Guts Baroque feat. Andrus Madsen
Fantasticus!
Sylvia Schwartz, baroque violin
Rebecca Shaw, viola da gamba
Andrus Madsen, harpsichord

Come join Guts Baroque, featuring Andrus Madsen, in early July! You’ll hear the whimsical, varied, and fantastical instrumental music from the courts of what is now Germany and Austria. Emperor Leopold I, himself a musician and composer, brought several prominent Italian musicians across the Alps to Vienna. These guests, including violin virtuoso Antonio Bertali, received good salaries and plenty of opportunities to perform, to compose, and to teach the new generation of German musicians the Stylus Fantasticus: the Italian style of purely instrumental fantasies made popular by Italian composers such as Girolamo Frescobaldi. Bertali’s student Johann Heinrich Schmelzer further developed the style. Schmelzer’s innovations helped spread it throughout what is now Germany, teaching and inspiring other prominent composers including Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber.

“Just listened to the Biber and was stopped dead in my tracks (my tracks being scrolling on my phone ... immediate closing of the eyes) so rolling, so gestural ... absolutely love it”
—Guts fan

Founded in 2017, Guts creates welcoming, powerful, un-stuffy experiences of baroque music played with love on period instruments, bringing you up close and personal with the music and the juicy stories of the composers and performers behind it. We breathe life into beautiful and unusual music, bringing it from the 17th and 18th centuries to your ears. Come experience the warmth and immediacy of historically-informed chamber music!