Italian Baroque Concert
Sunday, January 16 |
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Music at First Pres presents
An Evening in 1634
Sarabande performs instrumental and vocal chamber music from Baroque Italy.
Sunday, January 16, 2005 at 7:00 p.m.
Rita Lilly ~ Soprano
Scott Shubeck ~ Lute, Theorbo, Baroque Guitar
Sarah Gillies ~ Baroque Violin
Gilbert Martinez ~ Italian harpsichord & Spinette
Imagine it--gliding down the canals of 17th century Venice to a glamorous event featuring the glorious virtuoso music of Claudio Monteverdi, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Sigismonda d'India, et al. Relive a feast of early Italian music in the Stil Moderno--Modern Style--performed on lutes, violin, spinette, guitar and voice. Enjoyment for all ages--the student yearning to learn and the experienced with music in their hearts. A wonderful and refreshing evening of splendor, captivating the heart and mind, transporting the listener to a time where music was relinquished to the freedom of life and of love.
Program
La Mantovana – Gaspar Zanetti (1645)
Toccatta per Spinettina, e Violino – Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643)
Toccata – Giovanni Picchi (17th century)
Detta redoppio del La Favorita – Giovanni Paolo Foscarini (17th c.)
Questo dardo, quest’arco – Sigismondo d’India (1582-1629)
Sonata seconda – Dario Castello (17th century)
Intervallo
Fa una canzone senza note nere – Orazio Vecchi (1550-1605)
Ballo alla polacca – Giovanni Picchi (17th century)
Sonata duodecima – Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704)
Toccata e Arpeggione – G.G. Kapsberger (1575-1661)
Et e pur dunque vero – Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
Ciaconna – Francesco Corbetta (1620-1681)
Sonata seconda – Giovanni Battista Fontana (d. circa1634)
Allegrezza del nuovo Maggio – Biagio Marini (1596-1665)
Suggested donation: Adults $15. Students & Seniors $10.
Children 13 & under free. Childcare provided.
Reception following. Wheelchair accessible; Assistive Listening Devices and large print programs available. Plenty of free off-street parking. AC Transit stops at the front door.
Sarabande
Visit www.sarabande.us for more information and recording samples.
Rita Lilly, soprano, has appeared as a featured soloist with the American Boychoir, American Classical Orchestra, Bachworks, Bach Aria Group, New York Consort of Viols, and was the soprano for the Waverly Consort for nine years. She has been featured as a guest artist in recital with Anthony Newman and the Brandenburg Collegium. As a relative newcomer to the bay area, Ms. Lilly has sung with the American Bach Soloists, Magnificat, Bach Delegates, Baroque Choral Guild, and most recently performed the operatic role of Savitri by Gustav Holst at Mills College. Ms. Lilly has recorded on EMI/Angel, Musical Heritage, and Newport Classical labels.
Sarah Gillies, violin, is a native of Canada and now resides in San Francisco. She holds degrees from the University of Ottawa and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Sarah is one of the founding members of Sarabande, an early music ensemble, which performs regularly throughout the Bay Area and North America. She has also performed numerous times as a featured soloist for the Berkeley Early Music Festival, Fringe Festival, and Music Sources concert series. Sarah is a member of the Fresno Philharmonic, Stockton Symphony, as well as, performing with other orchestras throughout California on both Modern and Baroque violin. Sarah has studied with such great teachers as Camilla Wicks, Axel Strauss, and Laurette Goldberg.
A versatile player of ancient and modern plucked instruments, Scott Shubeck recently completed his Masters in Performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied classical guitar with Lawrence Ferrara and Tom Liesek. He has been an avid player of lutes and early plucked instruments, studying with Robert Strizich, and performance practice with early music matriarch Laurette Goldberg. Scott has been a soloist and continuo player with various ensembles and orchestras in the bay area, including Coro Hispano, Santa Rosa Symphony, Vallejo Symphony, City Concert Opera, The Venetian Consort, Les Sauvages, and Sarabande, an ensemble he co-directs with baroque violinist Sarah Gillies. Already in demand as a soloist and continuo player, Scott is building a formidable reputation as a passionate and daring player, challenging other players to the highest of artistic standards and creativity. In addition to finishing a solo CD, Scott is directing a new concert series in the East Bay.
Gilbert Martinez is an alumni of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he studied with Laurette Goldberg. He was also the teaching assistant in the Baroque Studies program at SFCM. He has participated in masterclasses in the US and Europe with Kenneth Gilbert, Ton Koopman, Davitt Moroney, and Colin Tilney, et al. He also studied with Alan Curtis in Italy. Mr. Martinez has performed with ensembles and soloists of great distinction, including the Artaria Quartett, Musica Angelica, The Whole Noyse, soprano Judith Nelson, gambist Juan Manuel Quintana, and Les Idees Heureses of Montreal. He was a prizewinner in the Concours International de Clavecin Bach in Montreal. As a conductor, he has led Southern Oregon‚s Jefferson Baroque Orchestra and this summer conducted a program of Bach and Vivaldi concertos at the Berkeley Early Music Fringe Festival. He has made a unique specialty of exploring rarely performed renaissance music for keyboard, seldom heard mainly for its lack of reliable modern editions and its technical difficulty. Concerts devoted to this repertoire include a program of Spanish and Portuguese music with baroque harpist Cheryl Ann Fulton, presented in the historic Mission Dolores of San Francisco. He conducted the Coro Hispano de San Francisco this October in a program of renaissance polyphony, followed by instrumental works of Cabezon and his contemporaries, assisted by Scott Shubeck. Currently, Gilbert is a key member of the board of directors of MusicSources, a center for historically informed performance in Berkeley, founded by Laurette Goldberg. For this organization, he will be conducting a performance of Bach concertos and a staged performance of the Peasant Cantata in March of 2005. A future endeavor will include a semi-staged presentation of a renaissance intermedio, presented as part of MusicSources‚ 18th year celebration.
