FiBO & Amandine
A celebration of orchestral music
Leclair–Muffat–Telemann
Amandine Beyer, violin and leader
Finnish Baroque Orchestra
Violinist Amandine Beyer visits the Finnish Baroque Orchestra, bringing with her three Baroque cosmopolites: Georg Muffat, Georg Philipp Telemann and Jean-Marie Leclair. They were all actively mobile, both geographically and musically, with the aspiration to combine the central national Baroque styles into a common European musical synthesis.
Muffat, born in a Scottish-French family, German-speaking and well-travelled in Europe, was the most persistent in this pursuit. The composer wanted to promote peace in a Europe traumatised by religious wars, and to create “an overture for unity, the precious peace, that all nations long for”. For a multi-cultural person like Muffat, it was a suitable task to merge the French, Italian and Austrian-German Baroque styles. He was also personally acquainted with Lully, Corelli and Biber, who were considered style icons in their linguistic regions. This concert will present pieces from a concert collection by Muffat, with Italian-style sonatas alongside French dances.
In his time, Telemann was highly considered and even infamously productive. He navigated with chameleon-like ease through different genres, when Leclair, on the other hand, was able to unite the French and the Italian tonal language so smoothly that he was named “Vivaldi of France”. They were both in their element as concert composers, and Amandine Beyer will now perform their violin concertos.
There is also a touch of Antique mythology: a seaport is glorified with depictions of dancing sea creatures in Telemann’s orchestral suite Water Music, and we are presented with a series of orchestral pieces from Leclair’s only opera Scylla et Glaucus, put together especially for this performance. In the love story between a nymph and a sea god we meet the beautiful Scylla before the curse that made her more famous as the sea monster that haunted for example Odysseus.
Duration: 2 h (incl. intermission)
Pauliina Fred introduces the concert at the House of Nobility on May 18th from 6–6.30 pm