Baroque weekend
Maxim Emelyanychev and Il pomo d’oro

With pomp and circumstance
The Baroque – an age of superlatives 

Golden, ornate, with magnificent façades – this is often our first impression of the Baroque. Yet behind the glittering surfaces of an era that stretched from the early 17th to the mid-18th century lies a world brimming with artistic curiosity, technical innovation, and striking contrasts.

Biography

Maxim Emelyanychev

Conductor? Pianist? For Maxim Emelyanychev, who is equally successful at the podium and the keyboard, it doesn’t matter: “The main thing is music! What matters most is to love what you do and to immerse yourself in it completely.” Raised with the image of a child prodigy and the recipient of numerous awards, he made his conducting debut at just twelve years old and soon became a regular guest with leading Russian orchestras. After studying in his hometown of Nizhny Novgorod, Emelyanychev moved to the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where he studied piano, harpsichord, and conducting with Gennadi Rozhdestvensky.

Il pomo d’oro

Sensational, dynamic, breathtaking: all these adjectives have been applied to Il pomo d’oro (The Golden Apple), one of the “most brilliant ensembles on the early music scene” (BBC Music Magazine). So it comes as no surprise to learn that the ensemble named itself after the “Festa teatrale” of the same name by Italian Baroque composer Antonio Cesti. The opulent open-air spectacle of 1668 featured 300 horses; 73,000 fireworks were set off, 24 stage sets were erected, and the whole thing lasted eight hours. This operatic superlative inspires the members of the Italian original-instrument ensemble, founded in 2012, to make music with an “explosive footprint” that has earned it a “reputation as perhaps the most exciting baroque team of our time” (Rondo).