Royal Music: Purcell & Händel is the title of the Christmas Concert of the musical season ERF&TeatroMasiniMusica 2018-19 on Thursday 13 December at the Church of Sant’Ippolito in Faenza (9 pm). On the stage the orchestra of Camerata Accademica, conducted by Paolo Faldi, with a program of Suites taken from the Concert The Fairy Queen by Henry Purcell and the Water Music by Händel.
For this Christmas, the Church of Sant’Ippolito in Faenza recovers the atmosphere of the English ‘700, with a concert focused on the suites of two fundamental compositions. The first is from The Fairy Queen by Herny Purcell, a baroque semi-opera that the great English composer drew from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; while the second comes from Water Music, the famous concert that Händel held on the river Thames – and that so much keen on King George I to urge him to ask the orchestra to perform the whole opera three times.
In the sumptuous concert the Anglo-Italian style and the French overture meet each other in a framework of regal majesty. Purcell, near the end of his career, with The Fairy Queen (London 1692), here proposed in a suite, composed some of his most beautiful theatrical music, exhibiting the contrapuntal skill and assimilation of Italian influences. While Händel’s Water Music is composed for instruments that, in addition to strings and continuous, requires at least one flute, two oboes, a bassoon, two horns and two trumpets.
To bring the regal atmosphere to Faenza will be the Camerata Accademica, instrumental and vocal ensemble orchestra of the Pollini Conservatory composed by students and graduates of the Padua Conservatory who are engaged in the study of the great Baroque repertoire, according to the performance practice of the time. The ensemble is conducted by Paolo Faldi, professor of flute at the Conservatory of Padua and prestigious interpreter of baroque music. Graduated in oboe and in recorder, Paolo Faldi perfected himself in baroque oboe at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, winning in 1988 the position of First Oboe and Flute in the Baroque Orchestra of the European Community conducted by Ton Koopmann and Roy Goodman, with tours throughout Europe and radio and television recordings. He has played with the major European baroque groups and orchestras.