This season Philharmonia Baroque has been coming up with some innovative approaches to the familiar. The subscription series began with a concert devoted entirely to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; but, thanks to the scholarly insights of piano soloist Robert Levin, the focus extended beyond the music itself to Mozart’s own practices, including “reconstructions” of his improvisatory skills. This coming Friday attention will shift from Mozart to Johann Sebastian Bach with guest conductor and harpsichord soloist Lars Ulrik Mortensen, whose program will include a selection from the 1981 inaugural concert of Philharmonia Baroque, the BWV 202 cantata “Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten,” the first of his two “wedding” cantatas. For the third subscription offering, the focus will be on Antonio Vivaldi; but the presentational approach will be informatively distinct.
Vivaldi will be represented by his most familiar work, the first four concertos (usually known asThe Four Seasons) of his Opus 8, a set of twelve concertos that he collected under the title Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione (the test of harmony and invention). Elizabeth Blumenstock, who had played the “Winter” concerto last December (appropriately enough), will this time perform the solo violin parts in all four concertos. Rather than use these pieces to stoke the appetite for more Vivaldi, however, Music Director (and conductor for this concert) Nicholas McGegan has decided to flesh out the program with four other Italian Baroque compositions that will establish a context for the music we all know so well. The most familiar of these will probably be the B-flat major concerto by Arcangelo Corelli, the eleventh in his Opus 6 collection of twelve (which Philharmonia Baroque recorded in 1992). This will open the program and be followed by a sinfonia in F major by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, after which the four Vivaldi concertos will be performed. Those concertos will then be followed by an A major concerto by Pergolesi’s teacher, Francesco Durante. The program will then conclude with a pastorale for two violins by the little-known Bolognese master Lorenzo Zavateri.
The San Francisco performance of this Philharmonia Baroque concert will take place on Friday, November 5, at Herbst Theatre. Tickets start at $25 and range up to $85. They are available from City Box Office, either through their Web site or by telephone at 415-392-4400. Student Rush tickets are $10 and go on sale one hour before the concert begins.
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