Tempesta di Mare concludes its 20th anniversary season with the orchestral concerts of its three-program focus, Season XX. The program, Season XX: Orchestra features works from Tempesta di Mare’s past twenty years of rediscoveries by Fasch, Reutter and Janitsch, plus a colorful orchestral suite by Telemann.
Season XX: Orchestra will be performed in-person on May 20-21, 2022 in Wilmington, DE and Philadelphia, PA. The on-demand concert film will be available from June 20 – July 19.
The program includes modern-day US premieres of music by some of the composers the ensemble has introduced to American audiences over the past twenty years: Georg Reutter the Younger (1708-1772), Johann Gottlieb Fasch (1688-1758) and Johann Gottlieb Janitsch (1708-1763), along with a comic orchestral suite by Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767).
The program opens with the rousing Servizio di tavola No. 1 by Georg Reutter the Younger, a symphony for trumpets, timpani, oboes, strings and continuo. Reutter’s Vienna boasted the era’s most extraordinary trumpeter, Johann Heinisch, who may have been the only person in all of Europe able to play the demanding solo in the slow movement. Reutter, the last great composer of the Viennese high baroque and a new focus of Tempesta’s rediscovery work, made his U.S. debut with Tempesta in May 2021 at the bustling Cherry Street Pier.
Johann Friedrich Fasch’s Overture-Suite in D for woodwinds, strings and continuo highlights this composer’s colorful innovations in the use of wind instruments within an orchestra; expressive slow movements with soaring melodies; and the heartbeat of pulsating notes in his fast movements, all qualities that made Tempesta musicians and audiences fall in love with his music from the ensemble’s first forays into his orchestral music in 2008. Though Fasch worked at the court of Zerbst, his music was much in demand for the legendary orchestra in Dresden.
The glittering Sinfonia in G for strings and continuo by Johann Gottlieb Janitsch, a prominent composer of the mid-eighteenth-century Berlin Classical style, anticipates the melody-driven music of Haydn and Stamitz that will arrive a generation later. Its outer fast movements are awash in exuberance, its middle slow movement exhibits a particularly haunting quality. Though it was first written for Frederick the Great’s orchestra in Berlin, where Janitsch performed as a bassist, the piece enjoyed a wide circulation and survives in copies by contemporaries for use at the courts of Darmstadt and Dresden. The Berlin original perished in the allied bombings of World War II.
The concert program concludes with the witty Ouverture-Suite in D “jointe d’une suite tragi-comique” by Georg Philipp Telemann, for trumpets, timpani, woodwinds, strings and continuo. The suite pokes fun at the quackery in self-help books circulating in Telemann’s time that described ridiculous cures for melancholy and other ailments. The music pantomimes a person suffering with gout and the dancing while riding a stage coach recommended as a proposed cure, a hypochondriac and others. As with other character suites by Telemann, such as Don Quixote and the 1720 Mississippi Bubble, the composer draws on his inexhaustible inventiveness with a flair for the theatrical to delineate clearly-drawn characters and situations without resorting to words.
Performances like these have led to Tempesta’s worldwide reputation over the past 20 years as an interpreter and pioneer in the revival of baroque-era music. As a result, Tempesta recently performed as the first non-European ensemble at the International Telemann Festival in Magdeburg, Germany, and has just been invited for a second engagement at the Zerbst Fasch Festival in 2023.
Three in-person performances will take place in May:
Friday, May 20, 7:00 pm – Wilmington, DE
Saturday, May 21, 3:30 pm – Center City
Saturday, May 21, 8:00 pm – Center City
Center City performances of the program will take place in the Theater at Christ Church Neighborhood House; the Wilmington performance at Christ Church Christiana Hundred.
In-person performances require masking. For the latest health & safety requirements, visit: https://tempestadimare.org/covid-19/.
Season XX: Orchestra will be filmed live and produced in HD audio and video for that will become available on-demand on June 20 and lasting through July 19.
