20 singers from St. Martin’s Chamber Choir will be joined by four instrumentalists from the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado to perform four exquisite works from the Baroque and Classical eras by two pairs of composing fathers and sons. This is the kind of clean but interesting programming I love best — one piece each by four master composers, bound together by a fascinating biographical detail that makes them companions for the evening. Aside from hearing the choir (which is sounding as good or better than I have ever heard any group of SMCC singers, I might add), the audience will be invited to ponder the idea of inherited musical talent — nature or nurture, to use sociological words.
Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti were both acknowledged Baroque masters (Domenico born in that uniquely productive year 1685 when J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel were also born). Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart, while less equal to each other in their talents than the former pair (Leopold being decidedly inferior to his son Wolfgang as a composer, although he distinguished himself independently of his son by writing a book expounding a violin-playing method that was used to teach violinists for hundreds of years after his death), nevertheless warrant attention in that the work we are singing by Leopold was attributed for a hundred years or more to Wolfgang, and therefore thought good enough to be worthy of him. And I am quite fond of the piece myself, being in a sort of Rococo or Galant style that falls in between the Baroque and Classical, and chock full of melodic inventiveness, demonstrating in part where the young Wolfgang inherited his melodic genius.
This is going to be a concert that will be talked of for many months and perhaps even years to come, so I recommend getting your tickets soon! The Saturday evening performance at St. Andrew’s is already half sold, so this one may very well sell out before the evening itself.
Friday April 13, 7:30pm, Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Wheat Ridge
Saturday, April 14, 7:30pm, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Denver
Sunday,April 15, 3:00pm, St. Paul Community of Faith, Denver
Tickets available at our website; or our office at (303) 298-1970.