Coming up in Philly music: A stellar early music season

Philadelphia’s early music organizations have prepared a spectacular season for those of us who like to hear Renaissance and Baroque music played on the kind of instruments musicians actually used in those periods.

The biggest event on the schedule is the “weekend festival of music, art, and learning” Piffaro is presenting in honor of the 500th anniversary of the first great novel in Western literature, Don Quixote. Thanks to a grant from the Pew Foundation, Piffaro has arranged a city-wide celebration that includes a scholarly symposium on Don Quixote and exhibits at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Rosenbach Foundation, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Van Pelt Library.

The centerpiece will be two performances of The World of Don Quixote, a concert devoted to the music of Cervantes’s time, on October 8 and 9 at the Philadelphia Episcopal Church. Piffaro is augmenting its forces with a guest list that features a leading early music vocal group and several other performers with big reputations in the early music world. The staging will be choreographed by Christopher Williams, a choreographer who has worked with the English National Opera and the Martha Graham Dance Company.

The speakers list at the October 8 symposium, Music, Word and Art in the Age of Cervantes, includes Edith Grossman, who produced the most recent translation of Don Quixote, and experts on Spanish music, art, and politics in Cervantes’s day. (Admission is free but advance registration is required.)

The rest of Piffaro’s season will be devoted to Spanish Renaissance music. In December they’ll collaborate with a brass ensemble, Dark Horse Consort, in festive music from Spain and the Americas. In February they’ll explore 17th-century Spanish theater with the Philadelphia Artists Collective, and a pair of early music stars, soprano Julianne Baird and counter-tenor Drew Minter. In March, they’ll present Spanish cathedral music specially written for the wind bands Piffaro emulates.

Exploring the seasons (and Bach)

Philadelphia’s other period instrument group, Tempesta di Mare, is devoting its schedule to a celebration of the seasons. Each of its concerts will include a concerto from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons surrounded by relevant work from other Baroque composers. Fall: A Chill in the Air, on October 22 at the American Philosophical Society, and on October 23 at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, will celebrate the snap of the fall with Vivaldi’s autumn concerto; a concerto of the seasons by a French Baroque composer; and a “chilling revenge cantata.”

The December concert will team Vivaldi’s vision of winter with depictions by two other Baroque composers, along with some French noels and Corelli’s warm Christmas Concerto. March and May will bring similar concerts in honor of spring and summer.

In January, Tempesta will present a concert devoted to the three Jewish women whose patronage kept Bach’s music alive in the decades after he died. The first performance of the program will take place on January 21 at the National Museum for American Jewish History on Independence Mall.

Choral Arts and Vox Ama Deus

Choral Arts Philadelphia isn’t a specialized early music organization. Their programs can include music from every era, including our own. But they use period instruments when they play Baroque music and their conductor, Matthew Glandorf, is a scholarly expert on Baroque style and the role music played in Baroque society.

For their new season, Glandorf is embarking on an ambitious historical exploration. Choral Arts will present nine concerts that feature the 18 cantatas Bach performed during the liturgical year 1734-35, in his capacity as the choir director of the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. Each program will include a mid-concert lecture that relates the cantatas to the lives we lead today. The first concert in the Season of the Life of J.S. Bach series will be on October 5 at St. Clement’s Church.

The concerts will hew to the same format Glandorf has developed for the popular Bach @ Seven concerts he’s led for the last few years. Each concert will take place on a Wednesday at 7pm and last an hour. Modern minds can engage in close listening, knowing our truncated attention spans will only be challenged for a short time. The concerts are all followed, in addition, by a classy, animated reception.

On New Year’s Eve, Glandorf will once again conduct a complete performance of Bach’s three-hour Christmas Oratorio as he did in 2014. This may seem like a rarefied way to spend New Year’s Eve, but it’s scheduled to end around 8pm, leaving time for more raucous celebrations. Like many of Glandorf’s experiments, the 2014 concert was surprisingly satisfying.

Vox Ama Deus is another hybrid organization whose offerings range from the Renaissance to 20th-century American music. It started as an early music group, the Vox Renaissance Consort, and now is celebrating its 30th anniversary season (here’s the full line-up for 2016-17). Conductor Valentin Radu always produces a winner when he leads Renaissance and Baroque music. Vox Ama Deus won’t be presenting any early music concerts in center city Philadelphia this season, but suburbanites can hear them in Chestnut Hill and suburban sites like Doylesford Abbey. I especially recommend any program in which the Renaissance consort sings in full Renaissance costume. It’s one of the more magical events available in the Philadelphia region.

Above at right: Piffaro Renaissance Band is ready for a new season of authentic early music. (Photo courtesy of Piffaro)