6th Baroque Music Festival: 1723

Alternative Stage founding donor

The Baroque Music Festival, the successful tradition of the Thessaloniki Concert Hall, returns to Athens to take audiences on a supersonic journey across time, from 1723 to today. The programme of this year’s Festival, curated by versatile and highly prolific artist Dimos Goudaroulis, includes four singular concerts revolving around the year 1723.

The first three concerts will be presented in the historical hall of Parnassos Literary Society (8 St George Karytsi Square, Athens) on 13, 15 & 18 November, and the fourth and final concert on the Greek National Opera Alternative Stage at the SNFCC on 19 November 2023. The Festival is a co-production of the the GNO Alternative Stage with the Thessaloniki Concert Hall. 

The curtain of the 6^th Baroque Music Festival opens at Parnassos Literary Society with the concert J.S. Bach, C.F. Abel: Sonatas for Viola da Gamba and harpsichord (13/11) featuring Lucile Boulanger, one of the most important and acclaimed gambists of our time, and harpsichordist Pierre Gallon. The same hall will also host the concerts Köthen – London, un piccolo viaggio: Transcriptions and Original Repertoire for Violoncello Piccolo (15/11) with Dimos Goudaroulis (violoncello piccolo) and Bruno Procopio (harpsichord), and Orient Express, Paris – Constantinople: Cantemir, Lully, Rameau, Forqueray (18/11) with the participation of nine virtuoso musicians. The Festival comes complete on the GNO Alternative Stage with the concert Giuseppe Tartini, Antonio Vandini: Music for Violin, Cello and Basso Continuo (19/11) by the ensemble La Stravaganza Greca.

The detailed programme of the 6th Baroque Music Festival is as follows:

J.S. Bach, C.F. Abel
Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord
Monday 13 November 2023 • Starts at 20.30
Parnassos Literary Society

Lucile Boulanger (viola da gamba), Pierre Gallon (harpsichord)

In 1723, the year when Johann Sebastian Bach left the German town of Köthen, Carl Friedrich Abel, the last and most important gambist of his time, was born there. His father, Christian Ferdinand Abel, was the principal gambist and cellist in Prince Leopold’s orchestra at the court of Köthen and a good friend of J.S. Bach. Carl Friedrich Abel would later study in Leipzig with Bach and become a close friend and collaborator of his son, Johann Christian Bach, in London, where they would establish the famous Bach-Abel concert series.

Lucile Boulanger is one of the most important and distinguished viola da gamba players of our time. In this programme, she presents, alongside her collaborator and excellent harpsichordist Pierre Gallon, two of the three magnificent Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord that Bach probably wrote in Köthen, as well as sonatas by Carl Friedrich Abel.

Köthen – London, un piccolo viaggio
Transcriptions and original repertoire for violoncello piccolo

Wednesday 15 November 2023 • Starts at 20.30
Parnassos Literary Society

Dimos Goudaroulis (violoncello piccolo), Bruno Procopio (harpsichord)

In 1723, J.S. Bach completed the period of his life during which he lived in Köthen and left for Leipzig, where he would remain until the end of his life. During the almost seven years he stayed in Köthen (1717–1723) as Kapellmeister at the court of the music-loving Prince Leopold, Bach, at his most creative age and with excellent musicians at his disposal, wrote some of his most important works of instrumental and chamber music, such as the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, the Sonatas for violin and harpsichord, the Suites for cello solo and possibly the three Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord.

In the first part of the program, Dimos Goudaroulis on violoncello piccolo and the outstanding French-Brazilian harpsichordist Bruno Procopio present transcriptions of works for violin or for viola da gamba and harpsichord that J.S. Bach wrote in Köthen, in a particularly original rendition featuring the rare and refined timbre of the violoncello piccolo, an instrument associated with Bach and his entourage. The second part of the concert includes authentic repertoire for violoncello piccolo and basso continuo, featuring one of Giuseppe Valentini's highly original 12 Allettamenti, published in London in 1720, and two sonatas by the Italian cellist Andrea Caporale, who lived in London and worked closely with Georg Friedrich Händel.

Orient Express, Paris – Constantinople
Cantemir, Lully, Rameau, Forqueray

Saturday 18 November 2023 • Starts at 20.30
Parnassos Literary Society

Nikos Paraoulakis (ney), Michalis Kouloumis (violin), Manousos Klapakis (percussion), Vangelis Paschalidis (santur), Thimios Atzakas (oud), Dimitris Kountouras (recorder), Andreas Linos (viola da gamba), Elektra Miliadou (baroque cello, viola da gamba), Panos Iliopoulos (harpsichord)

Artistic direction, curators: Thimios Atzakas, Andreas Linos, Panos Iliopoulos
Arrangements: Thimios Atzakas, Panos Iliopoulos

1723 marked the death of Dimitrie Cantemir, a Moldavian politician and scholar, a superbly educated encyclopaedist, multilingual and highly cultured, an ethnographer, a musicologist, but also an important composer and theoretician of Ottoman classical music and master of the tanbur. Cantemir spent long periods of his life in Istanbul, where he not only composed works that hold a prominent place in the classical repertoire of Ottoman music to this day but also collected and transcribed over 350 pieces from the oral musical tradition of his time in a musical notation he invented himself. This collection, as well as perhaps the most influential treatise on the theory and performance of Ottoman music, entitled Kitâb-ı ’ilm al-musîqî (The Book of the Science of Music), which he authored, constitute the monumental work Edvâr-ı mûsıkî, part of which will be heard in this concert.

The nine exceptional musicians, who form two ensembles on stage (one with instruments from Eastern Mediterranean musical traditions and another with baroque instruments), converse, improvise, cooperate and change roles, proposing a contemporary and original dialogue between the music of Dimitrie Cantemir and the Ottoman court and the music of Baroque France in the late 17th and the first half of the 18th century.

Giuseppe Tartini, Antonio Vandini 
Music for violin, cello and basso continuo

Sunday 19 November 2023 • Starts at 19.30

Greek National Opera Alternative Stage
Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center

La Stravaganza Greca: Simos Papanas (baroque violin), Dimos Goudaroulis (baroque cello), Theodoros Kitsos (baroque guitar, theorbo), Markellos Chryssicos (harpsichord)

In 1723, the virtuoso violinist and composer Giuseppe Tartini, alongside his longtime friend and colleague in Padua, the cellist Antonio Vandini, left Italy for Prague, where they would work for three years in the service of Count Kinsky. The two musicians would remain friends and collaborators throughout their lives. Tartini wrote for Vandini two demanding concertos for cello and orchestra. Vandini's seven extant and recently rediscovered sonatas for cello and basso continuo are particularly expressive and virtuosic.

The ensemble La Stravaganza Greca proposes a programme around the friendship of the two musicians and the dialogue between their instruments, combining virtuoso sonatas by Tartini and Vandini with rare and wonderful trio sonatas for violin, cello and basso continuo by Italian composers of the time Alessandro Stradella, Nicola Antonio Porpora and Giovanni Benedetto Platti.