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Handel and London
de Fesch - Handel - Pepusch - H. Purcell
Handel spent a considerable part of his life in London. The city also served as a base for many other composers. Johann Christoph Pepusch, a Berliner, likewise settled in London and Willem de Fesch from the Netherlands played there in Handel's opera orchestra. Providing an authentic London touch is the sensual vocal music of Henry Purcell. The performers are the Sheridan Ensemble from Berlin with Susanne Lagner as its soloist.
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A Royal Hungarian Wedding
Ghizeghem - Ockeghem - Tinctoris
The royal wedding of Matias and Beatrice d'Este in 1476 lasted for nearly four weeks. The festivities included a bridal procession of no fewer than 67 trumpeters and were interspersed with masses, religious processions and even the best man's funeral. The evenings were devoted to plays, to singing of heroic deeds and to celebrating the king's victories in tournaments. King Matias Corvinus (1458-1490) had a great respect for education. He could speak and write several languages and practised astrology. The choir of the royal chapel performed the most highly-esteemed music of the times, Franco-Flemish polyphony. The Corvina Consort from Hungary presents a cross-section of the music of this royal court.
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Handel and Italy
Corelli - Couperin - Geminiani -
Hellendaal - Handel - Roman
As a young man Handel spent a few years in Italy, where he adopted the latest fashions in composition and, among other things, the finer points of operatic art. In this concert experienced lecturers from the Sibelius Academy and the Universität der Künste in Berlin combine forces for a programme focusing on the music of Handel in the light of his Italian period.
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Handel: Acis & Galatea
Handel's Acis and Galatea ties in with the Masque tradition popular in London at the beginning of the 18th century and, with its mythological subjects and its alternation of sung recitatives, arias and choruses, competing with the new Italian opera. The poetically beautiful libretto by John Gay, father of the Beggar's Opera, and Alexander Pope inspired Handel to compose his first London masterpiece. The music of the blissful pastoral idyll, its shattering and the discovery of new happiness places the work on a novel and stirring symbolic plane. Acis and Galatea was the Handel opera most often performed in his lifetime. Johan Helmich Roman staged it in Stockholm. Tonight's is, however, the Finnish premiere of the complete work.
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