Canadian baroque ensemble Tafelmusik want to take Canberrans on "a virtual visit to five private homes, in five different cities in Europe" – including the lavish Palais Royal in Paris and a pancake restaurant in Delft.
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They're doing this through their new concert House of Dreams. Its creator, bassist Alison Mackay, wants you to feel like you are a guest for the afternoon in one of these spectacular baroque homes. You will sit in the parlours and appreciate the "best music in town" while gazing on "some really spectacular paintings".
The paintings from artists including Vermeer, Canaletto and Watteau will be projected above the orchestra in giant gilt frame at Llewellyn Hall, along with photos of the houses and the rooms where they were once displayed. Mackay says that this will put the music into its original "historical and social context".
The music is a mix of beloved and lesser known baroque works from Handel, Bach, Vivaldi, Sweelinck, Purcell and Telemann. Audiences can particularly look forward to one of the lesser known pieces, a suite from the opera Alcyone by Marais. Mackay describes the work as "absolutely ravishing" and containing a sailors' dance featuring an original context for a familiar tune.
To complete the experience, the program is knitted together by narration from Canadian theatre actor and director Blair Williams. He will introduce the houses as well as recite excerpts from some of the literary and dramatic works that inspired the music.
The houses featured are all real houses located in London, Venice, Paris, Delft and Leipzig. They have been chosen because they are known to have hosted musical performances of prominent composers in the same rooms as their significant collections of paintings from contemporary artists.
Presenting baroque music in an authentic way is a specialty for Tafelmusik, described by Gramaphon Magazine as "one of the world's finest Baroque orchestras". The 17 members of the orchestra are all experts in historical performance techniques. To further help bring the music to life, most of their instruments are original. In fact, perhaps their most extraordinary instrument, the Santo Serafin violin played by music director Jeanne Lamon, was made just a short five-minute walk from the Venice house depicted in this concert.
Tafelmusik has extensively researched and photographed all five houses to put the concert together. In the intervening centuries these houses have changed hands – they are now museums, galleries, a French court and a pancake restaurant. The artworks have moved on too. They hang in the Louvre and the Hermitage and experts had to pore over auction and estate records to identify the correct paintings that belonged to each house.
"We've been able to digitally put the paintings back in the rooms and then we put the music back in live," says Mackay. And it's not just the rooms that they are recreating. They found a letter from a friend of Handel's which described the first rehearsal of an opera in the composer's home. Tafelmusik recreate this experience by setting the London leg of the journey in Handel's Mayfair house and will be performing music from his opera Theodora. Projected on the screen above them will be a Marco Ricci painting, most likely owned by Handel at that time, depicting an orchestra rehearsal in a private home.
It's a concert of layers on layers - real concerts recreated in authentic rooms on original instruments. "It deepens your understanding of the world from which the music comes, and the purposes for which it is written," says Mackay.
Tafelmusik is performing House of Dreams in Llewellyn Hall at the ANU School of Music at 7pm on Thursday, February 26. $30-$102. Bookings on 1800 688 482 or go to http://tickets.musicaviva.com.au/single/SYOS.aspx?p=9332
