2008 Season Overview

	At the Sherman Library & Gardens, each performance is preceded by live brass music al fresco while concert-goers enjoy strolling through the gardens.

The 28th annual season of our Festival will welcome the return of distinguished vocal and instrumental soloists who have given us great pleasure for many seasons.

Our Festival Chorus and Festival Orchestra of period instruments are created from individually engaged singers and players, We never hires existing performing groups, so that our unique ensembles are heard only in our Festival.

The opening program will offer brilliant concertos for virtuoso soloists. You will hear an obscure concerto for violin, trumpet and cello obbligato by Philipp Telemann, and a concerto for trumpet and strings by Giuseppe Torelli, whose 350th birthday we recognize in three of this season’s concerts.

Organ recitalist Timothy Howard will return, this year joined by Baroque trumpeter John Thiessen. Continuing our efforts to offer the best in Baroque music and also significant creations from later periods that are in some way inspired by the Baroque, Dr. Howard’s recital will conclude with a monumental work by the Hungarian Romantic composer Franz Liszt, one that is melodically based on the notes B A C H of the German musical scale.

Two events in the beautiful Sherman Gardens will follow our established pattern. Wednesday evening’s chamber music for voices and strings, this year including trumpet, will offer solo cantatas by Alessandro Scarlatti and a wild and humorous 17th-century work for strings by the little-known Carlo Farina. Friday evening again will bring together the four magnificent solo artists who are heard as an ensemble only here annually in the Gardens. Of special interest will be rarely performed solo sonatas and a trio sonata by Johan Roman, the most important Swedish composer of the 18th century.

Our Festival Finale, with soloists, chorus and orchestra conducted by Artistic Director Burton Karson, will open with two sacred cantatas based on the biblical text of the Magnificat, the first by Francesco Durante (previously credited to his student Pergolesi), and then J. S. Bach’s Meine Seel erhebt den Herren. Vivaldi’s dramatic Dixit Dominus, to a text from Psalm 109, will close our 28th season.