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Celebrating Bach: Trios & Solos by the great Johann Sebastian Bach
In honor of the 240th anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach, the new season of Early Music Afternoons begins on Sunday, October 19, 2025, with a concert of music by the master, performed by Ensemble Chaconne (Peter H. Bloom, Baroque flute; Carol Lewis, viola da gamba; Olav Chris Henriksen, Baroque lute). The trio will play flute sonatas, a prelude and fugue for lute, and a transcription for viola da gamba from Bach’s second cello suite. The concert will take place at 3:00 pm at the Somerville Museum, One Westwood Road (at Central St.), Somerville, MA. Admission is $30 general admission, $25 students and seniors, $20 Museum members. Tickets are available at the door. Street parking is available, and the Museum is ADA compliant. For further information, call (617) 666-9810 or go to https://www.somervillemuseum.org/calendar-events/duo-maresienne-celebrating-bach
By the time Johann Sebastian Bach passed away in 1750, he was a highly respected composer, although many of his contemporaries found his music to be old-fashioned and complex, preferring the newer “galant” style, with its simpler melodies and harmonies. Several decades later, connoisseurs of music began to collect and play again the compositions of the old master. This was the beginning of the Bach revival that continues until this day and is the inspiration for our program. You’ll hear two of Bach’s pieces that are specified for lute, his Prelude BWV 999 and Fugue BWV 1000, as well as the beautiful Prelude, Allemande and Gigue from the d minor suite for cello, transcribed for bass viola da gamba. And the program’s centerpiece is the three sonatas for flute and basso continuo, including the ravishing e minor sonata, likely inspired by Bach’s friendship with the virtuoso flutist Pierre Buffardin.
Founded in 1985, Ensemble Chaconne is dedicated to vivid, historically informed performance of renaissance and baroque music on period instruments. The group has performed in the United States and abroad, with concerts for The National Gallery in London, Atlanta’s famed Spivey Hall, the venerable Edison Theatre in Saint Louis, The Bach Festival Society of Winter Park Florida, The Yale Center for British Art, the Royal Shakespeare Company Residency at Davidson College, The Bach Ascending Series in Savannah, The National Music Museum in Vermillion SD, Boston’s acclaimed Jordan Hall, Lewis University Arts & Ideas (Chicago area), and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, among others.
Event Links
Tickets: https://go.evvnt.com/3293715-0
