Salut! Baroque The Cosmopolitans

Salut! Baroque’s 2023 concert series concludes in October with ‘The Cosmopolitans’ performed in Sydney and also in Canberra with a program that includes music by Lully, Couperin, J S Bach, Georg Muffat, Rameau and Telemann.

Behind seemingly effortless ornamentation, strict rules had to be observed to establish the character, emotion and aesthetics of the music. JS Bach commented that, “It is … somewhat strange that German musicians are expected to be capable of performing at once and ex tempore all kinds of music, whether it come from Italy or France, English or Poland”. Travelling musicians and composers pollinated new ideas across cultures but it was through the cosmopolitan Georg Muffat’s seminal work published in four languages, Florilegium primum (1695) and secundum (1698), that musicians became fluent in the language of French and Italian music, and “how to use, with judgment, beautiful decorations and appropriate ornaments, which light up the piece … like precious stones”.

The program: Jean-Philippe Rameau – Ouverture from Opera Zoroastre/ Georg Philipp Telemann – Ouverture in B flat major Les Nations / Johann Rosenmüller – Sinfonia quinta in D minor / Michele Mascitti – Sonata in A Minor, Op. 1, No. 8 / François Couperin – Second Ordre L’Espagnole from Les Nations / Jean Baptiste Lully – Marche pour la Cérémonie des Turcs / Johann Joseph Fux – Concerto Le dolcezze e l’amarezze della notte / Johann Sebastian Bach – Sinfonia from Cantata BWV 18 / Luigi Boccherini – Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid / Georg Muffat – Suite No.2 in G minor Sperantis gaudia/  Henry Eccles – Sonata in G minor / André Campra – from L’Europe Galante

Salut! Performers: Sally Melhuish, Alicia Crossley, recorders/ John Ma, Bridgitte Holden, baroque violins/ Heather Lloyd, Suzie Kim, baroque violas/ Tim Blomfield, baroque cello/ Will Hansen, double bass/ Jack Peggie, percussion/ Monika Kornel, harpsichord

Friday 6 October, 7.30pm Albert Hall, Canberra

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