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The Queen’s Chamber Band is a group of eight soloists organized by harpsichordist Elaine Comparone to emulate the original band, formed in 1762 by Bach’s youngest son, John Christian to entertain the queen in her private chambers. The modern group, which records and concertizes worldwide, can be heard this evening as they bring us Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Concert No. 2; you can hear them live at Merkin Concert Hall on January 25th.

The earliest of our “Tempest” offerings is Matthew Locke’s incidental music, written for a 1674 performance, played this evening by Il Giardino Armonico under Giovanni Antonini. The most recently composed is Paul Moravec’s “Tempest Fantasy,” winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize. Moravec describes it as a “musical meditation on characters, moods, situations, and line of text from my favorite Shakespeare play.” He dedicated it to the performers on the recording, clarinetist David Krakauer and the Trio Solisti. You’ll also hear Ernest Chausson’s “La tempete” from the BBC Philharmonic under Yan Pascal Tortelier, Berlioz’s ‘Fantasy on The Tempest’ from “Lelio” performed by the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus under Michael Tilson Thomas, and Sibelius’s “The Tempest”: Suite No. 2 as Sir Neville Marriner conducts the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.

Time for a change after all that Shakespearean fantasy. Roy Harris’s Symphony brings us back to modern times, Theodore Kuchar conducting the Ukraine National Symphony. Two short piano pieces of Thomas “Fats” Waller precede the Alban Berg Quartet’s go at Haydn’s String Quartet in D Minor. Gardening images abound in our last hour, with Mamoru Fujiedia’s “Patterns of Plants,” Debussy’s: “Jardin sous la pluie” (Gardens in the Rain), and Delius’s “In a Summer Garden.” Ah! Intimations of sunnier times . . .