Mac’nClassicalCheese - Mar 14, 2024

Welcome to baroque mornings! We're starting off with Bach who is like the godfather of baroque music, and if you read on you'll see that musicians have ~opinions~ when it comes to playing Bach. So we have movements from 2 of his violin concertos played by my *favorite Bach violinist, Hilary Hahn. Then 2 movements from his concerto for violin and oboe played by one of my friend's favorite Bach violinists, Janine Jansen. Concertos are pieces written for a solo instrument, like a violin, playing the main melody while an orchestra accompanies them. Even though the orchestra is playing too, they are like the band supporting a lead singer. Their accompaniment is important and can be great music on it's own, but the main event is the soloist. Concertos are 3 movements except in unique cases (hats off to Glazunov you sneaky enigma). Sometimes, a composer loves the form so much that they add another voice to the main line and write for more than one soloist. It's rare but Bach did it a few times, and there are some famous ones by Beethoven (his triple concerto), and Brahms (his double). Then we have obligatory movements from Handel's Water Music and Corelli's Concerto Grosso. The rest of the show is unaccompanied, solo piano music by Bach. There are 2 Inventions and 1 Sinfonia, all played by someone regarded as the best interpreter of Bach for piano, Glenn Gould. The inventions are written in 2 voices, and the sinfonias in 3 (the sinfonias are actually crazy and I still forget it's just one person playing sometimes, so get excited!) And then to close, we have some movements from the Goldberg Variations: a set of pieces which introduces a theme in the 1st movt., the "Aria", and then plays a series of variations based off this theme. We will hear variations 6, 9, 11, and 25.