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A MadAminA! Insert: Handel Redux

Nov. 27, 2024

It was in 1984 that the Washington Friends of Handel decided to commission a new work in honor of the upcoming 300th anniversary of Georg Friedrich Handel and music director Stephen Simon chose Ellen Taaffe Zwilich to do the honors. The intention was to give the world premiere in the fall of 1985 but, owing to a schedule conflict, the Handel Festival Orchestra would not launch the Concerto Grosso 1985 until May of 1986. Its performance was preceded by a rendition of the Handel Sonata in D for violin and continuo upon which the Zwilich five-movement piece was based.


First line of Handel's Sonata in D for violin and continuo


G.F. Handel

The Washington Post’s critic wrote: “It’s a marvelous piece, thematically unified by Handel’s lovely opening violin phrase, in which the baroque and the contemporary enjoy the most fruitful symbiotic relationship. Zwilich has the happy knack of saying things clearly and simply, but with unexpected details, and she has added to the repertory a piece that should become a concert standard.”

Prescient words. The Concerto Grosso 1985 has had hundreds of performances all over the world. When the great music engraver and founder of Boelke-Bomart/Mobart Music Publications heard a tape, he exclaimed “I want that piece” and it was taken into his publishing fold, along with Zwilich’s Divertimento, Clarinet Quintet, and Fantasy for Harpsichord. Scored for a handful of winds, harpsichord and strings, the 15-minute Concerto Grosso is now available from Schott Music Corporation.

To learn more about Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, visit schott-music.com.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
Concerto Grosso 1985 (1985)
for chamber orchestra
fl.2ob(2.ca).bsn-2hn-hpd-str
15'

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