Handel and Haydn Society Presents "Italian Virtuosi"
Concertmaster Daniel Stepner, directing
With soprano Dominique Labelle
In a program full of fire and exuberance, violinist Daniel Stepner leads principal players from the Handel and Haydn Society’s Period-Instrument Orchestra in Baroque concerti by composers who were also leading violinists of their day, including Corelli and Vivaldi. Renowned soprano Dominique Labelle is featured on the program, singing Handel’s rarely performed cantata Delirio Amoroso, written during the composer’s four-year sojourn in Italy.
Handel and Haydn Society concertmaster since 1986, Daniel Stepner is also a member of the Lydian String Quartet and the Boston Museum Trio, as well as director of the Aston Magna Festival in the Berkshires. He has performed and recorded a wide repertoire on period and contemporary instruments.
Composed during Handel’s years living in Italy (1706-1710), Delirio Amiroso (love’s delirium) is a brilliantly orchestrated cantata for solo soprano. It tells a story of classical love featuring stunning arias and music that is in turns light and airy, then tragically dramatic. It is a perfect match for soprano Dominique Labelle, a frequent guest with the Society, who is esteemed for the beauty of her tone and technique.
Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, No. 3, is one of the Baroque composer’s most beloved works. Long considered a genius of Western music, Corelli (1653-1713) exercised a wide influence on his contemporaries and on succeeding generation of composers. His work, as both performer and composer, did much to spread the popularity of the violin throughout Europe.
One of Italy’s most distinguished and best-known Baroque violinist–composers, Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741), is represented on the program with his Concerto for oboe, bassoon, string and continuo – a work noted for its vitality, melodic invention, and originality.
Pietro Locatelli (1695 – 1764), a student of Corelli’s, was a virtuoso violinist. Based on the story of Ariadne, his Concerto Grosso, Op. 7, No. 6—Il Pianto d’Arianna, is essentially an instrumental cantata, with the solo violin playing the role of Ariadne and the orchestra serving as the chorus prominent in Greek tragedy.
CORELLI: Concerto Grosso, Op.6, No. 3
VIVALDI: Concerto for oboe, bassoon, strings and continuo
LOCATELLI: Il Pianto d’Arianna (Concerto Grosso Op. 7, No. 6)
HANDEL: Delirio Amoroso (cantata for soprano, strings and oboe)
WHO:
Daniel Stepner, conductor
Dominique Labelle, soprano
Daniel Stepner, conductor
Daniel Stepner has been the concertmaster of the Handel and Haydn Society for 22 seasons. His artistic achievements with the Society have won him special praise in The Boston Herald, "Concertmaster Daniel Stepner plays early music like no other local violinist. He's a true leader." Mr. Stepner is also first violinist of the Lydian String Quartet (in residence at Brandeis University), a member of the Boston Museum Trio (resident a the MFA), Artistic Director of the Aston Magna Festival in the Berkshires, and a Preceptor in Music at Harvard University. He has performed chamber and solo music from 1589 through 2002, and has recorded baroque sonatas by Bach, Vivaldi and Marais, major chamber works of Schubert, Brahms, Harbison, and Yehudi Wyner, and violin and piano sonatas of Charles Ives. He has been concertmaster for a number of orchestras, including Boston Baroque, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra and the New Haven Symphony. As a touring musician, he has played in eleven countries in Western Europe and the former Soviet Union, and throughout Australia and the United States. Mr. Stepner hails from Wisconsin, and his major teachers were Steven Staryk in Chicago, Nadia Boulanger in France, and Broadus Erle at Yale, where he earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree. He has taught violin and chamber music at the New England Conservatory, the Eastman School, Boston University and the Longy School.
Mr. Stepner last conducted the ensemble in a Vivaldi and Tartini program in 2004.
Dominique Labelle, soprano
Soprano Dominique Labelle is known for the luminous beauty of her voice, her committed stage presence, and the impeccable musicianship that she brings to her appearances in opera, concert, and recital. A frequent guest of the Handel and Haydn Society, she most recently appeared in Bach’s Mass in B Minor in October of 2002. Ms. Labelle has appeared with many of the finest symphonies, including those of Boston, Cleveland, Dallas, Houston, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Toronto with such noted conductors as Bernard Haitink, Christopher Hogwood, Kurt Masur, Nicholas McGegan, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Roger Norrington, Robert Shaw, and Franz Welser-Möst. Her operatic appearances have included leading roles with Boston Lyric Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Göttingen Handel Festival, Glimmerglass Opera, and Vancouver Opera. One of today’s finest interpreters of Handel, she presented the modern-day premiere of his recently discovered Gloria at the International Handel Festival in Göttingen with Nicholas McGegan conducting the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and has since performed the work with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Wiener Akademie in Vienna’s Musikverein.
The Boston Globe has said of Labelle that, “really, everyone needs more Dominique Labelle in their lives. There’s operatic glamour in the voice, of course, and technique and control to burn!”
