GAYLORD, MN, OCTOBER 30, 2024 — La Grande Bande, a local classical music ensemble, will continue it’s 2024/25 Concert Season with a concert entitled “Handel’s Water Musicks” at 7:30pm on Thursday, November 14 at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Gaylord and Friday, November 15 at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis.
The concert will feature two works written by George Frideric Handel in 1708 and 1717. “This concert is one of four for our upcoming season that features music written by George Frideric Handel,” noted Music & Artistic Director Dr. Michael Thomas Asmus. “2025 will be the 340th anniversary of Handel’s birthday, so we wanted to commemorate him and some of the great music he has written.”
The first half of the concert will feature a cantata by Handel, Oh come chiare e belle, which La Grande Bande will be presenting as a staged production. “We decided to stage the cantata to help illustrate the underlying plot of the cantata,” Asmus noted. “There’s going to be a really beautiful backdrop we created using a beautiful painting of Castel Sant’Angelo made by Caspar van Wittel in the late seventeenth-century. There will be costumes, props, and a few other really neat things, too.”
On the surface, the cantata’s plot centers largely around the Tiber River, which is depicted as less glorious than in its past. Thanks to the help of the shepherd Olinto and the goddess Gloria, the Tiber is restored to its former greatness by the cantata’s conclusion. In between the lines, however, the cantata is a homage to Pope Clement XI with poetry likely written by Cardinal Ruspoli, a patron of Handel while he was in Rome.
The other piece on the concert program is Handel’s famous Water Music Suites, selections from which you’ve no doubt heard used at weddings, in TV commercials, or practically anywhere else. “This piece is probably one of the best known by Handel, especially the hornpipe which I’m sure many people have heard played at weddings,” Asmus said. The Water Music Suites are filled with baroque-era dance music that accompanied king George I down the Thames on July 7, 1717. “The really remarkable thing about Water Music is that they had a barge filled with musicians, somewhere around 50 players, which is quite remarkable,” Asmus noted. “We’ll have about half that number for our performances. It’ll be a real treat for everyone to hear this incredible music played on instruments that king George I would have heard back then.”
For the performances, Asmus (harpsichordist) will be joined by the three vocalists, Dr. Catherine Sandstedt, Alina Tamborini, and Dr. Alyssa Anderson, along with an orchestra of 22 players. The instruments in the orchestra includes the recorder, baroque oboes and bassoon, baroque trumpets and horns, baroque violins and violas, baroque cellos and baroque bass, and two harpsichords.
La Grande Bande has several events planned for the week. They will host two free open rehearsal sessions on Tuesday, November 12 and Wednesday, November 13 starting at 4:30pm at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Gaylord. On Thursday, November 14 at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Gaylord they will host a pre-concert talk starting at 6:45pm with the concert performance to follow at 7:30pm. There will be a second performance on Friday, November 15 at Annunciation Catholic Church, Gaylord. A reception with light refreshments will be held after the Gaylord performance. Tickets can be purchased on the website www.lagrandebande.org/tickets or by phone at 507-237-6539.