Performing Forces
2 horns, 3 oboes, bassoon,
strings and basso continuo (21 musicians).

Duration of the Program
This program can be performed in one or two parts, to be determined with the concert organizer.

The path of English Baroque composers was littered with numerous obstacles, primarily created by the endlessly changing political and social situations. First, there was the complete paralysis of public musical life during the Commonwealth (1649-1660); next, the forced introduction of the French style during the Restoration (1660-1690); third, the growing popularity of the Italian style (1690-1710); and finally, the absolute supremacy of Italian music and performers in English musical life (1710-1740).
Under such circumstances the great mastery of such composers as Matthew LOCKE, who found a perfect balance between the old English and the modern French traditions and practices, or Henry PURCELL, who obtained a typically English sound through a fusion with local dance- and song forms, seems even more striking. Also, John STANLEY, who seems to have mastered the Italian style better than some Italians; Charles AVISON, who displayed great ingeniousness in his original arrangements; and Thomas Augustine ARNE who, as an innovator during the transition from Baroque to Classical styles was in every way as capable as his more renown contemporaries on the continent, were among the most remarkable native English musicians of their time.
They embodied the essence of English national musical pride and ensured against the fact that English Baroque music would be reduced to Handel and his Italian contemporaries.

Performing Forces
Soprano,
2 oboes, recorder,
strings and basso continuo (19 musicians).

Duration of the Program
This program can be performed in one or two parts, to be determined with the concert organizer.

During his stay in Rome (1706-1709), HANDEL worked for a several different patrons: Cardinal Carlo Colonna, for whom he primarily wrote chamber music; Prince Francesco Maria Ruspoli, whom he served as his chapel master; and Cardinals Benedetto Pamphili and Pietro Ottoboni, for whom he mainly composed cantatas to be performed during the weekly house concerts — called accademie or conversazioni — in their respective courts. Both cardinals were also librettists and authored numerous texts for operas, oratorios, and cantatas.
In this program, Les Muffatti recreate the atmosphere of such house concerts, even though they chose to reconstruct a rather exceptional situation (for the time) during which a sufficient number of musicians were present in order to constitute a full orchestra.
Centerpieces of the program are the cantata Delirio amoroso, on a libretto by Pamphili, and Ero e Leandro, set on poetry most probably written by Ottoboni. The concert is further complemented by a few Concerti Grossi of Arcangelo CORELLI and Giuseppe VALENTINI, whose orchestral compositions were extremely popular in early eighteenth-century Rome.

Performing Forces
2 horns, 2 oboes, bassoon,
strings and basso continuo (23 musicians).

Duration of the Program
This program can be performed in one or two parts, to be determined with the concert organizer.

In many ways Giuseppe SAMMARTINI (1695-1750) was an exception among the group of Italian composers who decided to establish themselves and develop their careers in London. Contrary to Geminiani and Castrucci, among others, SAMMARTINI was from northern Italy (Milan); he was considerably younger than his colleagues; he was not a violinist but an oboist; he had not studied with Corelli; and he went to London much later than they did (in 1728). However, as Corelli, Geminiani, and Castrucci, SAMMARTINI was also one of Handel’s acquaintances — he was an oboist and a flutist in his orchestra — and he went on to become an extremely successful composer of orchestral music as well, although his oeuvre became truly popular only after his death. During the 1770s and 1780s, his concertos and overtures were performed even more often than Corelli’s Concerti grossi. Except for his famous concerto for treble recorder, SAMMARTINI’s music is mostly unknown today, a sad situation for a composer who, not only had such an impact on English musical life as a transitional figure between the Baroque and the Classical period, but whose compositional output shows great variety. Moreover, his music was, according to the 18th-century English music critic Charles Burney "full of science, originality, and vigor."
For this program Les Muffatti made a rigorous selection from SAMMARTINI’s numerous concerti grossi for strings, solo concertos for oboe, recorder, flute, organ, or harpsichord, and overtures for mixed orchestra.

Performing Forces
Strings and basso continuo (17 musicians).

Duration of the Program
This program can be performed in one or two parts, to be determined with the concert organizer.

Even before the time that Arcangelo CORELLI (1653-1713) emerged as Italy’s most sought-after violin teacher, he had already acquired an international reputation as the unchallenged leader and organizer of all performances of string ensemble music in Rome. His name was associated with the concerto grosso, a concept that essentially referred to a typically Roman instrumentation technique in which a small nucleus of soloists regularly alternates with the entire string ensemble.
In 1680, Georg MUFFAT (1653-1704) was the first non-Italian composer who went to Rome to meet CORELLI, and he was the first person to introduce the concerto grosso north of the Alps in his Salzburg publication (1682) of a groundbreaking collection entitled Armonico Tributo. A few years later, Johann Christoph PEZ (1664-1716), a composer from Munich also went to study with CORELLI (1689-92), after which he applied the new orchestral techniques to his own works. His Concert Sonata in F Major is a brilliant example of such stylistic integration. Incidentally, PEZ probably even heard the 1689 performance of Lulier’s oratorio Santa Beatrice d’Este for which CORELLI composed the opening Sinfonia, the earliest extant orchestral composition of the great Roman master.
However, the major international success of the new genre only came after 1713, with the posthumous publication of CORELLI’s own Concerti Grossi Opus 6. The fact that in the following decades London became the new center of the Corellian Concerto grosso is partly a consequence of the presence there of a number of CORELLI’s former students: Francesco GEMINIANI and Pietro CASTRUCCI, who vigorously disseminated their teacher’s music.
GEMINIANI even made several orchestral arrangements of CORELLI’s chamber pieces, including the famous variations upon La Follia. On the other hand, both he and CASTRUCCI wrote their own original Concerti grossi, though not without influences of CORELLI’s concertos, or of for that matter of George Frederic Handel’s, who was unquestionably the leader of musical life in London at the time.

