Event Schedule

Classical at Sunset Series

Pre-Concert talk at 2:00 PM with David Gordon.

The world-class orchestra plays Vivaldi's Four Seasons and more on period instruments! With Nicholas McGegan, conductor and Elizabeth Blumenstock, violin. 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. Visit their website here.

Under Music Director Nicholas McGegan, Philharmonia Baroque was named Musical America's 2004 Ensemble of the Year, and, according to Los Angeles Times critic Alan Rich, has become "an ensemble for early music as fine as any in the world today." The Orchestra performs an annual subscription season in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is regularly heard on tour in the United States and internationally. The Orchestra has its own professional chorus, the Philharmonia Chorale, and welcomes such talented guest artists as mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, countertenor David Daniels, conductor Jordi Savall, violinist Monica Huggett, recorder player Marion Verbruggen and soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian.

 PROGRAM

Arcangelo Corelli 
Concerto Grosso Op. 6 No. 7 in D major

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi 
Sinfonia in F major

Antonio Vivaldi 
Le quattro stagioni 
(The Four Seasons), Op. 8, Nos. 1-4 
Elizabeth Blumestock, violin

   Concerto in E major, RV 269 
   La primavera (Spring)

   Concerto in G minor, RV 315 
   L'estate (Summer)

INTERMISSION

Le quattro stagioni 
(The Four Seasons) continued

   Concerto in F major, RV 293 
   L'autunno (Autumn)

   Concerto in F minor, RV 297 
   L'inverno (Winter)

Pietro Locatelli
   Concerto Grosso Op. 7, No. 6
   "Il pianto d'Arianna"

Francesco Durante
   Concerto No. 5 in A major

Nicholas McGegan

Nicholas McGegan is loved by audiences and orchestras for performances that match authority with enthusiasm, scholarship with joy, and curatorial responsibility with evangelical exuberance. He has been music director of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra for twenty-six years, and was Artistic Director of the International Handel Festival Göttingen for twenty years.

He has been a pioneer in the process of exporting historically informed practice beyond the world of period instruments to conventional symphonic forces, guest-conducting orchestras including the Chicago, St. Louis Symphony, Toronto and Sydney Symphonies, the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, the New York, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong Philharmonics, and the Northern Sinfonia and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, as well as opera companies including Covent Garden, San Francisco, Santa Fe and Washington.

Born in England, Nicholas McGegan was educated at Cambridge and Oxford. He was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) "for services to music overseas." His awards also include the Halle Handel Prize; the Order of Merit of the State of Lower Saxony (Germany); the Medal of Honour of the City of Göttingen, and an official Nicholas McGegan Day, declared by the Mayor of San Francisco in recognition of his distinguished work with the Philharmonia Baroque.

Visit Nic McGegan on the web at www.nicholasmcgegan.com.

Elizabeth Blumenstock

Baroque violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock is widely admired as a performer of compelling verve and eloquence. She has played with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra since 1981 as a regular soloist, concertmaster, and leader. She is also a regular concertmaster with American Bach Soloists, the Göttingen Händelfestspiel Orchestra and the Italian ensemble Il Complesso Barocco. Blumenstock is a member of several other leading period-instrument chamber ensembles, including Musica Pacifica, Arcadian Academy, and Trio Galanterie.

Blumenstock has performed throughout the United States and abroad, appearing with the Boston and Berkeley Early Music Festivals, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Los Angeles Opera, Carmel Bach Festival, Oulunsalo Soi Festival (Finland), and San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, among many others. With over 95 recordings in her discography, she has recorded for Dorian, harmonia mundi, Virgin Classics, BMG, Reference Recordings, Koch International, Sony, and New Albion, among others.

An active and enthusiastic teacher, Blumenstock is instructor of baroque violin at the International Baroque Institute at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is on the teaching staff of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She has also taught at the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin and the Austrian Baroque Academy, and has coached baroque ensembles at Roosevelt University, the University of Virginia, and at the School for Music in Montevideo, Uruguay.

She plays a 1660 Andrea Guarneri violin on loan from the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra Period Instrument Trust.

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra

The Orchestra has had numerous successful collaborations with celebrated musicians, composers, and choreographers. Philharmonia Baroque premiered its first commissioned work, a one-act opera by Jake Heggie entitled To Hell and Back, in November 2006. In collaboration with the Mark Morris Dance Group, Philharmonia Baroque gave the U.S. premieres of Morris' highly acclaimed productions of Henry Purcell's King Arthur and Jean-Philippe Rameau's ballet-opera Platée.

Among the most-recorded period-instrument orchestras in the United States or in Europe, Philharmonia has made thirty-two highly praised recordings - including its Gramophone award winning recording of Handel's Susanna - for harmonia mundi, Reference Recordings, and BMG. In 2011, the orchestra launched its own label, Philharmonia Baroque Productions, with an acclaimed recording of Berlioz' Les Nuits d'été and Handel arias featuring mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. The second CD release, Haydn: Symphonies No. 104 "London", No. 88, No. 101 "The Clock," was nominated for a GRAMMY® Award for Best Orchestral Performance.

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra was founded by harpsichordist and early music pioneer Laurette Goldberg.