Themes of loss and lonesomeness abound in the most important opera ever written.
Pegasus Early Music
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A classical conundrum
From virtual performances to reduced ensemble sizes, local classical music groups present revised 2020-21 seasons.
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CLASSICAL | Pegasus Early Music: ‘Nevertheless, She Persisted’
The 17th and 18th centuries were enlivened by some persistent and talented women composers and performers, all of them more or less erased by history until recently. This weekend’s Pegasus Early Music concert features a potpourri of instrumental pieces, songs, and opera excerpts by five such women: Barbara Strozzi, Antonia Bembo, Isabella Leonarda, Julie Pinel, […]
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Pegasus Early Music’s season opener features works for viol
The early string instrument known as the viol (rhymes with “smile”) can frequently be found in Renaissance and Baroque art, usually in the hands of princesses, saints, or angels. For Pegasus Early Music’s September 22 concert “Viol3,” however, three viols will be in the hands of musicians Beiliang Zhu, Lisa Terry, and David Morris.
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Classical review: Pegasus’s ‘Bach & Bach’
In the Baroque period, different countries had different musical traits associated with them. In a quick-and-dirty overview: Italian music was vocally oriented and virtuosic; German music was “learned” (heavy on the counterpoint); and French music was, well, French: generally light textured, highly ornamented, more concerned with the intimate than the transcendental. (This is a very […]
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Classical review: Pegasus marks Monteverdi’s 450th
Pegasus Early Music kicked off its 2017-18 concert season in grand style on Sunday, with a program featuring the madrigals and sacred song settings of Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi — widely considered the father of opera — marking his 450th birth year. The concert also featured instrumental music by his contemporaries Dario Castello, Biagio Marini, […]
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Sounds all around
Rochester’s 2017-18 classical music season has a little something for everyone, from traditional performances to contemporary concerts.
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Pegasus Early Music stages its first opera, ‘Dido and Aeneas’
In the world of opera, good things often come in large, gaudily wrapped packages. Pegasus Early Music this weekend hopes to prove that small is good, operatically speaking, with a production of Henry Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas.” The opera will run this Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday at the Jewish Community Center’s Hart Theater. “It’s been […]
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Classical review: Pegasus’s “The Secret of the Muses”
The 17th century French lutenist and composer Jacques Gaultier was once praised for “the goodness of his hands — the most swift, the neatest, and most even that ever were.” That’s also an accurate paean for 21st century lutenist Paul O’Dette, who offered a blissful solo recital on Sunday afternoon as part of the Pegasus […]
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Classical review: “Barbara’s Venice”
The best concerts bring genuine discoveries as well as purely musical delights. This was the case with “Barbara’s Venice,” the opener to Pegasus Early Music’s 12th season. The Barbara referred to is Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677), a notable singer and an even more celebrated composer in a time and place that had more than its share […]
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Pegasus Early Music sets sights on Vivaldi
If you attended the RPO’s performance of Richard Strauss’s “Ein Heldenleben” last month, you heard one of the late-Romantic era’s biggest pieces of program music — music that paints pictures or tells a story. Strauss wrote plenty of these pieces, as did such 19th-century composers as Liszt and Tchaikovsky. But if you think program music […]
