The concert featuring Giovanni Antonini, Julia Lezhneva and Il Giardino Armonico will be a meeting with outstanding Baroque composers – George Frideric Handel, Geminiano Giacomelli, Carl Heinrich Graun, Matthew Lock and, finally, Antonio Vivaldi. The programme will be interesting and varied, and the selection of works will allow you to look at the achievements of these composers from many perspectives.

Locke was a leading English theatre composer active before Henry Purcell. One of his most famous works is incidental music for The Tempest staged in April 1674, which was a loose adaptation of the work of William Shakespeare, prepared by the poet Thomas Shadwell. In it, Locke was the first in the British Islands to articulate tremolo in a string instrument part. Tremolo is a fast-paced repetition of sounds, designed to increase tension. The concert programme includes four sections of the music for The Tempest: Introduction, Canon 4 in 2, Lilk and Curtain Tune.

Nowadays, we remember Vivaldi mainly as the creator of instrumental concertos, but this prolific composer wrote numerous and very successful operas too. The programme features two arias from the works of the Red Priest – the daring Agitata da due venti from Griselda, based on Decameron, and the lyrical Zeffiretti che susurrate from Ercole su’l Termodonte (Hercules in Termodont). In the 18th century, the concept of copyright did not yet exist, and composers freely used in their works modified arias from the operas of their colleagues. Vivaldi did so too, and the aria Sposa son disprezzata from Bajazet (another variant of the title is Il Tamerlano) is a slightly changed aria from Giacomelli’s La Merope. These types of operas were referred to as "pasticcio", which literally means ... pate.

The German composer and tenor Carl Henrich Graun was one of the most respected authors of Italian-style operas. A taste of his excellent, though little known today, oeuvre you will feel in the dramatic aria No, no di Libia fra le arene from Silla dated 1753.
Handel is currently one of the most recognizable composers of the Baroque era, famous both for his instrumental and vocal-instrumental works. During the concert his two arias will sound: the violent Un pensiero nemico di pace from Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (Triumph of Time and Disappointment) and no less attractive Brilla nell'alma from Alessandro. The wonderful Concerto grosso in G minor op. 6 no. 6 will be a superb crowning of the programme.