Program Notes
Tonight we embark on an enchanted gondola ride through the glittering Grand Canal of Venice. Everywhere the canal is illuminated with candlelight and we see the moon and stars reflected on the gentle lapping waves. Occasionally we hear singing on the water with soft accompaniment on the lute. The water rebounds this delicate music, and we feel much like the Argonauts, enticed by the sweet, languid song of the sirens. Sometimes we hear voices from within the many Palazzi. Perhaps people are engaged in card games, masked balls, or state affairs.
We are in the year 1634, and the people of “La Serenissima” have much to celebrate on such a handsome evening. Only two years earlier, Venice had battled the Plague and nearly lost a third of its population. In thanks to God’s mercy upon the floating city, a magnificent church had been erected, called the Santa Maria della Salute--literally the church of good health!--and it still stands at the head of the Grand Canal. This building was the design of the great architect Balbastre Longhena, still a young man but steadily growing a reputation amongst his peers. Venice is a good place for a person like Longhena, since this city is one of the most beautiful in the world and a much visited center of creativity. It is indeed a “Serene Republic” where diverse ideas and cultures merge.
Good fortune again smiles on Venice, trade becomes even more profitable, and prosperity is again widespread. In fact, we are approaching a splen-did palazzo; we are the invited guests of the Mocenigo family. As we disembark from our gondola, we enter the palazzo through a great arched doorway. We ascend a marbled staircase where we see statues of great heroes from antiquity. In a room filled with marquetry of rare woods, we are greeted by the nobleman and his family. Everyone is dressed in extravagant clothes. Among the guests, several wealthy merchants of the confraternity are present, as are clergymen from St. Mark’s and numerous poets and literati. Several foreign dignitaries are also present, namely a French ambassador, and a Japanese prince with his attendants.
A concert is to be held in the portrait hall. New paintings have been commissioned and are being viewed for the first time in this grand setting. Most of the composers being heard on tonight’s program are present at this event--his excellency has chosen to honor them this evening--as are all of the artists as a symbol of civic pride for all to see and hear.
We are in the midst of a banquet of the senses, celebrating sight, sound and taste. Course after course of exotic food is offered to the guests. Red, white and claret wine flows from a fountain which looks like the mountain of Parnassus. An aged man arrives as the last guest to the festivities. It is the famed Claudio Monteverdi. He is crowned with a laurel wreath by his excellency and is then called by his colleagues “queste bell’ MONTE, sempre VERDI”--this great MOUNTAIN, ever GREEN. The concert in his honor is about to begin and we hear the musicians strumming a favorite dance from the court of Mantua, the former house in which Monteverdi was employed. It is called La Mantovana, and is first heard sung, then played to the sound of the tambourine.
Soon we hear works from Monteverdi’s peers, some from as far away as Rome--Girolamo Frescobaldi--to works of his fellow musicians at St. Mark’s--Dario Castello and Giovanni Battista Fontana. A famous lady from the court of Ferrara also sings for us. Her voice rivals that of the Muses. She appears for us as the goddess Diana, accompanied by the theorbo. This goddess of the forest and the hunt is the patroness and protector of this evening’s proceedings. The violinist Dario Castello then imitates the sounds of Apollo’s lyra in a stunning fireworks display of invention and alchemy.
Signor Orazio Vecchi requests that the musicians sing a song in a simple style, one “without too many notes, one that would have aided Orpheus in crossing the river Styx, or cured Saul from madness.” Giovanni Picchi, the organist of San Rocco and an accomplished dancer, performs a flourish upon the harpsichord. Later we hear a work by a Novarese nun. It is a violin piece by Isabella Leonarda. This celebrated woman belongs to a convent made up of nuns from noble families. Her works show an impressive synthesis of the styles previously heard on the concert and her music makes a favorable impression upon the guests. A young musician is present who is widely traveled and held in high esteem. It is Giovanni Kapsberger, a German by name, and sometimes called “il tedesco della tiorba.” He is a virtuoso upon the lute and theorbo and ravishes the senses of all present.
At last, the great maestro Monteverdi presents his song of a forsaken lover. It is a perfect response to Signor Vecchi’s request in that a master musician can use simple means to make the birds silent and the rocks weep. In a display of noble nonchalance, or sprezzatura, a nobleman plays several inventions and imitations upon the guitar, at once ecstatic, then melancholy, here melodic, then rhythmic. Sweet repose is then offered in the work of the late violinist Fontana.
Now the evening has passed midnight into the morning hours and the musicians have decided to make an end. In hopes for future prosperity and happiness, they sing a song by Biagio Marini anticipating a new and pleasant spring.
--Gilbert Martinez
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Producer, Music at First Pres
and Music Director of First Presbyterian Church of Alameda
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| Posted: Saturday, January 01, 2005 at 17:22 |
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First Presbyterian
Church of Alameda
2001 Santa Clara Ave.
Alameda, CA 94501
P: (510) 522 1477
F: (510) 522 2590
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