From Sept. 20 to Oct. 9, the Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival will hold three programs of early chamber music performed on period instruments. Special guests include viola da gambists Susie Napper and Melisande Corriveau from Montreal, harpsichordist Elisabeth Wright from Bloomington, Indiana, renaissance bassoonist Anna Marsh from the Pacific Northwest, baroque violinist Marlisa del Cid Woods, lutenist and guitarist William Simms and flutist Jeffrey Cohan. These performances are co-sponsored by Mark’s Episcopal Church and the Church of the Epiphany and will be repeated in Annapolis and Baltimore.
For more information, visit www.chcmf.org. All performances are scheduled for 7 p.m. They are free. However, there is a suggested donation of $20 to $30.
THESE DISTRACTED TIMES
Susie Napper on viola da gamba, Elisabeth Wright on harpsichord and Jeffrey Cohan on baroque flute perform suites entitled “La Paix” (Peace) and “Le Guerre” (War) by Monteclair, settings by Francesco Barsanti and Francesco Geminiani of Scottish ballads associated with the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513 and a soldier’s sad farewell, and “A Sad Pavan for these Distracted Times” by Thomas Tomkins, written following the execution of Charles I and the destruction of his organ .
All three pieces reflect the 18th-century composer’s insight in providing perspective and solace in the face of discord and suffering and are to be included among other works by the warrior king and flutist Frederick the Great, his court keyboardist Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Johann Sebastian Bach alongside a solo for viola da gamba by Carl Friedrich Abel.
Sept. 20 at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church at 301 A St. SE.
CHACONNE POUR LA PAIX
Mélisande Corriveau on pardessus de viole, Susie Napper on viola da gamba, Elisabeth Wright on harpsichord and Jeffrey Cohan on baroque flute join Les Voix humaines, the widely celebrated prize-winning duo of viols from Montreal, in a program illuminating the role of the chaconne in France as the culminating statement of an opera’s content at the court of Louis XIV.
In Jean Baptiste Lully’s “Phaeton” (1683), warring nations are unified in global harmony. “Le Temple de la Paix” was premiered in 1685 two days after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. Chaconnes from these operas, in remarkable transcriptions from 1713 for chamber music presentation to Louis XIV by his court librarian Philidor l’Ainé that Jeffrey Cohan discovered at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, is presented alongside Couperin’s “La Paix de Parnasse” and other selections by Marin Marais and Arcangelo Corelli, which demonstrate the stylistic chasm between French and Italian styles that was debated vociferously in France during the mid-18th century (the “Guerre des Bouffons”).
The rarely heard pardessus de viole is the highest-pitched member of the fretted viol family of stringed instruments, corresponding to the violin but played in the lap, alongside the viola da gamba or bass viol, also fretted like a guitar and with a range approximating that of the cello.
Sept. 26 at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church at 301 A St. SE.
THE QUALITY OF MERCY: Shakespeare in Venice 1600
Marlisa del Cid Woods on baroque violin, Anna Marsh – dulcian/renaissance bassoon, William Simms – baroque guitar and theorbo and Jeffrey Cohan on renaissance flute perform “The Merchant of Venice”, dated 1605. and unknown musical selections by Cima, Buonamente, Merula, Frescobaldi and “L’Eroica” by Andrea Falconieri.
Oct. 9 at The Church of the Ephiphany at 1317 G St. NW.
The Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival has since 2000 presented chamber music by familiar as well as little-known composers from the Renaissance through the present on Capitol Hill and in Baltimore and Annapolis in period instrument performances which shed new light upon early performance practice and occasionally contemporary compositions by Slovenian and other composers. Many unpublished works from the Library of Congress have have received their modern day premieres.
