Ring in the holidays with an effervescent chamber music concert. Hailed as “a fearsomely powerful musician” by The Toronto Star, Aisslinn Nosky—concertmaster of the Grammy Award-winning Handel and Haydn Society—joins NWS Fellows in exploring works ranging from 1625 to 2017. Get a worldwide view of music from the 17th century through composers from Italy, Bohemia, Germany and France. NWS Conducting Fellow Molly Turner leads Michael Oesterle’s Kammerkonzert, while regal trumpets take center stage in Georg Philipp Telemann’s Concerto.

----

Reserve your seats today and enjoy unbeatable savings by subscribing to New World Symphony’s Chamber Music series. Starting at just $10 a concert, our 2023-24 series features works for small ensembles by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Claude Debussy, J.S. Bach, Wynton Marsalis and Hildegard von Bingen.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

This concert can also be added to any Compose Your Own (CYO) subscription series. Pick three or more performances you’d like to attend and receive all the perks and savings of being a New World Symphony subscriber.

COMPOSE YOUR OWN SUBSCRIPTION

Program

Johann David Heinichen

Concerto in F major, S. 233
Approximate duration: 9 minutes

After earning a degree in law from the University of Leipzig and establishing a successful legal career, Johann David Heinichen moved to Venice to study Italian opera. By 1712 he was a music instructor for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen, and within four years he was appointed Kapellmeister (music director) to the Dresden court, one of the most important musical establishments in Europe. Many of Heinichen’s 250 works were unfortunately destroyed during World War II, but those that survive demonstrate his unique interest in combining unusual instrumental timbres. This is true of the Concerto on today’s program, which includes solo flutes and solo horns, instruments that composers of the time rarely featured together in a concerto. The first movement has prominent horn solos reminiscent of hunting calls, which alternate with cheerful flute solos and a ritornello (repeated musical passage) from the strings. The pastoral second movement conveys musical images of the tranquil countryside and is followed by an exuberant finale that demonstrates the horns’ technical prowess. Horns in the Baroque period did not have valves, so all pitch changes were controlled completely by the performer’s embouchure (position of the mouth).

Dario Castello

Sonata concertante in Stil Modern, Book 1, No. 4 (1629)
Approximate duration: 9 minutes

Dario Castello was an early 17th-century composer and instrumentalist who directed a wind ensemble and worked at San Marco in Venice. The sonata, which means “to sound,” was a newly emerging genre intended to explore the range, timbre and technical capacities of wind, string and keyboard instruments. Italian sonatas from this time are composed of many contrasting sections that flow into one another. Some of the sections are freer and more improvisatory, while others contain stricter imitative counterpoint (a dialogue between the voices that follows a precise set of rules). This creates a distinct sense of “sprezzatura” (studied carelessness), and Italian Baroque sonatas are meant to sound as though the performers are brilliantly and effortlessly inventing each new musical idea on the spot.

Georg Philipp Telemann

Concerto in D major for Three Trumpets, TWV 54: D3
Approximate duration: 11 minutes

With a catalog of more than 3000 surviving works, Georg Philipp Telemann remains one of the most prolific composers of Western classical music. He was highly respected by his colleagues and one of the most famous composers of his time. Indeed, when the city of Leipzig needed a new music director in 1723, the search committee unanimously chose Telemann. He turned down the job, however, and the city ultimately had to hire their third-choice candidate, Johann Sebastian Bach. Throughout his career, Telemann was committed to sharing his music with the general public. He intentionally cultivated opportunities for large audiences to hear works that had originally been commissioned for exclusive court ceremonies. Additionally, he published the first German music periodical, which gave amateur musicians and students easier access to printed music at home. His Concerto for three trumpets opens with a grand first movement reminiscent of a stately procession. Telemann demonstrates his contrapuntal abilities in the second movement with a tightly constructed fugue, an imitative dialogue based on an opening musical subject that adheres to strict rules. Soaring melodies and lyricism are on full display in the third movement, and the Concerto concludes with an exuberant celebration.

Jan Dismas Zelenka

Concerto in G major à 8, ZWV 186 (1723)
Approximate duration: 15 minutes

A native of Lounovice, a village south-east of Prague, Jan Dismas Zelenka eventually relocated to Dresden to work as a bass player in the prestigious Hofkapelle (court chapel). He eventually earned the title of Kapellmeister (music director) in Dresden and composed a substantial number of sacred works. In 1723 Zelenka was commissioned to write a new melodrama to celebrate the coronation of Charles VI and Elizabeth Christine as the new monarchs of Bohemia. He returned to Prague to conduct the work’s premiere, and while there, he also composed the Concerto on today’s program. The oboe and bassoon have particularly prominent roles in this piece, demonstrating technical virtuosity in the fast movements and expressive lyricism in the slow movement.

Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre

Trio Sonata No. 3 in D major (c. 1695)
Approximate duration: 9 minutes

When she was a young girl, Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre’s musical skills were so impressive to Louis XIV that he arranged for her continued education and granted her a royal privilege to publish her compositions. During her impressive career, she was a sought-after harpsichordist, the host of important Parisian salons, and the first French woman composer to have an opera performed at the Paris Opera. French women writing music at the turn of the 18th century often published their pieces anonymously or under their husbands’ names, but Jacquet de La Guerre’s patronage from the King allowed her to publish her music with her own name. Her trio sonatas are emblematic of the genre, featuring lush harmonies, rich dissonance and an intimate conversation between the three musical lines. Each movement presents a different emotional quality, with lively fast movements and a particularly poignant aria affetuoso.

Michael Oesterle

Kammerkonzert (2017)
Approximate duration: 17 minutes

Michael Oesterle is a German-Canadian composer whose works have been performed throughout North America and Europe. He describes his 2017 Kammerkonzert for piano and violin with 13 wind instruments as “a rhapsodic skirmish between the violin and piano who throughout the piece try to outshine one another, and to shamelessly round up the members of the wind band to their respective aesthetic camp.” Often the violin and English horn are matched, as are the trombone and the piano. After building into a frenzy, the winds decide they have had enough and depart, leaving the pianist and violinist alone to sulk.

Karol Szymanowski

Quartet No. 2 for Strings, Op. 56 (1927)
Approximate duration: 20 minutes

Across his distinguished career, Polish composer and pianist Karol Szymanowski was awarded numerous prestigious national honors. In addition to composing, he also directed the State Conservatory in Warsaw, founded the Young Polish Composers’ Publishing Company and wrote a novel. A scholar of Polish Highlander folk music, Szymanowski incorporated many of the rhythmic, melodic and harmonic elements of the Highlanders’ music into his later compositions, including his Second String Quartet. The piece was written in Paris in 1927, where Szymanowski spent several months each year exchanging in cross-cultural dialogues. The first movement opens with a hauntingly beautiful melody accompanied by a pulsating rhythmic ostinato (repeated pattern). Intense dissonance and pizzicato (plucked strings) are driving features in the second movement, and the final movement begins quietly before intensifying to a dramatic conclusion.

– © 2023 Paula Maust

Dr. Paula Maust is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. She is the creator of Expanding the Music Theory Canon, an online collection of music theory examples by historical women and/or people of color. A book based on the website is forthcoming from SUNY Press in December 2023. Paula is also an editor for Grove Music Online’s women, gender and sexuality revision project. As a harpsichordist and organist, she co-directs Musica Spira, a Baroque chamber ensemble dedicated to telling the stories of early modern women musicians and performs extensively in the Washington, D.C. area.