TEMPESTA DI MARE PHILADELPHIA BAROQUE ORCHESTRA & CHAMBER PLAYERS
Fanfare magazine has hailed Tempesta di Mare for its “abundant energy, immaculate ensemble, impeccable intonation, and an undeniable sense of purpose.” Led by directors Gwyn Roberts and Richard Stone with concertmaster Emlyn Ngai, Tempesta performs baroque music on baroque instruments with a repertoire that ranges from staged opera to chamber music. The group performs all orchestral repertoire without a conductor, as was the practice when this music was new. Tempesta’s Philadelphia Concert Series, noted by the Philadelphia Inquirer for its “off-the-grid chic factor,” emphasizes creating a sense of discovery for artists and audiences alike. Launched in 2002, the series has included over 35 modern world premieres of lost or forgotten baroque masterpieces, leading the Inquirer to describe Tempesta as “an old-music group that acts like a new-music group, by pushing the cutting edge back rather than forward.” Its supporters include the Pew Charitable Trusts, the William Penn Foundation, the Presser Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
In a marketplace dominated by European ensembles, Tempesta is the only American baroque music group to record for the prestigious British-based Chandos label, where it has released 13 titles, including first recordings and premieres. Live performances have been broadcast nationally on SymphonyCast, Performance Today, Sunday Baroque and Harmonia. Tempesta di Mare’s concert recordings are distributed worldwide via the European Broadcasting Union, the world’s foremost alliance of public service media organizations, with members in 56 countries in Europe and beyond.
Tempesta’s international appearances have included the Prague Spring Music Festival, the Göttingen Handel Festival, the Mendelssohn-Remise Berlin and the International Fasch Festival in Zerbst. Notable North American presenters have included the Frick Collection, the Oregon Bach Festival, Abbey Bach Festival, Whitman College, Cornell Concerts, the Yale Collection, the Flagler Museum, and the Indianapolis Early Music Festival. In spring 2016, the orchestra performed on the Miami Bach Festival. In March 2022 concluded a triumphant 5-concert orchestral tour to Germany, including the first non-European ensemble performance at the International Telemann Festival in Magdeburg.
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For further information, image or interview requests please contact Candace Herbert, (215) 755-8776, candace@tempestadimare.org.
For further information about Tempesta di Mare | Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra, please visit http://tempestadimare.org.
Tickets:
Preferred: $39.00
General Admission: $ 29.00
Free for full-time students and Grades 3-12.
On-Demand viewing link: $5-$29
Performance Information:
Season XX: Orchestra: 20 Years of Orchestral Rediscovery
In-Person:
Friday, May 20, 2022 – 7:00 pm
Christ Church Christiania Hundred, 505 Buck Road, Wilmington DE.
Saturday, May 21, 2022 – 3:30 pm
Christ Church Philadelphia, Neighborhood House Theater, 20 North American Street, Philadelphia PA.
Saturday, May 21, 2022 – 8:00 pm
Christ Church Philadelphia, Neighborhood House Theater, 20 North American Street, Philadelphia PA.
On-Demand:
Monday, June 20, 2022 @ 7:00 pm; streaming On-Demand through July 19, 2022. Virtual Concert Hall.
Visit the How to View Tempesta Concerts webpage to stream on computer and mobile devices. https://tempestadimare.org/concert-viewing-details/
Program:
- Fasch: Overture-Suite in D, FWV K: D16
- Reutter: Servizio di tavola, No 1, HofR 236/10
- Janitsch: “Darmstadt” Sinfonia in G
- Telemann: Orchestra Suite Tragi-comique, TWV 55:D22
FIND OUT MORE:
Blog Post about Tempesta’s 20th Anniversary Season by Anne Schuster Hunter: https://tempestadimare.org/blog/dancing-with-those-who-brought-you-happy-20th-anniversary-tempesta/
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