The Weimar Social Club:
Imagine that famous portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach, wig-adorned, career-established, in middle age. Now imagine what he might have looked like years earlier as a spry twentysomething, looking for work and community as twentysomethings do. When Sebastian Bach accepted his first big job at the court of Weimar, he crossed paths with Telemann, who was working in nearby Eisenach. The two quickly became friends and exchanged letters and musical ideas for decades. (Telemann became godfather to Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emmanuel.) When Pisendel passed through town around the same time, two friends became three. We like to imagine them hanging out together being people in their 20s trying to figure it all out, swapping jokes (both musical and German), playing and composing music together as they each launched their careers.

Our concert includes a sonata Bach wrote for Pisendel, a sonata Pisendel likely wrote in collaboration with (and maybe poking fun at??) Bach, and a sonata by Telemann that Bach and Pisendel both likely owned a copy of.

And… buckle up. The Bach and Pisendel push hard on the harmonic boundaries of conventional Baroque music. The most apt phrase that arose out of our rehearsal process is: “this is METAL!!”

Take a midday break from your Thursday with us to hear for yourself what shenanigans these three got up to. —Guts Baroque

Program:
Bach’s Sonata in e minor, BWV 1023 – opening with the dark-side cousin to his E major Partita prelude
Pisendel’s Sonata in c minor – the most metal piece on the program
Telemann’s Sonata in A major – a joyful contrast to the first two to bring us peaceably back into the world after our wild ride