Tempesta Di Mare Received Fasch-Prize Of The City Of Zerbst, Germany

The State Chancellery and Ministry of Culture of the State of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, held it's annual meeting in Berlin and announced that this year's Fasch-Prize of the City Zerbst will be awarded to Tempesta di Mare. The ensemble will be presented with the prize at the opening ceremony of the 17th International Fasch Festival on June 15, 2023 in Zerbst, were the orchestra will also give the Festival's opening concert performance.

"We are absolutely delighted!", says Tempesta co-Founder and co-Artstic Director Gwyn Roberts. "It is wonderful to be officially recognized as Friends of Fasch through the Fasch Prize. Even though we live and work here as Americans far from Zerbst, we feel a close connection to the previous recipients of the award, and to all those who promote Fasch's life and work through the Fasch Society and the town."

Since 2008, Tempesta di Mare has been among the ensembles, almost all of them European, leading the charge to revive the music of Bach-contemporary Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688-1758). In the seasons since, the ensemble has performed over 35 of his orchestral compositions, of which at least 28 have been modern-time world premieres, recorded three discs for the British label Chandos, and created modern performance editions, which have been sought out for subsequent performances by ensembles across the US and Europe.

The June 2023 program, with which Tempesta travels to Germany, includes four European Fasch premieres, that received their modern-time world-premiere performances in Philadelphia in May 2022 and March 2023 resepctively. These are the Orchestral Suite in E minor, FaWV K:e1, the Symphony in B flat, FaWV M:B1, his Violin Concerto in G, FaWV L:G6, and the Orchestral Suite in D, FaWV L:16.

A second performance of the program, with the inclusion of works by Vivaldi and Hasse, will take place at the Chamber Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic on June 17, 2023.

While in Zerbst, Tempesta di Mare will record a fourth all-Fasch orchestral premieres record for Chandos (release expected in early Spring 2025) at the former Riding Hall of the castle in Zerbst where Fasch lived and worked most of his career, It was completed during Fasch's lifetime in 1732 and is now repurposed as the Municipal Hall of the city. BBC Music Magazine called Tempesta's Fasch recordings "essential listening" and awarded them a 5-Star rating for their "sparkling strings and punchy horns".

"One of the things we love about Fasch's music that goes beyond the craftsmanship, expressivity, inventiveness and wit is the very distinct voice that lies behind the compositions," says Tempesta co-Artistic Director, Richard Stone, who has transcribed and reconstructed Fasch's music from their often-times damaged manuscripts for years. "He's not an imitator of any of his famous contemporaries like Vivaldi, Corelli or Telemann. Those influences are there, but he is also very much his own composer with a musical flavor that sets him apart from everyone else."

The two main repositories of Fasch's music are in Dresden, where he sent music to his friend Georg Pisendel (1688-1755), concertmaster of the fabled Dresden Hofkapelle orchestra, and Hesse-Darmstadt, where much of his music is copied in the hand of its then-capellmeister, the composer Christoph Graupner (1683-1760). The music in this program comes from both courts. The Dresden scores are often heavily damaged from water and subsequent ink erosion after the WWII bombings of that city, requiring note-by-note reconstruction before assembly into performance-ready editions.

More information about Tempesta and Fasch can be found on Tempesta's website: https://tempestadimare.org/in-focus/the-fasch-project/

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