelice sempre me vuol Dorilla ingrata, accompanied by the combination of bowing and pizzicatto which creates a magical effect. Or perhaps the stormy monologue So it is to you, gloomy places, silent horrors... , in which the hero devises plans for revenge from beyond the grave.

The oboe was the first wind instrument to become a favourite of Antonio Vivaldi. The Concerto for Two Oboes and Strings in D Minor can be tentatively dated to the period following 1724, though it may possibly have been composed earlier. It has not three movements (as in the overwhelming majority of Vivaldi's concerti), but four – as in an early church sonata. Throughout the four movements the oboes gradually win their independence. In the first movement (Largo) they imitate the violins, in the Allegro their friendly and almost indissoluble duet quarrels with the strings, and only in the second Largo does each of the soloists gain full freedom. In tandem, the originality of the music also grows: the second Largo and the impetuous finale are true miniature masterpieces.

The Concerto for Viola d'amore and Lute composed in 1740 is unique not just in Vivaldi's legacy but in the entire history of baroque music. If the viola d'amore with its six main and six resonant strings and velvety timbre has often inspired concerti still being written today, it is harder to say the same of the lute. For the delicate viola d'amore and the lute not to be lost among the violins and cellos, Vivaldi indicated that the latter be performed with mutes, from which the concerto received its very unusual – for the Venetian maestro – matt and "water-colour" hues.
Most of Vivaldi's concerti were written for solo instruments, while here the composer had the rare opportunity to afford the soloists a multi-voice structure. He did this with some significant extravagance. Initially the viola d'amore performs in two voices, while the multi-stringed lute remains surprisingly restrained in one voice for a lengthy period and it is only towards the end of the first movement that it begins to demonstrate its wider abilities. Vivaldi, who composed a great deal and at great speed, clearly worked on this concerto with great care over a long period, meticulously focussing on the perfection of each and every detail.
Anna Bulycheva

About the performers

The Barocco Concertato ensemble comprises:
Konstantin Yakovlev (baroque bassoon, oboe)
Maria Krestinskaya (baroque violin, viola d'amore)
Sergey Filtchenko (baroque violin)
Svetlana Grinfeld (baroque violin)
Ksenia Timofeyeva (baroque violin)
Alexander Gorbunov (baroque viola)
Rust Pozyumskiy (viola da gamba)
August Krеpak (baroque cello)
Elizaveta Panchenko (harpsichord, organ)
Konstantin Schenikov-Arkharov (theorbo, archlute, percussion)
Katerina King (baroque harp)

Director of the ensemble: Maria Krestinskaya

The St Petersburg early music ensemble Barocco Concertato was founded in 2011. The orchestra performs music of the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras. The ensemble's soloists play early instruments, striving to attain the same practice of historically informed performance.
The name of the ensemble refers to the Baroque stile concertato. In such works it was vital to reconcile the "competing" voices or groups of instruments – the Italian word "concertare" means "to concur" or "to attain team-playing".
The richness of the instrumental timbres brings the Barocco Concertato close to a Baroque orchestra: here there are such instruments as the Baroque violin, the viola d'amore, the theorbo, the archlute, the Baroque bassoons and oboes, the viola da gamba, the harpsichord, the organ and percussion. The regular musicians are frequently joined by guest performers.
The soloists of the Barocco Concertato have trained at master-classes given by such leaders of the authentic performance movement as Maria Leonhardt (The Netherlands), Peter Van Heyghen (Belgium), Andrew Manze (Great Britain), Bob van Asperen (The Netherlands), Vittorio Ghielmi (Italy), Hugo Reyne (France), Michel Laplénie (France), Andrew Lawrence-King (Great Britain) and Andrei Reshetin (Russia).
The musicians take part in prestigious early music festivals in St Petersburg, Boston, Utrecht (The Netherlands), Vantaa (Finland) and Sanssouci (Potsdam, Germany). All of the ensemble's members have been prize-winners at international competitions.
For more detailed information about the performers please go to: www.baroccoconcertato.com

The Alta Capella ensemble comprises:
Ivan Velikanov (cornetto, organ)
Alexandra Mikheyeva (sackbut)
Andrian Printsev (sackbut)
Mikhail Olenev (sackbut)
Eugene Kozharov (sackbut)

Director of the ensemble: Ivan Velikanov

Alta Capella is the first Russian ensemble of Renaissance and Baroque wind instruments. The ensemble was founded in 2009 by graduates, students and post-graduates of the Moscow Conservatoire. The musicians perform on authentic copies of historical instruments: the sackbut, slide trumpet, zink (cornetto), schalmei, bombarde and dulcian.
The name Alta Capella refers back to the 14^th–15^th centuries – that was the name given to an ensemble of three or four loud wind instruments performed from a height, a balcony or a gallery. The word "alta" (loud, high), probably also envisaged the performance of lofty (spiritual) music for high-born nobles.
The ensemble's repertoire includes medieval spiritual and secular music, works by composers of the Dutch school, Italian and English consort music and also Lutheran music of three centuries from Walther and Praetorius to Bach.
Alta Capella collaborates with such performers as Alexei Lyubimov, Anatoly Grindenko, Dmitry Sinkovsky, Dmitry Stepanovich and Andrei Nemzer. In 2011 with the participation of Andrei Nemzer the ensemble recorded the disc Fili mi, Absalon. Heinrich Schutz and His Italian Contemporaries.
The ensemble performs solo programmes at the Moscow Conservatoire, the State Institute of the History of Art and the Atrium of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Musical Theatre and takes part in early music festivals in Yehiam (Israel), Brunoy (France), St Petersburg and Moscow in addition to organising the International Festival of Music and Dance La Renaissance (since 2011). The festival has witnessed the Russian premieres of Claudio Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine and a stage version of the medieval 14^th century poem Roman de Fauvel.
The ensemble's musicians have trained on summer courses of early music in Urbino under Bruce Dickey (Italy) and taken part in international master-classes conducted by Martin Lubenow (Germersheim, Germany), William Dongois, Stéphane Léger and Wim Becu (Moscow, Bremen, Salzburg).
In 2012 soloists of the ensemble were prize-winners at the International Young Artists' Presentation Competition, which is run as part of the festival Laus Polyphoniae in Antwerp.
For more detailed information about the performers please go to: www.altacapella.ru

Age category 6+