Concerts - Con Gioia

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2008 8 p.m.
Zipper Concert Hall at the Colburn School
200 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012

Music of Love, Lamentation, and Joy
Vocal works by Purcell, Dowland, Buxtehude, Bach, and Handel, and music for harpsichord by Froberger.

featuring
Internationally acclaimed opera and oratorio star
Juliana Gondek, mezzo soprano
[link to website]
and
Clifton Massey, countertenor
[link to bio]
with
M. Anne Rardin, baroque violin
Jason Yoshida, baroque guitar and lutes
Denise Briesé, viola da gamba and violone
and
Preethi de Silva, director; harpsichord

Performance by Michael Maniaci, male soprano, has been cancelled due to illness.

General Admission: $25; seniors, members of SCEMS and EMA: $20
Friends of Con Gioia: $15; Students (with ID) and children: $10.
Patrons and Benefactors of Con Gioia receive free admission with prior reservation.

Prepaid reservations by mail (tickets to be held at the door).
Please send checks by February 18 to:
Con Gioia, 1020 Kent Drive, Claremont, CA 91711
909.624.0638

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2007 5 P.M.
A special pre-festival event of the 74th Los Angeles Bach Festival
Shatto Chapel
First Congregational Church of Los Angeles
540 South Commonwealth Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90020

Baroque yields to Mozart
with
Virtuoso Swiss violinist

Chiara Banchini, baroque violin
and
Preethi de Silva, harpsichord and fortepiano

Arcangelo Corelli		Sonata in G minor, op.V, no. 5
Henricus Albicastro		La Follia
J.S. Bach		Sonata in A Major, BWV 1015
Kaspar Fritz		Sonata no. 4 in E minor
Giuseppe Tartini		Sonata in A minor (B. a3) for solo violin
Mozart		Sonata in F Major, K. 377

Prepaid reservations by mail (tickets to be held at the door).
Please send checks by October 5 to:
Con Gioia, 1020 Kent Drive, Claremont, CA 91711
909.624.0638

This concert is supported by:

Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council

Nestlé USA

Doubletree Hotel, Claremont,
and the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce (Los Angeles).

Renowned soprano Julianne Baird
with fortepianist, Preethi de Silva
and Alfred Cramer, violinist
and readings from Austen’s novels by
British actress Michelle Arthur

Songs by Handel, Gluck, Arne, Dibdin, Storace et al. Instrumental music by Haydn
and Maria Hester Park nèe Reynolds

Sunday, February 4, 2007. 5:00 p.m.
Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church
301, North Orange Grove Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91103

General admission: $25; Seniors, SCEMS, EMA: $20; Friends of Con Gioia $18; students (with ID)15; children $12. Prepaid reservations (to be held at the door) accepted) until
Feb. 2. Please send checks to Con Gioia, 1020 Kent Drive, Claremont, CA 91711

A solo recital by our artistic director Preethi de Silva, fortepiano
performing on a rare copy of an 18th-century Viennese-style piano

At the Pasadena Museum of California Art, 490 E. Union Street, Pasadena, CA 91101

General admission: $18; seniors; Members of PMCA, SCEMS, EMA $15;
Friends of Con Gioia, students (with ID) and children: $10.
Patrons and Benefactors of Con Gioia receive free admission with prior reservation.

Prepaid reservations for tickets to be held at the door.
Please send checks to: Con Gioia, 1020 Kent Drive, Claremont, CA 91711.

Performance in conjunction with Mozart at 250—a conference to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. See March 26th program below.

Special ALL-MOZART concert in collaboration with the Pasadena Museum of California Art.

Pasadena Museum of California Art, 490 East Union St., Pasadena
Works by Mozart, including the Piano Concerto in A Major, K. 414; Fanatasy in c minor, K. 475; a string quartet, Duo in G for violin and viola, K. ; Piano Quartet in G minor, K. ; and Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s Mozart-Adagio. (Program subject to change).

Artistic Director Preethi de Silva invited to perform at two events in Germany:

A collaborative performance with Friedrich Wilhelm Prince of Prussia and actor Max Volkert Martens, including readings of correspondence between the prince’s ancestors—the two composer-performers, King Frederic the Great of Prussia and his beloved sister Margravine Wilhelmine of Bayreuth. The event was held at the Orangerie of the Palace of Oranienburg.

October 16, 2005 8:00 p.m.
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg
Claviermusik der Empfindsamkeit

Preethi de Silva performed works by C. P. E. Bach, J. G. Eckard, J. G. Müthel und W. A. Mozart on two original eighteenth-century fortepianos from the museum's famous collection of noteworthy European instruments.

Balch Auditorium, Scripps College, Claremont,
and
Sunday, April 3, 4 p.m.
Cathedral Center of St. Paul at 840 Echo Park Avenue, Los Angeles

MaryBeth Haag, soprano
Preethi de Silva, fortepiano
Janet Worsely Strauss, violin
Benjamin Wyatt, ‘cello

Solo and chamber music Joseph Haydn composed for women performers, as well as a rarely performed work by his contemporary, Marianna Auenbrugger.

Haydn:
Cantata for Soprano and Fortepiano: Lines on the Battle of the Nile Variations in F minor for Fortepiano, Hob. XVII:6;
Fortepiano Trios in E-Major and B-flat Major, Hob. XV:20 and 29

Marianna Auenbrugger:
Sonata for Fortepiano in E-Flat Major—a work by Haydn’s contemporary, who was a dedicatee of several of his piano sonatas.

