Showpieces

Baroque Weekend 2024

“Splendour and Decadence of the Italian Baroque”: With this title we invite you to the Philharmonie Berlin in February 2024, when you can enjoy the lavish beauty of a sensual epoch, presented by outstanding musicians.

The theme of our Baroque weekend brings to mind Italy’s magnificent opera houses and cathedrals, the revelry of Carnival, the magic of Venice, the fascinating history of Rome and its mythology. Our short festival explores the culture of a country that has fired the imagination of Europeans for centuries – and perhaps also that of the Berlin audience on a cold, dark weekend in February.

The opening concert of the weekend, Handel’s Heroines with the Academy of Ancient Music under Laurence Cummings, begins right away with one of the most magnificent moments in Baroque music: the Arrival of the Queen from Sheba from Handel’s oratorio Solomon. Arias for strong and seductive female characters such as Medea, Cleopatra and Semele – performed by Mary Bevan, one of England’s leading sopranos – take up the season’s theme of Heroes.

The ensemble Les Épopées under Stéphane Fuget makes a guest appearance with a programme of early Venetian opera arias. Lust, the title of the evening, refers to the numerous frivolous, decadent scenes in operas by composers such as Francesco Cavalli, Giovanni Legrenzi and Claudio Monteverdi. Four vocal soloists present such lascivious, sensual and dramatic moments from the early days of opera, when (almost) everything was permitted.

Lascivious moments from the early days of opera

In their programme of concertos by Antonio Vivaldi, violinist Amandine Beyer and the ensemble Gli Incogniti show how modern Baroque orchestral splendour can sound. Their concert is entitled Il mondo al rovescio (The world upside down), after a famous violin concerto of the same name. It features splendid concertos for a number of instruments, some with timpani and trumpets, which are quasi forerunners of the classical symphony.

The Swiss vocal ensemble Voces Suaves, which has just been awarded the prestigious Diapason d’Or music prize, will give a guest performance together with the instrumental ensemble Concerto Scirocco, which has also won many prizes. They will perform sacred Marian anthems by Alessandro Scarlatti, Agostino Steffani and Alessandro Melani – beautiful works that represent the opulence of Italian church music.

The final concert of the weekend is given by Il Giardino Armonico under Giovanni Antonini with mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital. Original concertos for mandolin by Emanuele Barbella and Giovanni Paisiello as well as Avital’s ingenious arrangements of works by Johann Sebastian Bach form the core of the concert, which shows the entire range of this typically Italian, often underestimated instrument.

The baroque weekend

Friday,

23 Feb 2024,
20:00

Chamber Music Hall