New Year's Day with Boston Baroque, from Sanders Theatre

Boston Baroque's New Year's concerts have become a cherished tradition, and now Classical New England brings you the New Year's Day for 2012 from Sanders Theatre in Cambridge.

Martin Pearlman, founder and director of Boston Baroque, conducts a concert that features music by Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, and Corelli, with stellar soloists to bring the music to life.

To hear the program, click on "Listen" above.




On the program:

Arcangelo Corelli - Concerto Grosso in C Major, op.6, no.10

J.S. Bach - Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043
Christina Day Martinson and Julie Leven, violins

G.F. Handel - Concerto for Harp in B-flat, Op. 4, No. 6
Barbara Poeschl-Edrich, harp

Antonio Vivaldi - Concerto in A minor for sopranino recorder, RV 445
Aldo Abreu, recorder

Antonio Vivaldi - Motet: Nulla in mundo pax sincera
Mary Wilson, soprano

Program Notes:

In the opera Giulio Cesare and in the oratorio Saul, Handel calls for a harp to lend its color to special dramatic moments. But it is in the "pure music" of his concerto that the harp shines as a virtuosic solo instrument. The pedal mechanism on the modern harp allows the player to raise and lower notes to create sharps and flats. In Handel's time, there was no such mechanism, yet the music of the day required chromatic notes and changes of key. To accomplish this, the triple harp—similar to what became known as the Welsh harp—used three rows of strings. The outer two rows, one played by the right hand, the other by the left, generally had the natural notes, equivalent to the white keys on the piano. Running down the middle was a third row of strings containing the chromatic notes, equivalent to the black keys on the piano. The sharps or flats could thus be played by either hand reaching to the inside.

Barbara Poeschl-Edrich, who now teaches harp at Boston University, studied the Baroque harp while a student in the Historical Performance Department at BU, the program in which Boston Baroque is in residence. She has performed on Baroque harp with Boston Baroque, the Boston Camerata, Handel and Haydn Society, and other ensembles. As a modern harpist, she has played with the Boston Symphony and was a soloist in an orchestral work written by Martin Pearlman.
Soloists

Mary Wilson has become a favorite of Boston Baroque audiences, having performed with us in operas and in concert, including a stunning appearance in Boston Baroque's concert at the Casals Festival in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Of her appearance this past March in our concert of "Jewels and Discoveries," the Hub Review wrote, "Ms. Wilson's voice is just about perfect for Handel—her tone is ripe with sun, and her phrasings so flexible they seem to almost ripple…"