Friday / 17 Oct 2003 / 8 pm
la venexiana
Claudio Cavina, Music Director
CHICAGO DEBUT

“In a few years, La Venexiana has conquered like a comet the heavens of late 16th and early 17th century vocal music.”
Klassik heute

Monteverdi: The Art of the Madrigal – Masters of the Italian madrigal, this ensemble of five voices and harpsichord has dazzled European concert audiences and recording audiences worldwide with its lush Mediterranean sound. Its name comes from an anonymous Renaissance comedy that shares the ensemble’s delight in the play of language and manners and the juxtaposition of the popular and the refined. Winner of the Cannes Music Award for Early Music in 2002 and recipient of a Gramophone Award the same year, La Venexiana is credited with taking Moneverdi’s madrigals “out of the museum and presenting them as living, vital works.”

Bach-analia: featuring Bach harpsichord concerti and Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 – One of the first and finest period instrument orchestras, the Academy of Ancient Music was founded in England by Christopher Hogwood in 1973. Devoted to recreating the experience of early music as authentically as possible, the Academy is particularly well known for its pioneering recordings, including the first recordings of all the Mozart symphonies on period instruments. This season a recent friend, Richard Egarr, celebrates the Academy’s 30th anniversary as Guest Director and harpsichordist giving us an experience of Bach as it would have sounded in the halls of Leipzig.

“Their music had a crystal beauty that seized the ear with a whisper and fitted the nave as if it had been built solely one day to hear this sound.”
The Evening Standard

Northern Light: A program of early Norwegian song – Three young women with interests as diverse as kindergarten teaching and Restoration Mad Songs come together in trio mediaeval to sing medieval polyphony originally intended for male voices. The result is a sound so startling and breathtakingly beautiful that their first recording, “Words of the Angel,” for ECM Records, soared to the pinnacle of the Billboard Top Bestsellers list. In all of their unusual repertoire, the ensemble displays a distinctly Scandinavian character, combining both elements of imported high art and native Northern strains.

This concert is generously supported by The Andrew E. and G. Norman Wigeland Memorial Endowment in Norwegian Language, Literature and Culture.

Amour, Amor: music by Lully, Handel and Scarlatti – Les Talens Lyriques, from Montpellier, France, is dedicated to performing the more flamboyant operatic and orchestral music of the Baroque period. Scorning any taint of piety associated with period performance, director and harpsichordist Christophe Rousset has transformed his childhood passion for archaeology into a talent for digging up old scores and restoring them to life. Rousset worked with William Christie and conducted Les Arts Florissants before forming Les Talens in 1991. For Gallic flair and a provocative take on Early Music, Les Talens Lyriques will not disappoint.