Dialogues from Baroque to the Present

The opening concert of the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava's chamber subscription series presents an unconventional combination of oboe, French horn, and harpsichord. The programme connects Baroque music with 20th and 21st-century works, tracing the evolution of sound imagination across centuries.

François Couperin served at the court of Louis XIV and Louis XV at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. For the Versailles celebrations, he composed in 1724 the cycle Les goûts réunis, in which he united French elegance with the Italian style of Arcangelo Corelli. A humorous contrast comes from Britten's portrait of a grasshopper in Two Insect Pieces (1935). Images for oboe, French horn, and piano come from Claude Debussy's unfinished Sonata (1915-1918) in Kenneth Cooper's reconstruction. It was precisely Debussy's colourfulness of this instrumentation that inspired Thomas Adès in 1993 to compose Sonata da caccia, paying homage to both Debussy and Couperin. Jean-Philippe Rameau created in his cycle Pièces de clavecin en concerts (1741) chamber works with a brilliant harpsichord part. Spell Song for solo oboe by Toshio Hosokawa (2015) draws from Eastern calligraphy. The concert closes with Vivaldi's Sonata for oboe and basso continuo in G minor RV28.

Programme
François Couperin: Concerto No. 14 from the cycle Les goûts réunis
Benjamin Britten: The Grasshopper from the cycle Two Insect Pieces
Claude Debussy (ed. Kenneth Cooper): Images for oboe, French horn, and harpsichord
Thomas Adès: Sonata da caccia
Jean-Philippe Rameau: Pièces de clavecin en concert: Concert V
Toshio Hosokawa: Spell Song for solo oboe
Antonio Vivaldi: Sonata for oboe and basso continuo in G minor RV28

Performers
Martin Daněk - oboe
Paweł Cal - French horn
Mélusine de Pas - viola da gamba
Monika Knoblochová - harpsichord