STAUNTON — Take a tour of Europe while never leaving Staunton at SpringFest: Baroque Journeys, a Staunton Music Festival weekend concert April 12-14.
Now in its third year, SpringFest offers a three-day celebration of Baroque music, spanning Europe from West to East and culminating with Handel’s Italian oratorio La Resurrezione. All concerts feature period instrument performers. Programs include music for voices, orchestra, and chamber ensembles and feature historical keyboards.
Through this music, and this particular program with its place based music, audiences will be transported to Europe and back in time, too. A new way to travel, if you will. These are masterpieces that have stood the test of time. Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” on Saturday night is known to classical music lovers as a crowd pleaser.
Because Staunton Music Festival plays all music composed prior to 1850 on instruments of that era, via “historic performance,” audiences will actually hear it the way that audiences would have heard it back then, when the composer wrote it. That’s unusual, and it happens here in Staunton.
As opposed to the larger summer festival, SpringFest is all early music — all Baroque. The summer festival’s music spans more than 600 years into the present day. Every concert this weekend will be performed on period instruments, by artists trained in historic performance. To learn more, visit: https://www.stauntonmusicfestival.org/period-instruments
Carsten Schmidt, Staunton Music Festival’s artistic director, will take audiences on a tour of the continent over the course of the weekend’s performances. The weekend will culminate with Handel’s Italian oratorio La Resurrezione.
Hamburg to Leipzig
- SpringFest 2024 opens its Baroque Journeys in Germany with works by Telemann and J. S. Bach, including concertos and vocal music.
- 7:30 pm Friday, April 12
- Trinity Episcopal Church
- $22-$32
Paris
- This free program features solo and chamber music by Couperin, Marais, Lambert, and Rameau.
- Noon on Saturday, April 13
- Trinity Episcopal Church
- Free admission
Venice
- Revel in the sumptuous richness of the Italian Baroque, featuring period instrument performances of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.”
- 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 13
- Trinity Episcopal Church
- $22-$32
London Playhouse
- Blackfriars Playhouse provides the setting for a short concert of instrumental and vocal music from 17th-century England.
- 10:30 a.m. Sunday, April 14
- Blackfriars Playhouse
- $16-$22
SpringFest Lunch & Lecture
- Lecture: Jon Gibson delivers an extended talk on Handel’s oratorio La Resurrezione just before the finale concert.
- 1 p.m. Sunday April 14
- Trinity Church’s McCracken Hall
- $15
Rome: Handel’s Resurrezione
- The SpringFest finale features a single, brilliant work: Handel’s Italian oratorio on the resurrection, penned in Rome in 1708.
- 4 p.m. Sunday, April 14
- Trinity Episcopal Church
- $22-$32
To view the schedule online, visit: https://www.stauntonmusicfestival.org/springfest
Festival artists
Canadian-American sopranos Molly Netter and Megan Chartrand, bass Peter Walker, violinists Martin Davids (Chicago) and Nicholas DiEugenio (Chapel Hill, N.C.), Jason Fisher and Sarah Darling (Boston), Baroque bassoonist Stephanie Corwin and oboist Geoffrey Burgess (Philadelphia), and more. To find out more about the artists performing, see artists online.
Tickets: (540) 800-6012 or [email protected]. Event is included in SpringFest Pass and Annual Pass. To learn more about SpringFest and Staunton Music Festival, visit https://www.stauntonmusicfestival.org
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