Bach to the Future Comes to SU Saturday, February 26

SALISBURY, MD---Love, infidelity and passion are the recipe for choral delight in Bach to the Future’s upcoming concert series, “A Night of Passions: Italian Madrigals from the Late Renaissance and Early Baroque.” Dedicated to providing the Eastern Shore with classical choral music performances of consummate technical excellence and contagious musical zeal, Bach to the Future (BTTF) presents a performance 8 p.m. Saturday, February 26 at Salisbury University’s Great Hall of Holloway Hall. The public also is invited to a pre-concert conversation with BTTF and Music Director Richard Allen Roe 7:30 p.m. In this program, three masterful composers paint familiar pictures with extraordinary music. The concerts will include selections from Don Carlo Gesualdo di Venosa’s Il Sesto Libro di Madrigali (1613), and Heinrich Schütz’s Italienische Madrigale (1611), as well as the complete Lamento d’Arianna (1610) of Claudio Monteverdi. While all pieces will be performed in their original Italian, translations will be provided in the concert program, and the dramatic nature of the music of madrigals from this period allows listeners to hear and feel the emotions of the lyricist and composer even without understanding the text word-for-word. Few composers had as interesting a personal life as the charming and volatile Prince of Venosa, Don Carlo Gesualdo. Legend states that he was accused of killing his wife and her lover in their bed after he caught them in an illicit affair. Gesualdo’s madrigals far exceed the norm for expressing the meaning of the text. Heinrich Schütz was one of many German composers to travel and study in Venice, Italy, the home of many of Italy’s finest musicians. His Italienische Madrigale, begun at this time, are not mere “student compositions”: the finesse of his musical language is remarkable for a composer of the Early Italian Baroque period, famous throughout Europe for his operas, church works and especially his madrigals. His Lamento d’Arianna gives voice to the Greek mythological heroine, Ariadne, who saved her beloved Theseus, repaid her kindness, however, by giving him a spool of thread to mark his way out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. Theseus repaid her kindness, however, by abandoning her on an island where wild animals and the brutal forces of nature threatened her life. Tickets are available in advance for $12 from Crackerjack’s in Easton or for $15 at the door. SU ID holders are admitted free. Funding for this event is provided by the SU Department of Music, the Talbot County Arts Council and the Maryland State Arts Council. For more information call 410-543-6030 or visit the SU Web site at www.salisbury.edu.