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The Juilliard School presents Juilliard Historical Performance 10th Anniversary Season Juilliard415 Richard Egarr, Harpsichord and Director Friday, October 11, 2019, 7:30pm Peter Jay Sharp Theater GEORGE FRIDERIC Concerto Grosso in B-flat Major, Op. 3, No. 2 HANDEL Vivace (1685-1759) Largo Allegro Moderato Allegro HANDEL Concerto Grosso in A Minor, Op. 6, No. 4 Larghetto affetuoso Allegro Largo Allegro CHARLES AVISON Concerto Grosso in A Major, No. 1 (1709-70) Adagio Amoroso Allegro (after sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti) Intermission Juilliard's full-scholarship Historical Performance program was established and endowed in 2008 by the generous support of Bruce and Suzie Kovner. Additional support for this performance was provided, in part, by the Muriel Gluck Production Fund. Please make certain that all electronic devices are turned off during the performance. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not permitted in this auditorium. 1 HANDEL Concerto Grosso in G Major, Op. 6, No. 1 A tempo giusto Allegro Adagio Allegro Allegro HANDEL Organ Concerto in F Major, Op. 4, No. 5 Larghetto Allegro Alla Siciliana Presto Jacob Dassa, Organ HANDEL Concerto Grosso in G Major, Op. 3, No. 3 Largo, e staccato—Allegro Andante Allegro Taya König-Tarasevich, Flute AVISON Concerto Grosso in D Minor, No. 3 Largo andante Allegro spiritoso Vivace Allegro (after sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti) 2 Notes on the Program By Georgeanne Banker In 1608, English traveler Thomas Coryat attended a concert in Venice that “consisted principally of musicke, which was both vocall and instrumental, so good, so delectable, so rare, so admirable, so super excellent, that it did even ravish and stupifie all those strangers that never heard the like ... For mine own part I can say this, that I was for the time even rapt up with Saint Paul into the third heaven.” The captivating expressivity of Italian music permeated English culture for well over a century after Coryat’s transcendental experience. In the first half of the 18th century, the English infatuation with Italian musicianship was exemplified by the popularity of George Frideric Handel’s Italian operas and instrumental music, and by the rise of what musicologist Richard Newton calls the Cult of Scarlatti, a result of the alacritous popularization of Domenico Scarlatti’s works in the British Isles. The curiously innovative pieces on this program capture what Charles Avison calls the “fine Fancy” of the Italian style. A recorder sonata masquerades as an organ concerto, keyboard works are transfigured for dynamic bowed instruments, orchestral works echo those of Arcangelo Corelli, and a publisher’s dubious musical pasticcio is presented as a coherent set of concerti grossi. These are products of a long, musical version of “the telephone game,” whispers from the halls of Italy transformed into brilliant works for the London stage. Before settling in London in 1712, the German-born Handel enjoyed a period of formative success in Italy. There, he soaked up the elegant, George Frideric virtuosic latticework of Italian music and found companionship with other Handel composers, including Domenico Scarlatti. While in Venice, Handel attended “a Masquerade, while he was playing on a harpsichord in his visor,” wrote Born: his biographer John Mainwaring in 1760. “Scarlatti happened to be there, February 23, 1685, and affirmed that it could be no one but the famous Saxon, or the devil.” in Halle (Saale), Germany Anecdotal accounts point to a warm friendship between the two keyboard virtuosos; according to Mainwaring, Handel considered Scarlatti to be a great Died: talent of the “sweetest temper.” In England, Handel famously triumphed as April 14, 1759, a composer of Italianate works. The first season of the Royal Academy of in London Music in London featured his 1720 opera Radamisto as well as Scarlatti’s Narciso, as produced by Irish composer Thomas Roseingrave. In London, Handel, and music publisher John Walsh, were also faced with a voracious market of amateur and professional musicians whose appetites for instrumental music had been whetted by Corelli’s Concerti Grossi, Op. 6. Walsh’s 1734 publication of Handel’s Concerti Grossi, Op. 3 was most likely produced without the composer’s knowledge. Considering its suspicious origins, this opus is as much a testament to Walsh’s ability to generate quality works for an eager public as it was to Handel’s refusal 3 Notes on the Program By Georgeanne Banker (continued) hold a grudge; Francesco Geminani brought Walsh to court in London for copyright