The Slovenian Philharmonic is starting the new year virtually, with the 6th Philharmonic Festival of Baroque Music having moved online on 8 January. You can follow it at https://filharmonija.si/. The festival is directed by the well-known Italian oboist, conductor and baroque music specialist Alfredo Bernardini.
Rome-born Alfredo Bernardini moved to the Netherlands in 1981 in order to specialise in baroque oboe and early music. He studied with Bruce Haynes and Ku Ebbinge and graduated from the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. In 1985 he joined the newly founded European Union Baroque Orchestra. Since then he has performed throughout Europe, in Russia, the USA, Canada, Japan, China, Korea, Malaysia, Egypt, Israel, South America and Australia, worked with numerous ensembles and recorded more than 100 albums. In 1989 he founded the Zefiro ensemble with the Grazzi brothers. Their recordings together have won numerous awards. Alfredo Bernardini is also a researcher of the history of wind instruments and has published several articles in specialist journals. From 1992 to 2015 he taught baroque oboe at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and also taught at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC) in Barcelona for several years. He is currently a professor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He has led workshops and masterclasses at music academies and summer schools throughout Europe and in Israel, Australia and the Americas.
For the first concert he has chosen Handel’s Water Music, the famous orchestral suite composed in 1717 to accompany the king’s excursion up the Thames aboard a royal barge. King George I was so pleased with the suite that the orchestra had to repeat it several times. Six years later, Handel’s friend Georg Philipp Telemann composed his own Wassermusik, which is also part of the concert programme.
Today (12 January) you can hear a Concert with Baroque Instruments at 7.30 p.m. The programme of this second, chamber concert includes a quartet, two trios and two sonatas by French, German, Italian and Catalan masters, under the direction of one of the world’s finest oboists, Alfredo Bernardini. Occupying centre stage at this concert is the oboe, the name for which in every European language is taken from the French word hautbois (“high wood”). The instrument itself is also believed to have originated in France. It was invented in the first half of the seventeenth century by musicians and wind instrument makers employed at the French royal court, among them members of the Hotteterre family, by gradually modifying the shawm, an older double-reed woodwind instrument. By the middle of the century, French music was being enthusiastically received in other countries and the oboe soon spread throughout Europe. The first item on the programme is the Concerto a quattro in D minor. Long attributed to Handel, it is now considered by musicologists to have been composed by his friend Georg Philipp Telemann between 1715 and 1730.
Alfredo Bernardini, baroque oboe
Paolo Calligaris, baroque bassoon
Žiga Faganel, baroque violin
Martin Sikur, baroque cello
Tomaž Sevšek, harpsichord
Programme:
Georg Frideric Handel: Concerto a quattro in D minor for oboe, violin, bassoon and basso continuo
Jacques-Martin Hotteterre: Suite No. 3 in C major, Op. 5, for oboe and basso continuo
Arcangelo Corelli: Sonata No. 1 in D major, Op. 5, for violin and basso continuo
Giovanni Benedetto Platti: Trio in C minor for oboe, bassoon and basso continuo
The programme of the third concert of this year’s 6th Philharmonic Festival of Baroque Music (at 7.30 p.m. on 15 January) consists of concertos for strings, woodwind and brass by Italian masters of the eighteenth century. One of Corelli’s concerti grossi will be performed by an unusual ensemble that also includes trumpets and oboes. We will also hear an overture by Francesco Maria Veracini that was admired by both Handel and Tartini and the Concerto in E minor by Francesco Durante, who was considered the leading music teacher in his native Naples. Tomaso Albinoni composed chiefly for his own pleasure, but his published collections, including the Concerti a cinque (Op. 9) for oboes and strings, guaranteed his popularity among professional and amateur musicians throughout Europe. He was only surpassed in this genre by Corelli and Vivaldi. The programme will end with the Concerto for Two Trumpets in C major, one of Vivaldi’s most frequently performed works.
Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra
Alfredo Bernardini, conductor
Programme:
Arcangelo Corelli: Concerto grosso in D major, Op. 6, No. 4 for two violins and cello solo (and strings, two trumpets, two oboes, bassoon and basso continuo)
Francesco Maria Veracini: Overture in G minor for two oboes, bassoon, strings and basso continuo
Francesco Durante: Concerto in E minor
Tomaso Albinoni: Concerto in F major, Op. 9, No. 3
Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto in C major for two trumpets, strings and basso continuo, RV 537
The focus of the family concert of the Philharmonic Festival of Baroque Music is the set of orchestral suites entitled Water Music which Handel composed in 1717 for a royal excursion up the Thames, to the delight of King George I. This is how one Londoner described the event in his diary: “His Majesty’s approval of it was so great that he caused it to be played three times in all, twice before and once after supper, even though each performance lasted an hour. The evening was as fine as could be desired for this occasion and the number of barges and boats full of people wanting to listen was beyond counting.” Six years later, Handel’s friend Telemann composed his own Wassermusik for the centenary of the Hamburg Admiralty, a programmatic suite depicting water deities from mythology, the ebb and flow of the tide, the winds, and merry boat people.
Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra
Alfredo Bernardini, conductor
Franci Krevh, presenter
Programme:
Georg Frideric Handel: Water Music, HWV 348–350 (extracts)
Georg Philipp Telemann: Wassermusik (Hamburger Ebb’ und Fluth), TWV 55 C3 (extracts)
Source: filharmonija.si
