The Festival continues its highly successful “concerto” program begun in 2005 by presenting an entire concert of spectacular concertos by J.S. Bach featuring violin, harpsichord, oboe d’amore and more. Led by harpsichord soloist Andrew Arthur, this will be an unforgettable evening of solo “stars”– virtuoso instrumental soloists of our own Festival Orchestra.

The six Brandenburg Concertos stand at the pinnacle of the form first perfected by Corelli. But unlike Corelli’s and Handel’s concerti exclusively for strings, these works deploy an entire rainbow of instruments, from horns (in the first) to the outrageous harpsichord solo (in the fifth.) Each concerto is also distinctive in its character of expression, sometimes witty (the second) and at others darkly “antique” (the sixth.) No other collection of concerti grossi in the Baroque shows such range of ideas and effects, yet their dedicatee, the Margrave of Brandenburg, apparently never even looked at them from receipt until his death 13 years later.