The Stillness of the Evening

 

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Musicians
Katarina Đorđević (viola d’amore)
Geoffrey Irwin (viola d’amore)
Nikolay Ginov (cello)
Asako Ginova (harpsichord)

Description

Two great works in C Minor open and close this concert, both making use of ‘scordatura’, that is, re-tuning. For Bach’s fifth cello suite the cellist must retune his highest string down a tone to G, to give the instrument greater resonance in the key. For the viola d’amore, no standard tuning exists, and so the six (or seven) strings of the two d’amores in Biber’s Partita – the seventh and final piece from his Harmonia artificioso-ariosa, are tuned to a chord of C Minor. The unusual instrument (which is rarely heard other than in performances of Bach’s St. John Passion, also with a pair) gains more resonance by having the same number of sympathetic strings, which run through the instrument’s bridge but are not played, giving the instrument a distinctive sound, which Leopold Mozart described as “especially charming in the stillness of the evening”. These pieces are separated by a lively arrangement by Bach for solo harpsichord of a concerto by his contemporary, (and incidentally also a d’amore player) Vivaldi.

Programme
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Cello Suite V in C minor BWV 1011
Prélude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Govottes I & 2, Gigue.

Vivaldi-Bach
Concerto for solo harpsichord in G BWV973
Allegro, Largo, Allegro

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber von Bibern (1644-174)
Partita in C minor
Praeludium, Allemande, Sarabande, Gigue, Aria, Trezza, Arietta Variata