6th Baroque Music Festival: 1723

The Baroque Music Festival, the successful tradition of the Thessaloniki Concert Hall, returns to the GNO Alternative Stage and the historical hall of the Parnassos Literary Society to take audiences on a journey to the enchanting world of Baroque music. The programme of this year’s Festival, curated by the prolific and tireless cellist Dimos Goudaroulis, includes four singular concerts revolving around the year 1723.

The Festival opens with a concert by Lucile Boulanger, one of the most important and acclaimed gambists of our time, who will perform two of Johann Sebastian Bach’s wonderful sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord composed in the German city of Köthen‎, as well as sonatas by the last great gambist of the second half of the 18^th century, Carl Friedrich Abel.

Next comes a second concert with Dimos Goudaroulis on the violoncello piccolo and the exquisite French-Brazilian harpsichordist Bruno Procopio performing transcriptions of Bach’s works for violoncello, violin or viola da gamba and harpsichord, as well as works by Giuseppe Valentini and sonatas by Italian violoncellist Andrea Caporale.

The third concert, titled Double Ensemble (East – West) on Period Instruments, in which the music of Dimitrie Cantemir and sophisticated music from the Ottoman court engage in dialogue and are contrasted with music from the Baroque European courts of the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries, in a modern and historically informed reading in which two quartets made up of excellent musicians engage in original conversation and interaction.

The Festival comes complete with the fourth concert, featuring the ensemble La Stravaganza Greca, includes an Italian programme of masterly sonatas by Giuseppe Tartini and Antonio Vantini, as well as rare trio sonatas for violin, violoncello and basso continuo by Italian Baroque composers Alessandro Stradella, Nicola Antonio Porpora and Giovanni Benedetto Platti.