Baroque pearls for the chamber

To kick off the ‘Music at Handel's House’ series, a young ensemble from Leipzig and Dresden brings together masterpieces of early music. With Georg Friedrich Handel, Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann, the three great heroes of Central German Baroque music are represented in this concert. The programme oscillates between chamber music gems such as Bach's Musikalisches Opfer BWV 1079 and Telemann's 18 Canons Mélodieux TWV 43:g1 and works that were actually conceived for a larger context and have been adapted by the four musicians for a purely instrumental chamber concert. The silvery sound of the transverse flute lends a graceful voice to Ruggiero from Alcina and Cleopatra from Giulio Cesare in Egitto. Excerpts from Water Music and Fireworks Music invite listeners to enjoy new listening experiences in this reduced instrumentation. Handel's popular Trio Sonata in G minor HWV 393 was originally written for two violins and basso continuo. It, too, takes on a new timbre in this instrumentation.