Tempesta di Mare presents Handel and His Frenemies

The notes didn’t tell you anything about the music because they didn’t need to do so. The seven selections on the program were all theater and concert pieces written by composers who wanted to attract cash customers in 18th Century London and Germany.

You don’t need a musicologist to tell you you’re going to like the sound of wooden Baroque flutes playing over 18th Century string instruments that are gentler and more nasal than modern strings. No one has to tell you “what to listen for” when you’re listening to music like the rolling polonaise in a Handel suite or the wind sonorities and sturdy English rhythms in an overture by Thomas Arne.

Friends and rivals

Tempesta dubbed this program “Handel and his Frenemies.” The selections were written by Handel and five composers who were his friends and rivals, often simultaneously.

Giovanni Bononcini was a cellist and composer who wrote operas for Handel’s opera company. His operas were so popular they were the main reason the company stayed solvent. Handel and Bononcini became embroiled in a political clash in spite of their close business association, because the Tories took up Handel and the Whigs supported Bononcini.

No matter. Bononcini’s Cello Concerto in F is an appealing piece. Tempesta’s principal cellist, Lisa Terry, reinforced its appeal with a reading that gave it some of the scale and intimacy of a guitar performance.

Birth of the Messiah

The most entertaining piece on the program for me was John Pepusch’s overture to The Beggar’s Opera, John Gay’s jibe at Italian opera. The overture starts, cheekily, with a speeded up, higher pitched version of the somber chords that open most 18th Century overtures. The popular tunes that follow let you know you’re hearing the prelude to a musical about highwaymen and bawds, not the legendary heroes and mythological figures that populated Italian opera.

Pepusch and Handel were friends and colleagues but The Beggar’s Opera truncated Handel’s career as an opera composer. He eventually turned to English language oratorios such as Messiah and earned a permanent place in the heart of the English public.

Tempesta di Mare’s concerts in the Perelman theatre are a rare opportunity to hear 18th-century theater music in a theater that’s roughly the size of the theaters for which it was written. Tempesta itself is one of the few organizations in the country that can take advantage of such a facility and present period instrument concerts with a full-size Baroque orchestra, and it is one of only five such orchestras in the United States.