Highlights of the High Baroque

Dallas Bach Society brings Highlights of the High Baroque to Our Redeemer Lutheran Church on Saturday, October 10, at 7:30 PM. It's part of their Masterworks Series, and the whole evening is built around the music of the eighteenth century. The program pulls from a few of the biggest names of the era—Bach, Telemann, Vivaldi, and Clerambault—and the ensemble plays on period instruments, which means you're hearing these pieces on the kinds of instruments they were actually written for.

The night opens with Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, one of his most recognizable works, followed by Telemann's Concerto for Flute, Recorder and Strings. From there, the program shifts to the voice: Vivaldi's motet Nulla in mundo pax sincera brings in a soprano, and the evening closes with Clerambault's cantata Médée, which retells the Greek myth of Medea in an emotional, brilliant setting. It's a wide-ranging set that moves from the structured energy of the concertos to the more dramatic, vocal storytelling of the cantata.

On stage, the New Texas Symphony Orchestra provides the foundation, joined by soprano Taylor Fenner, Baroque violinist Clare Cason, recorder player Mei Stone, and flauto traverso player Meg Griffith. The mix of voices and period winds—recorder and flauto traverso—is a good way to hear the different colors of the Baroque sound in one sitting. The Dallas Bach Society describes the program as a look at the Baroque aesthetic, and the shift from the instrumental concertos to the vocal works lets you hear that aesthetic from a few different angles.

It all goes down at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, 7611 Park Ln, Dallas, TX 75225, on Saturday, October 10, starting at 7:30 PM.