Saturday, April 24, 2021, 7:30 pm EDT
Live Streamed on www.oldpostroad.org
Tickets $10 students, $35 individual, $70 family
For more information and tickets: visit www.oldpostroad.org or call 781-466-6694
On April 24 at 7:30 pm, the period instrument chamber ensemble Musicians of the Old Post Road will livestream its final concert of the 2020-21 season. Entitled C’est Magnifique!, th
The ensemble will perform rarely-heard works of Louis-Nicolas Clérambault, Antoine Dauvergne, Jean-Marie Leclair, and Georg Philipp Telemann, composers who enlivened the musical scene of Paris as its public concert scene was beginning to flourish. Performers include flutist Suzanne Stumpf performing on traverso, violinists Sarah Darling and Jesse Irons, violist Marcia Cassidy, cellist Daniel Ryan, and theorbo player Olav Chris Henriksen.
Among the first French Baroque composers to incorporate the Italian style was Louis-Nicolas Clérambault. His trio sonata La Magnifique is an engrossing trio sonata that uses elements of the Italian style alongside French dances in an engaging succession of movements.
Virtuosic Italianate brilliance is on display in the Flute Concerto in C Major, op. 7, no. 3 by Jean-Marie Leclair. A violin virtuoso and composer, Leclair was considered the founder of the French violin school. This concerto, however, is one of the few he designated for wind instruments.
Antoine Dauvergne was also a violin virtuoso as well as an important opera composer. He was one of the co-directors of the Concert Spirituel, a trendy concert series that attracted and showcased international virtuosi in 18th-century Paris. The program includes Concert de Simphonie no. 1 in B-flat Major, a brilliant work that features a fiery French overture and varied dance movements, concluding with a brilliant Chaconne.
The prolific German composer Georg Philipp Telemann became a sensation in Paris with the premiere of his “Paris Quartets.” His lively Quartet in D Major is taken from his fourth book of quartets, published in Paris in the 1750s.
The concert will be live-streamed from the beautiful sanctuary of Trinity Lutheran Church in Worcester and will be followed by a reception on Zoom with the performers.
Single ticket prices are $10 for students, $35 individual, $70 for families; Premier Subscriptions ($160 individual; $320 family) are still available for purchase and allow subscription holders access all seven of the ensemble’s online concerts and events from this season through June 2021. For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit www.oldpostroad.org, or call 781.466.6694.
The concert is dedicated to the memory of Dorothea “Dot” Widmayer of Sherborn, a Board member Emerita of Musicians of the Old Post Road who passed away on March 6, 2021.
The program is supported, in part, by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, and Avidia Bank.
ABOUT MUSICIANS OF THE OLD POST ROAD
Musicians of the Old Post Road takes its name from its acclaimed concert series that brings period instrument performances of music of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries to beautiful historic buildings along New England’s fabled Old Post Road, the first thoroughfare to connect Boston and New York City in the late 17th century.
Winner of the 1998 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society, Musicians of the Old Post Road has also received programming awards from Chamber Music America and the US-Mexico Fund for Culture. The ensemble has toured in Germany, Austria, and Mexico, and has appeared at festivals and on concert series in the US, including the Indianapolis Early Music Festival, the Boston Early Music Festival Concert Series, the Castle Hill Festival, the Artists Series at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, and the Connecticut Early Music Festival. The ensemble has held a residency at Dartmouth College and was featured on WCVB television’s “Chronicle” program and 99.5 All Classical radio’s “Live from Fraser” program.
The ensemble’s discography includes seven recordings that have each been praised in the US and abroad. They include: The Virtuoso Double Bass (Titanic, 1994), Trios and Scottish Song Settings of J. N. Hummel (Meridian, 1999), Galant with an Attitude: Music of Juan and José Pla (Meridian, 2000), Quartets of Telemann and Bodinus (Meridian, 2004), Feliz Navidad: Christmas from Spain and New Spain (Meridian, 2008), and Roman Handel (Centaur, 2013). The ensemble’s 7th CD, Earthly Baroque, was released by Centaur in 2017.
