612 for harpsichord
Allemande, “Plainte faite à Londres pour passer la Melancolie”, from: Suite XXX in A minor, FbWV 630
Louis COUPERIN: Pièce pour clavecin in F major “Tombeau de M. de Blancrocher”
Mihály BULYOVSZKY: Suite in B flat minor for harpsichord
Johann Sebastian BACH: Ciaconna in D minor, BWV 1004, arrangement for harpsichord by G. Leonhardt
Waleska Sieczkowska violin
Sofya Gandilyan harpsichord
On Good Friday our soloists Sofya Gandilyan and Waleska Sieczkowska will play music appropriate to the hour of death: five sonatas from the “Sorrowful Rosary” by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704) as well as harpsichord works by his contemporaries.
Biber’s 16 “Mystery Sonatas” are in many respects an exceptional cycle. Each sonata presents a musical image that is linked to the life of Jesus. Also, each sonata in the first printing contains symbolic images appropriate to the respective themes. Another special feature of this cycle is the so-called scordatura, i.e. the retuning of the violin. For each sonata – except for the first and the last – the violin has to be tuned differently, reaching its climax in Sonata XI, where the strings even have to be tuned one above the other, so that visually a cross is created. Several violins await you, allowing our soloist Waleska Sieczkowska to retune several times.
The counterpart to the Biber sonatas are harpsichord works that deal with the theme of mourning. Thus the harpsichord pieces by Johann Jacob Froberger (1616-1667) and his pupil
Louis Couperin (cа. 1626-1661) were written in memory of the deceased; like Biber’s sonatas, they are full of the
mourning sound symbolism.