Saturday, April 2, 2004, 8 p.m.
Garrison Theater, Performing Arts Center, Scripps College, Claremont, CA

Sunday, April 3, 4 p.m.
Cathedral Center of St. Paul at 840 Echo Park Avenue, Los Angeles

Known for his stunning blend of dazzling virtuosity and colorful expressivity, Matthias Maute is recognized as one of the foremost recorder players of his generation. He is a first-prize winner of the Musica Antiqua competition in Bruges, Belgium. A founding member of Trio Passagio, and artistic director of Ensemble Caprice, Mr. Maute is also a member of the Baroque ensemble REBEL. He has been featured at early music festivals around the world, including those of Utrecht, Bruges, Berlin, Kassel, Schwetzingen, Stuttgart and Avignon. His recordings can be heard on prestigious labels including Vanguard Classics, Antes Editions and Dorian Recordings.

The program in Los Angeles included Arcangelo Corelli’s well-known Variations on La Follia, Sonata Quarta by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Telemann’s Sonata in C Major and Mealli’s Sonata La Bernabea for recorder; and J. S. Bach’s Sonata in E minor (BWV 1034) for transverse flute, as well as solo works by de Silva and Maute.

March 10, 2004, 8 p.m.
Garrison Theater, Performing Arts Center, Scripps College, Claremont
and
March 13, 2004, 8 p.m.
Shatto Chapel at the First Congregational Church, 540 South Commonwealth Ave., Los Angeles

Music for Violin, Harpsichord, and Fortepiano

British baroque violinist Monica Huggett was the featured guest artist in Con Gioia’s concerts on March 10 and 13, 2004.

The program included Heinrich Biber’s Sonata V in E minor (1681), Arcangelo Corelli’s Sonata in C major, op. 5 no. 3, and J. S. Bach’s Sonata in B minor (BWV 1014) for violin and harpsichord. They were followed by two works for violin and fortepiano: the rarely performed Sonata in G minor by French composer Joseph Boulogne Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and Sonata in B-flat major, K. 454 by Mozart. Saint-Georges, whose mother was of Caribbean descent, was born in Guadeloupe and educated in France. He earned considerable recognition as a composer in Europe in the late 18th century. Ms. Huggett, who recently performed one of St. Georges violin concertos as soloist and conductor of the Portland Baroque Orchestra, also performed the Chaconne from Bach’s Partita in D minor, BWV 1004 for solo violin.

MUSIC REVIEW
Staying faithful to the sound LOS ANGELES TIMES March 15, 2004
Violinist and accompanist find the soul of 17th and 18th century music on period instruments.
BY RICHARD S. GINELL
Special to The Times

The hardy, long-running Los Angeles Bach Festival – 71 seasons strong and counting – doesn’t officially get going until March 28. But for those who couldn’t wait, there was a notable “pre-festival concert,” sponsored by Claremont’s Con Gioia Early Music Ensemble, in the First Congregational Church’s Shatto Chapel on Saturday night: a recital by one of the leading lights of the Baroque violin, Monica Huggett.

No mere hodgepodge of 17th and 18th century music, Huggett’s program was helpfully sequenced in chronological order, a history lesson not only in style but in choices of instruments. Huggett’s keyboard partner, Con Gioia founder and music director Preethi de Silva, spent the first half playing a harpsichord lavishly decorated with Japanese figures, switching to a fortepiano in the second. For her part, Huggett switched from a Baroque bow to a 1770-vintage prototype of a modern bow; the latter’s ability to sustain notes and dig was striking.

Huggett and de Silva opened with the ever-unpredictable Heinrich Ignaz von Biber’s Sonata No.5 – a piece loaded with streaky virtuoso flights and quirky tempo changes. Despite the blurring limitations of her Baroque instrument, Huggett next caught the rhythms and generated some incisive attacks in Corelli’s Sonata in C major, Opus 5, No. 3, and the finale of J.S. Bach’s sonata in B minor, BWV 1014, was especially turbulent and exhilarating.

Even in these musicologically correct times, it still comes as a mild shock to hear the oft-heard Bach Chaconne – with its daunting legacy of high-wattage interpretations by the 20th century’s great violinists – played on the lighter, thinner-toned Baroque violin. Huggett handled the work very freely, altering some of the note values in the process, with some loss of tension midway through, yet bearing down nicely toward the close.

Switching to the 1770 bow for the first time, the violinist, with de Silva, then turned to a pleasing, energetic classical-styled sonata for fortepiano and obbligato violin by Guadeloupe-born contemporary of Mozart, Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges – violinist, composer and skilled swordsman. Huggett was also well-attuned to the wit within Mozart’s Sonata in B-flat major, K.454, and de Silva proved to be a particularly expressive performer on the fortepiano.

J. G. Müthel		Arioso and XII Variations in G major
J. G. Eckard		Six Variations on the Menuet d’Exaudet
C. Ph. E. Bach		Fantasy in C major, H. 284 [W. 59/6]
W.A. Mozart		Fantasy in C minor, K. 475 and Sonata in C minor, K. 457
Leopold Koželuch		Sonata in F minor, op. 38, no.3