Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival
Please join us in September and October in Annapolis for three contrasting programs of early chamber music performed on period instruments with fabulous special guests viola da gambists Susie Napper and Melisande Corriveau from Montreal, harpsichordist Elisabeth Wright from Bloomington, Indiana, and renaissance bassoonist Anna Marsh from the Pacific Northwest, along with our own favorites baroque violinist Marlisa del Cid Woods, lutenist and guitarist William Simms and flutist Jeffrey Cohan, all at 7:00 PM. These performances at St. Anne's Episcopal Church are co-sponsored by Live Arts Maryland and St. Anne's Episcopal Church and will also be repeated in Washington, DC and Baltimore. Please see www.chcmf.org/annapolis.
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All concerts at 7:00 PM at St. Anne's Episcopal Church
Church Circle in Annapolis
www.chcmf.org/annapolis
— Suggested donation $20 to $30 (a free will offering; pay as you wish)
— 18 and under free
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• September 22 - Tuesday at 7:00 PM •
1. THESE DISTRACTED TIMES
Susie Napper (Montreal) - viola da gamba
Elisabeth Wright (Bloomington, IN) - harpsichord
Jeffrey Cohan - baroque flute
Suites entitled "La Paix" (Peace) and "Le Guerre" (War) by Monteclair, Couperin's "La Paix de Parnasse" and "A Sad Pavan for these Distracted Times" by Thomas Tomkins all reflect the 18th-century composer's proficiency in providing perspective and solace in the face of discord and suffering and are to be included among other works by Frederick the Great, Johann Sebastian Bach and Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre.
• September 27 - Sunday evening at 7:00 PM •
2. A CHACONNE FOR PEACE
Mélisande Corriveau (Montreal/Paris) - pardessus de viole
Susie Napper (Montreal) - viola da gamba
Elisabeth Wright (Bloomington, IN) - harpsichord
Jeffrey Cohan - baroque flute
Les Voix humaines, the widely celebrated prize-winning duo of viols from Montreal, joins us 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. In "Persée" (1682) divine intervention brings a celebration of peace for the people of Ethiopia. Chaconnes from these operas and Lully's "Ballet du Temple de la Paix", in remarkable transcriptions from 1713 for chamber music presentation to Louis XIV by his court librarian Philidor l'Ainé, will be 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 early years of the 18th century.
• October 7 - Wednesday at 7:00 PM •
3. THE QUALITY OF MERCY: Shakespeare in Venice 1600
Marlisa del Cid Woods - baroque violin
Anna Marsh - dulcian/renaissance bassoon
William Simms - baroque guitar and theorbo
Jeffrey Cohan - renaissance flute
Shakespeare asserted that "The quality of mercy is not strain’d, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven" in "The Merchant of Venice", first performed in 1605. The Italian chamber music from this time to be included in this program was imbued with humanism's late 16th and early 17th century perspective that brought human emotion and individualism ever more poignantly into public consciousness in all the arts. Music embraced greater chromaticism and emotional palpability, leading to the unfolding of what we think of today as baroque style. Stunning and relatively unknown musical selections by Cima, Buonamente, Merula, Frescobaldi and others are to be performed on instruments seldom heard today.