PLEASE NOTE: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO ILLNESS. FURTHER INFORMATION WILL BE AVAILABLE SHORTLY AT https://astonmagna.org
Great Barrington — On December 17 at Saint James Place, Aston Magna will celebrate Daniel Stepner’s 30th year as its Artistic Director. And while they’re at it, the group will perform “A Baroque Holiday Celebration,” a program of audience favorites by Vivaldi, Bach, Purcell, Corelli, and Pachelbel.
Since 1972, Aston Magna has been a leader in the world of historically informed performance, being America’s oldest annual summer festival devoted to music performed on period instruments. Their mission is simply to play early chamber music naturally, which is to say, in a manner that would be most familiar to audiences of the time in which a work was originally conceived.
And for the last three decades, violinist Daniel Stepner, Professor Emeritus at Brandeis University, has been leading the organization. A Preceptor in Music at Harvard University for 21 years, Stepner served as concertmaster of the Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra for 24 years and was a founding member of the Boston Museum Trio at the Museum of Fine Arts, playing violin with the ensemble for 30 years.
Aston Magna gave the first American performances of J. S. Bach’s complete Brandenburg Concertos and performed the first Mozart symphonies on original instruments. The group’s international performances have included appearances at the Valtice Festival in the Czech Republic and a tour of Europe performing George Frideric Handel’s oratorio “The Triumph of Time and Truth” at such venues as the Pamphilj Palace in Rome, where Handel first directed the work in 1707.
And the object of all of this activity? It is not, as you might think, about enslavement to technical correctness (as rewarding as that may be). Rather, it is about pleasure—pleasure that comes from hearing music originating in Bach’s time, and earlier, sounding the way it sounded to composers and audiences of the day. The sonorities produced by original period instruments—or historically accurate reproductions—are so pleasing that the simplest motives and harmonies are of unsurpassed beauty when performed skillfully.
They’re playing a killer program on the 17th:
- Vivaldi’s “Winter”
- J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 3 and 6
- Purcell’s Chacony (Sonata in G Minor)
- Corelli’s Christmas Concerto
- Pachelbel’s Canon and Gigue
And here’s the lineup of musicians:
- Daniel Stepner, Julie Leven, and Julia Glenn, baroque violins
- Marcus Thompson and Anne Black, baroque violas
- Laura Jeppesen, baroque viola and viola da gamba
- Loretta O’Sullivan and Jacques Lee Wood, baroque cellos
- Chelsea Bernstein, baroque cello and viola da gamba
- Anne Trout, baroque bass and violone
- Michael Sponseller, harpsichord
If you click on the links for these players, you’ll realize they constitute an all-star band.
Julia Glenn will play baroque violin on Vivaldi’s virtuoso showpiece “Winter.” This work is sufficiently thrilling to be placed at the end of the program, but that honor goes to Arcangelo Corelli’s Christmas Concerto, which, alone, is worth the price of admission.
Hear the Aston Magna Players in a program of Bach, Vivaldi, Purcell, Pachelbel, and Corelli at Saint James Place, December 17 at 3 p.m. or on Sunday, December 18, at 3 p.m. in Slosberg Music Center, Brandeis University, 415 South Street, Waltham. Purchase tickets here or call 888-492-1283.
Aston Magna participates in the MCC Card to Culture program offering $2 tickets for EBT and WIC cardholders.
