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More Details About Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra: The Majesty of Christmas

Herbst Theatre at the San Francisco War Memorial Building

The Herbst is small by most performing-arts standards (only 928 seats). So despite its stately appearance, it provides a refreshingly intimate atmosphere.

Wine, beer, soda and coffee are often available in the Main Veterans marbled lobby for shows with intermissions (not lectures).

More Information

Website: http://www.philharmonia.org/NextConcert.htm

Program
Heinrich Schütz: The Christmas Story (Weihnachtshistorie)
Johann Rosenmüller: Magnificat
Johann Rosenmüller: Sonata in D major
Johann Kuhnau: O heilige Zeit

Konrad Junghänel, guest conductor
Philharmonia Chorale
Bruce Lamott, director


This concert explores the fertile but still relatively unknown landscape of 17th-century German sacred music. The program brings together three composers (Heinrich Schuetz, Johann Rosenmueller and Johann Kuhnau) who, though seen in their own day as giants of music, have seen their reputations dimmed by their status as "pre-Bach": composers viewed all too often as secondary figures who provided a background for the emergence of the genius of Bach. This is most remarkable in the case of Schuetz, whose works have enjoyed the praise of scholars for at least a century, but whose music still encounters difficulty in reaching the broader concert audience. Although Kuhnau is often noted in passing as Bach's successor in Leipzig, his music and that of Rosenmueller remains regrettably unexplored.

No factor is more important to the history of German sacred music in the 17th century than the diffusion of Italian style in the North, and the journeys of musicians back and forth across the Alps form a thread in this concert. German musicians, traveling to Italy to learn the latest fashions in concerted polychoral music or solo monody, brought back home with them musical ideas, styles and techniques which they and their German colleagues would assimilate into a revolutionary new German musical language fusing the Germanic interest in polyphony and harmony to the Venetian concertato style, the more severe consonant-laden sounds of the German language to the Italian recitar cantando, and an Italian graciousness of melody to the German motet.

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra

San Francisco's Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra has been dedicated to historically-informed performance of Baroque, Classical and early-Romantic music on original instruments since its inception in 1981. Under the leadership of Nicholas McGegan, its Music Director since 1985, Philharmonia has become "an ensemble for early music as fine as any in the world today" (Los Angeles Times). The Orchestra performs a subscription season in four cities in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is regularly heard on tour in the United States and internationally. In addition to Mr. McGegan, the Orchestra has welcomed eminent guest conductors to its podium including William Christie, Andrew Parrott, Jordi Savall, Gustav Leonhardt, Monica Huggett and Stanley Ritchie.