Performing Forces
2 vocal soloists (S, A),
1 violin soloist,
strings and basso continuo (14 musicians).

Duration of the Program
90 minutes of music.

Since he became a student at the famous Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo in Naples, Giovanni Battista PERGOLESI (1706-1736) took lessons with Leonardo Vinci. The remarkable violin concerto in B-flat Major, one of the few instrumental compositions still preserved of PERGOLESI’s, reminds us of the fact that in the conservatory he had been trained primarily as a violinist. The concerto is an ideal opener for this program, since during the early eighteenth century the violin was traditionally the instrument Orpheus was most often represented with. The cantata Nel chiuso centro — in a number of sources also titled Orfeo — for soprano and string orchestra was published in (or shortly after) 1736, year in which the 26-year old composer died in Naples. Today PERGOLESI is mainly known for a few sacred compositions, among which his Salve Regina and the Stabat Mater. However, with Orfeo we explore some of the secular dramatic repertoire of the composer who, during his sadly short career was primarily famous for his operas.
The Stabat Mater has inspired numerous composers and is one of the most enthralling and poignant scores in western music history. This is no wonder since the text focuses primarily on such words as pain, sorrow, weeping, sadness, grief, affliction, mourning, torment, and death. How could anyone be indifferent to the suffering of a mother who witnesses the agony of her son? The sequence, forbidden by the Council of Trent (1545-1563), because it was too ornate and indecent for the liturgical service, was rehabilitated by pope Benedict XIII in 1727 and was integrated in the liturgy of the Passion on Good Friday.

Performing Forces
Strings and basso continuo (18 musicians).

Duration of the Program
This program can be performed in one or two parts, to be determined with the concert organizer.

There is undoubtedly no other family in Western music history that has produced as many excellent musicians and composers as the Bach family from Thuringia in central Germany. The Bachs’ musical activities spanned from the middle of the sixteenth through the late nineteenth century. The availability of such a vast repertoire of fascinating music makes it hard to assemble a befitting concert program that presents music of various members of the family. In this program, Les Muffatti limits itself to string orchestra compositions of three of the 18th-century Bachs. Naturally, a number of Johann Sebastian’s (1685-1750) well-known orchestral pieces — though performed in their original strings-only versions — form the core of the program. The program also offers music by Sebastian’s cousin Johann Bernhard (1676-1749) — whose suites in vermischter Geschmack closely emulate Georg Philipp Telemann’s works — and of Sebastian’s second son (and Telemann’s godson), Carl Philipp Emanuel (1714-1788). His string symphonies of the early 1770s present some sort of inventory of all the possible nuances of moods and emotions that the current styles of Empfindsamkeit (sensibility) and of the budding Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) were able to evoke in music.

Performing Forces
2 vocal soloists (S, A),
strings and basso continuo (17 musicians).

Duration of the Program
65 minutes, without intermission.
However, the composition can be divided into two sections, and the program can be complemented with instrumental pieces by VIVALDI to make it a concert in two parts.

In the 1720s Antonio VIVALDI — then already one of the most renowned Italian composers — composed three Serenate in honor of the French monarchy. One is set for mezzo-soprano, alto, and string orchestra and is now known as Gloria e Imeneo. However, neither the correct title of the composition, nor the original introductory Sinfonia are known, because the first pages of the manuscript are missing. On the other hand, we do know that Gloria e Imeneo was commissioned for the wedding of Louis XV and the Polish princess Maria Leszczynska, and that it was performed in the gardens of the French Embassy in Venice on the evening of 12 September 1725. As it is the case for most Serenate, the text does not present any particular plot. The two protagonists, Hymen (Imeneo), the god of Marriage, and Gloria, the personification of eternal glory, only compete with each other in celebrating the radiant (and henceforth also ensured) future of the French monarchy, and in congratulating the young royal couple in most flowery language.
The exceptionally high quality of the music largely compensates for the libretto's obvious lack of dramatic substance. Gloria e Imeneo is an example of some of VIVALDI's best music: in the arias the composer alternates virtuosity with elegance, poignancy, and dramatic fervor in a way similar to what he did in his most compelling operas. Some arias even have tune-like qualities, comparable to the most unforgettable of his concerto melodies. On the other hand, recitatives are short and lively and they never distract from what was most important to VIVALDI and his French sponsors: a solid hour of ravishing and exciting Baroque music.