WAG has heard again from Mark Kramer, founder and artistic director of – and musician with – Ars Antiqua.
The Chappaqua-based baroque music ensemble will offer its next program at 8 p.m. Feb. 9 with “A Parisian Picture Gallery: 18th-Century French Musical Portraits,” followed by a buffet of French pastries and coffee.
Artists will include Nicholas DiEugenio on baroque violin and Leon Schelhase on harpsichord, with Kramer on viola da gamba. The program will feature music by Jean-Marie Leclair, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Marin Marais and Louis-Gabriel Guillemain.
Here’s how Kramer has advanced the program:
“Under the luminescence of sparkling chandeliers, ceilings covered with gold filigree and a profusion of glittering ornaments, Parisian music rooms provided a perfect backdrop for the effervescent and graceful music of French baroque composers. It was the age of Chardin, Boucher, Watteau and Fragonard whose paintings captured tiny moments of daily life and the faces of perfumed society. Composers took this painterly approach in their sonatas and chamber works, giving them fanciful titles and evoking the essence of a particular person or moment in time. Through the realistic musical imagery of Marais we experience the horror of an 18th-century medical procedure while Leclair and Guillemain delight the ear with enchanting music that is spectacularly ornate and decorative. In Rameau’s miniature portraits for harpsichord and accompanying instruments, we meet the King of Persia, Kouli Khan, and also learn about the mystery of a ‘ golden’ vioľ created expressly for the composer’s music.”
As always, the concert will be held at the historic Church of St. Mary the Virgin, at 191 S. Greeley Ave. in Chappaqua. Tickets are $35 and will be available at the door the evening of the concert, with the ticket desk opening at 7:30 p.m.
For more, visit ars-antiqua.org.
– Mary Shustack