infringement just a few years prior. Regardless of Walsh’s shady business practices, this set of six “hautboy” concertos are exciting reimaginings of earlier works by Handel arranged for strings and continuo with colorful appearances by oboes, recorders, flutes, and bassoons. The Concerto Grosso in B-flat Major, Op. 3, No. 2 is scored for a concertino, or solo group of two oboes, violin, and two cellos, which join a ripieno, or tutti group of two violins, viola, cello, and continuo. The third movement, a spritely Allegro, features a fugue nearly identical in structure and key to the sinfonia of Handel’s 1717 Brockes Passion, transformed and presented here by Walsh’s publishing house in a secular, fully instrumental context. The Concerto Grosso in G Major, Op. 3, No. 3 is like a three-movement mixtape of Handel covers, where a variety of earlier works are performed by an instrumental band of one flute or oboe, two solo violins, strings, and continuo. The playful opening Allegro, derived from the anthem My song shall be alway, HWV 252, and the closing fugue, a colorful orchestral rendition of his keyboard Fugue in G Major, No. 231, HWV 606, is bridged by a brief, rapturous Adagio. In just 60 seconds, this slow movement captures the profound spiritual gravitas of its base material, the Te Deum written for the Duke of Chandos in 1717-18. “Mr. HANDEL is in Music, what his own DRYDEN was in Poetry; nervous, exalted and harmonious; but voluminous, and, consequently, not always correct,” Avison wrote in 1753. “Their abilities equal to every thing; their execution frequently inferior. … Yet, as both their excellencies are infinitely more numerous than their deficiencies, so both their characters will devolve to latest posterity, not as models of perfection, yet glorious examples of those amazing powers that actuate the human soul.” Handel’s ability to actuate the human soul is most definitely evident in his stellar set of 12 Concerti Grossi, Op. 6. Though some borrowing and self-referential material is included, these Grand Concerti largely comprise new material that is rife with exciting contrasts, enrapturing musician and listener alike with the sonic chiaroscuro that so embodies this genre. Intended for use during productions of Handel’s oratorios and odes at London’s Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theater, these concertos are scored for a Corellian concertino group of two violins and cello and a ripieno ensemble of strings and continuo. The Concerto Grosso in G Major, Op. 6, No. 1 was completed on September 29, 1739. Bursting open with a sparkling, garrulous Allegro, the concertino and ripieno groups immediately engage in excited dialogue. The similarly exuberant closing Allegro echoes material from his friend Domenico Scarlatti’s keyboard Sonata in G Major, K. 2. 4 However similar, musicologist Alexander Silbiger writes that “the piece is by no means a paraphrase of the Scarlatti sonata and manages to sound altogether Handelian.” The Concerto Grosso in A Minor, Op. 6, No. 4 was finished just nine days later. The opening Largo affettuoso and the third movement Largo sigh in contrast with the resolute fugue of the second movement and the brusque, closing Allegro. Handel’s Op. 4 organ concertos were similarly employed for performances at Covent Garden and are largely based on his previous works (think Joni Mitchell’s 2000 reinterpretation of “Both Sides Now”). The Organ Concerto in F Major, Op. 4, No. 5 is a thoughtful reworking of his Recorder Sonata in F Major, Op. 1, No. 11. Presented during a performance of Deborah on March 26, 1735, this work would have provided ample space to showcase Handel’s compositional versatility and improvisational skills. In 1709, Irish composer Thomas Roseingrave, like many young musicians, found himself in Italy to hone his musical techniques. One evening, he met “a grave young man dressed in black and in a black wig, who had stood in one corner of the room,” recounted music historian Charles Burney. The man in black was asked to sit down at the harpsichord, and “when he began to play, Rosy said, he thought ten hundred d----ls [devils] had been at the instrument; he never had heard such passages of execution and effect before.” The man was revealed to be Domenico Scarlatti, and though the two became close friends and colleagues, Roseingrave did not touch the keyboard for a month after that encounter. Roseingrave’s ardor for Scarlatti had lasting effects at home: His 1739 edition of XLII suites de pièces pour le clavecin en deux volumes composées Charles Avison par Domenico Scarlatti fed British cravings for Italian music and inspired the likes of Charles Avison.