Classical and Jazz: Preview - OAE at Baroque Contrasted, Kings Place from April 6-10
Published: 24 March, 2011
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR
THINK all baroque music sounds the same? The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment will be out to change your perceptions through a five-day Baroque Contrasted mini-fest next month at Kings Place. The OAE will be showcasing its soloists, juxtaposing well-known favourites with virtuoso rarities and laying on Scratch Baroque and Sing Baroque for adults and Totty Baroque for toddlers.
“It’s easy when thinking of baroque music to lapse into the assumption that it all sounds the same – quite pretty, nice, unthreatening,” says OAE chief executive Stephen Carpenter. “We’re setting out to shatter those assumptions. Far from just nice, baroque music can be thrilling, angry, tragic and touching.”
Concerts will include Baroque Winds featuring rarely heard chamber music for flute, oboe, trumpet, violins and continuo written by major composers.
Baroque Strings will feature music from 17th and 18th-century Italy and there’ll be music for Baroque Oboe (hautboy), flute and recorder and Baroque Brass, mixing sacred music with earthy country dances.
Restoration Baroque will mix energetic dances with tender arias, opening with a gutsy Handel concerto grosso and culminating with his Da Tempeste sung by stunning baroque soprano Julia Doyle.
Participation events include:
• Scratch Baroque where amateur adult musicians are invited to play music rehearsed by OAE musicians and then play alongside them at a Baroque from Scratch event. Anyone interested should pre-register by forwarding their details to scratch@oae.co.uk or by calling 020 7239 9374.
• Sing Baroque in choruses from Purcell operas coached by OAE director Robert Howarth and OAE players. No experience necessary, just turn-up.
• Totty Baroque: four to six-year-olds can bang a drum, shake a maraca and ting a triangle to Purcells’s magical The Fairy Queen.
• Totty Concert by workshop toddlers; any under sixes, are invited to bring their favourite toy and hear the Totty Musicians play alongside the OAE virtuosos.
• Baroque Contrasted runs from April 6-10, 020 7520 1490, www.kingsplace.co.uk