all rejoice, all laugh

Ensemble Arava

In this concert, Ensemble Arava is pursuing the two great German Baroque composers Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. Music from a sacred and secular context can be heard - two worlds that were strictly separated in the Baroque era. Excerpts from the "Nine German Arias" and the secular cantata "Un'alma innamorata" by Handel are combined with sonatas by Bach. Ensemble Arava illuminates the diverse oeuvre of the two composers and invites its listeners to discover the similarities and differences in their works.

Arava is Hebrew and means both willow tree and wilderness. A word that unites two strong images - the tender willow tree as a symbol of the eternally renewing, fertile spring and the wilderness as a place of untamed, alien nature. The German-Israeli ensemble was the musical ambassador of the UNESCO City of Music Hannover in Spain in 2015, and in 2017 won both the special prize at the H. I. F. Biber Competition in Austria and the 1st prize and audience award at the 1st International Moderation Competition in Frankfurt. In 2018 it made its first appearance at the Resonanzen Festival at the Vienna Konzerthaus and was a finalist at the Göttingen Handel Competition. In 2019, it performed at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music and at the Mozart Gesellschaft Wiesbaden. 2022 saw the release of the ensemble's debut CD, "The Habsburg Garden of Eden" on Brilliant Classics, which received high praise from RBB and HR. 2023 saw the premiere of the ensemble's own production "Egalité" in Berlin, a collaboration with actress Alexandra Marisa Wilcke on gender roles in the Baroque period to the present day. In 2024, a collaboration with composer Udi Perlman is planned, juxtaposing French Baroque music with a commissioned work inspired by it.