Programmes
An Enlightened Heart
Songs and sonatas by Anna Bon, Elizabetta da Gamberini, Anne Ford and by the male composers Carl Friedrich Abel and George Frederik Handel whose work influenced them. Gamberini was the first female to have her keyboard published but also sang in Handel’s Oratorios. While music was enthusiastically practiced by female amateurs, professionals like Gambarini and Ford had many obstacles thrown in their path when performing in public: Ann Ford’s father tried to stop audiences hearing her concerts by having her arrested and constables placed on the door!
A Christmas Risonanze
The brilliance of Venetian music includes not just Vivaldi’s virtuosic string music but also the flute and harpsichord sonatas by the female composer Anna Bon, a leading female composer and pupil from Vivaldi’s Ospedale della Pietà. Galliarda’s Christmas programme includes a version of Winter from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, cantatas by Tomaso Albinoni and Telemann and pieces for viola da gamba by Antonio VandiniThe brilliance of Venetian music includes not just Vivaldi’s virtuosic string music but also the flute and harpsichord sonatas by the female composer Anna Bon, a leading female composer and pupil from Vivaldi’s Ospedale della Pietà. Galliarda’s Christmas programme includes a version of Winter from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, cantatas by Tomaso Albinoni and Telemann and pieces for viola da gamba by Antonio Vandini.
Battlefields and Baroque
Music from the Ancièn Regime and England at a time of revolution and enlightenment. The desire for a return to a more natural, simple life that inspired Marie Antoinette’s romance C’est mon Ami was part of the rich tapestry of music heard in Paris towards the end of the 18th century. Popular songs of the people and arrangements of songs by Gluck, Mozart and Marie Antoinette, contrast with virtuosic works for viol and harpsichord by Marin Marais, Antoine Forqueray and by Julie Candeille. In London the bright French tunes of surviving emigré composer François Bathélemon, were translated and transported to attract the audiences of the London stage.