Double Honorees
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
It’s a double-birthday evening: this evening we honor both the Italian-born Baroque composer Francesco Geminiani and the early 20th-century Slovenian composer Vitezslav Novák.
Geminiani (b. 1687) was a contemporary of Handel who was born in Lucca, Italy but died across the waters in Dublin! He was one of the greatest violinists of his time, and it is a violin work that we hear: Andrew Manze will both fiddle and conduct the Academy of Ancient Music in the Concerto grosso in D Minor, otherwise known as “La folia.” You’ll definitely recognize the tune. And you’ll recognize the tune Brahms borrowed for his “Variations on a Theme by Haydn,” Kurt Masur leading the New York Philharmonic.
Vitezslav Novák, a Dvorák disciple and pupil, was born this day in 1870. The genre scenes of his picturesque “Slovak Suite” employ Moravian exoticisms but go beyond regionalism to the universal, especially in the movements describing children at play, lovers meeting, and a nocturnal scene. Libor Pesek conducts the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Returning to the Baroque: Salvatore Accardo is the violinist and conductor of I Solisti Napoli as we present the Red Priest’s Concerto No. 2 in E Minor, “Il favorito.” (Vivaldi had such a fun nickname, didn’t he?)
Geminiani (b. 1687) was a contemporary of Handel who was born in Lucca, Italy but died across the waters in Dublin! He was one of the greatest violinists of his time, and it is a violin work that we hear: Andrew Manze will both fiddle and conduct the Academy of Ancient Music in the Concerto grosso in D Minor, otherwise known as “La folia.” You’ll definitely recognize the tune. And you’ll recognize the tune Brahms borrowed for his “Variations on a Theme by Haydn,” Kurt Masur leading the New York Philharmonic.
Vitezslav Novák, a Dvorák disciple and pupil, was born this day in 1870. The genre scenes of his picturesque “Slovak Suite” employ Moravian exoticisms but go beyond regionalism to the universal, especially in the movements describing children at play, lovers meeting, and a nocturnal scene. Libor Pesek conducts the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Returning to the Baroque: Salvatore Accardo is the violinist and conductor of I Solisti Napoli as we present the Red Priest’s Concerto No. 2 in E Minor, “Il favorito.” (Vivaldi had such a fun nickname, didn’t he?)
