With Covid resurgent, Music of the Baroque revises its season again

Thu Nov 05, 2020 at 2:34 pm

By Lawrence A. Johnson

Inon Barnatan will perform Mozart with Music of the Baroque March 29. Photo: Marco Borggreve

Due to the fall resurgence of the novel coronavirus, Music of the Baroque has revised the previous revision of its 2020-21 season, which was originally announced last February. 

MOB will offer six 2021 programs, retooled with an eye towards Covid-19 limitations. In essence, Music of the Baroque’s 50th anniversary celebration is being put off a year, with epic choral works like the Messiah and St. Matthew Passion delayed until 2021-22.

The pandemic-minded programs will concentrate on strings, spanning just an hour each, with no conductor for the first two programs. While planned as streaming events for now, MOB is leaving open the possibility of admitting small audiences if changing circumstances permit.

Concertmaster Gina DiBello will be the soloist for The Four Seasons January 24, with baritone Christopher Kenney reading the poems that inspired Vivaldi’s ineradicable work. On February 28, co-assistant concertmasters Kathleen Brauer and Kevin Case are solo protagonists in two-violin concertos by Bach and Vivaldi.

Music director Jane Glover returns on March 29 with a program of Handel and Mozart. Inon Barnatan is the soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 14, sharing the bill with Mozart’s Symphony No. 29, and Handel’s Concerto grosso in A major and “Arrival of the Queen of Sheba.”

Principal guest conductor Nicholas Kraemer will lead the April and May programs. The April 26 concert features Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 3, 5 and 6. The May 9 event is devoted to concerto grossi and concertos for four violins by Vivaldi and Telemann. 

Glover will lead the final MOB concert on June 6, a program for chorus and orchestra featuring Byrd’s Mass for 4 Voices, Purcell’s In Nomine in 7 Parts and Vivaldi’s Gloria in D major.

The programs will be split between MOB’s two usual venues—the Harris Theater and the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie—with the choral program slated for Winnetka.

Subscriptions are now on sale with streaming passes for individual program available later this month. baroque.org 

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One Response to “With Covid resurgent, Music of the Baroque revises its season again”

  1. Posted Nov 10, 2020 at 3:56 pm by GCMP

    I know arts organizations are in a tight place, but does MOB really think that substituting streamed events is in any way shape or form the same as a traditional concert? And yet they expect us to “pay” the same as a traditional concert. At least we should get tax credits.
    In this age of financial uncertainty that would be a small help.

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