Our program tonight features music by the other two composers of that great Classical Triumvirate mentioned in the first concert and a work by a contemporary musician which derives its inspiration from an anonymous medieval melody and a modernist painter.
From 1717
Our program tonight features music by the other two composers of that great Classical Triumvirate mentioned in the first concert and a work by a contemporary musician which derives its inspiration from an anonymous medieval melody and a modernist painter.
From 1717-1723 Johann Sebastian Bach was employed in the court of Prince Leopold of Köthen as the prince’s own music director. For the duration of this service he had a wonderful relationship with his employer. He was freed from the daily duties of a choirmaster (both administrative and musical) and encouraged to write secular instrumental music. Among the works written in these years are his six Brandenburg Concerti, his six Cello Suites, The Well-Tempered Clavier, and the six Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin.
It is almost impossible to believe that there was ever a time J.S. Bach’s music was not revered. In the years immediately following his death, the musical world moved on very quickly to new styles and structures. When his music was all but forgotten, Felix Mendelssohn brought it back to the attention of the public with a performance of the St. Matthew Passion in 1829. At the end of the century, Joseph Joachim rediscovered and began playing the solo violin works. Now these violin pieces are recognized as works of pure genius- large-scale structures with beautiful melodies clearly popping out of complex multi-voiced textures which test the technical and interpretive capac