Archetti Performs Concerts in Palo Alto, Berkeley and SF, Nov. 1-3

The San Francisco Early Music Society journeys to England the weekend of November 1-3, 2013, for a lively program of Italian concertos. The Bay Area's premier Baroque string ensemble, ARCHETTI (Carla Moore and John Dornenburg, co-directors), will recreate the excitement of London's cosmopolitan concert scene as it was in the early 18th century when Continental musicians flocked to Britain to satisfy a burgeoning demand for the finest of European musical culture.

Founded in 2009 by violinist Moore and viola da gambist Dornenburg, Archetti represents the finest of our own internationally renowned early music scene. Their program for SFEMS, Masters of the Italian Concerto in England, focuses on the genre of the concerto grosso as it was interpreted by four leading Continental-born composers and one bona fide Englishman.

The story of the concerto in England begins with Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713), the first great exponent of the concerto grosso, whose influence spread across Europe through many widely disseminated publications and a host of impressive students. Nowhere was Corelli's influence felt more strongly than in England, where legend has it his fans waited like groupies at the docks to get copies of his newly published Opus 6 concerti grossi, rushing home to stay up all night with their friends playing through the entire set. Archetti will perform the second concerto, in F.

One person Corelli influenced most powerfully was George Frideric Handel (1685-1759). Handel's homage to Corelli is obvious in his own Opus 6 set of Twelve Grand Concertos, from which Archetti will play No. 7, in B-flat. A delightful feature of this particular concerto is the sheer chutzpah of its fugue subject, which consists of fourteen repetitions of the same pitch. The brilliance of Handel's music is equally apparent in his concerto for chamber organ and strings, "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale," which will feature soloist and UC Berkeley Professor of MusicologyDavitt Moroney.

A well-known quip in early music circles says that Handel was a German composer writing Italian music for English audiences. But this is not to suggest that Italian composers in England were in short supply. On the contrary, quite a few Italians also immigrated, including the great Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762), among the most important of Corelli's disciples. Geminiani modeled his violin sonatas and concertos on those of his teacher and even published a set of concerto grosso arrangements of Corelli's entire Opus 5 violin sonatas. Archetti will perform the second concerto from Geminiani's Opus 7 (1748), his final collection of concerti grossi.

The lone Englishman on the program, Charles Avison (1709-1770), was a great admirer of Geminiani, considering him superior to Handel. According to Charles Burney, he studied composition with Geminiani in London. During Avison's lifetime, the keyboard works of Domenico Scarlatti were highly popular, and several editions were published in London. Avison took the 32 printed Scarlatti Essercizi and arranged them into 12 concerti grossi. However, unlike Geminiani's arrangements of Corelli's violin sonatas, Avison's concerti are imprinted quite strongly with his own style.

The latest composer on the program, Pieter Hellendaal(1721-1799), was a Dutch musician who studied in Italy with Giuseppe Tartini before settling in England in 1751. His Six Grand Concertos, Op. 3, were published in 1758 and share the same remarkable variety of movements and imagination of form that one sees in Handel's Opus 6. Archetti concludes its program with Concerto No. 5 from this set, a work notable for its lavish, galant-styled Larghetto and March with characteristic trumpet and timpani motifs.

NEXT CONCERT

December 20 - 22 | Magnificat, Warren Stewart, Director

A Venetian Christmas Mass, featuring the glorious polychoral music Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli developed at San Marco, bridging the gap between the High Renaissance and the early Baroque. Magnificat together with The Whole Noyse early brass consort will perform Andrea's Mass (1587), motets and canzoni by Giovanni (1597, 1615), and appropriate chant for the feast day.

ABOUT ARCHETTI

Archetti Baroque String Ensemble was founded in 2009 by violinist Carla Moore and viola da gambist John Dornenburg to perform the rich chamber concerto repertory of the Baroque era. The collective experience and artistry of Archetti's members allow them to develop distinctive, dynamic and historically informed interpretations without a conductor.The ensemble's size is perfectly suited to the bountiful 8-part-book violin concerti of composers such as Vivaldi, Corelli, Handel and Torelli, and is also small enough for the intimacy of Bach's harpsichord concerti. Archetti(pronounced "ar-keht'-tee") means "bows" in Italian and naturally alludes to the dominance of Italian string music in the Baroque concerto repertory. The group's first CD, Grand Concertos: Handel and Hellendaal, will be released in late 2013 on the Centaur label.

Founded in 1975, SFEMS is the leading early music community-based service and membership organization in the US. Under the direction of Harvey Malloy, it is the focal institution in Northern California for the advancement of historically informed performance of early music. Through its concert series, publications, outreach activities, affiliate support and educational programs, SFEMS encourages the development of amateurs, supports professionals, and increases public involvement and participation in early music. SFEMS is the lead presenter of the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition of early music.