CONCERTO ITALIANO - POSTPONED TO MARCH 2022

Sunday, October 3, 2021 4pm | St. Stephens Episcopal Church, Cohasset, MA

$28 Suggested Donation - Please support this program if you are able.

with special guests Cristiano Contadin and Amanda Forsythe

** We will follow ALL guidelines as recommended by the CDC regarding masking.

This concert program looks like a gallery of riches by German composers who lived and worked in the Baroque period between the end of the 17th and mid-18th centuries.... yet, the title of this special musical exhibition is Concerto Italiano. Why? The style and the musical forms of these works originated from, and were developed in Italy in the first half of the 1600s. The repertoire that we feature in this program all stem from the three and four-part sonatas and songs of the Venetian repertoire that flourished under composers such as Castello, Fontana, Buonamente, and Rossi.

Amanda Forsythe is a frequent collaborator with Cristiano Contadin and Opera Prima. Their recent CD Torna Vincitor, an album of music by Johann Gottlieb Graun, received a Critics Choice award from Opera News. CDs will be available for purchase at the concert.

Amanda Forsythe, soprano

American soprano Amanda Forsythe is internationally acclaimed for both her operatic and concert work. She made her USA stage début with the Boston Early Music Festival, where her many leading roles have included Poppea and Drusilla L’incoronazione di Poppea, Niobe and Manto (recording) in Steffani's Niobe, regina di Tebe, Venus Venus and Adonis (John Blow), Pallas The Judgment of Paris (Eccles), Isabelle Le Carnaval de Venise (Campra), Serpina La serva padrona and Edilia Almira, Königin von Castilien, for which she received rave reviews. She sang Euridice on the recording of Charpentier’s La descente d'Orphée aux enfers with the Boston Early Music Festival which won the 2015 GRAMMY AWARD for Best Opera Recording.  Her highly acclaimed CDs have included her début solo album of Handel arias "The Power of Love" with Apollo’s Fire on the Avie label.  She recently toured with French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, performing works based on the Orfeo myth, and subsequently recorded the role of Euridice in a new edition of Gluck’s Orfeo for the ERATO label.   

Major European opera house engagements have included Dalinda Ariodante in Geneva and Munich and Barbarina Le nozze di Figaro,Manto in Steffani’s Niobe, regina di Tebe, Amour in Gluck’s Orphée and Nannetta Falstaff at London’s Royal Opera House.  Her performance as Nannetta was described by Gramophone Magazine as “meltingly beautiful”.
amandaforsythe.com

Cristiano Contadin, VIOLA DA GAMBA

Cristiano Contadin is an Italian viola da gamba player and the founder of the Opera Prima Ensemble, a chamber music group of internationally-acclaimed soloists devoted to the baroque repertoire. As a gamba soloist and continuo player, Cristiano Contadin collaborates with ensembles in Italy and abroad, including I Barocchisti, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Accademia Bizantina, Odechaton, La Venexiana, Orchestra Sinfonica “G. Verdi” (Milan), Cantar Lontano, Boston Early Music Festival, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala (Milan), and Il Suonar Parlante.

Mr. Contadin has recorded for Sony, EMI Classical, Universal (Deutsche Grammophon), Arte, Brilliant, Hyperion, Stradivarius, Winter & Winter, CPO and Naxos, among others.  In 2015, he released a recording of the complete Telemann Trio Sonatas and Concertos with his Opera Prima Ensemble to widespread acclaim. For this disc, proclaimed by Classic Voice as “CD of the Month”, Musica Magazine confirmed him as “a first-rate artist for the sweetness of the sound, the stylistic relevance and the absolute mastery of the instrument”.
cristianocontadin.com

Michael Sponseller, HARPSICHORD

Michael Sponseller is recognized as one of the outstanding American harpsichordists of his generation. A highly diversified career brings him to festivals and concert venues all around as a recitalist, concerto soloist, and active continuo performer on both harpsichord and organ. He studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music with Lisa Goode Crawford with additional studies at the Royal Conservatory of Music, The Hague. He has garnered prizes at the International Harpsichord Competitions of Montréal (1999), the International Harpsichord Competition at Bruges (1998, 2001) as well as First Prizes at both the American Bach Soloists and Jurow International Harpsichord Competitions. He appears regularly as harpsichordist and continuo organist with several of American’s finest Baroque orchestras and ensembles, such as Bach Collegium San Diego, Les Délices, Aston Magna, Tragicomedia, Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, and can be heard on over 20 recordings from Delos, Centaur, Eclectra, and Naxos. At home, he is a regular presence at Boston’s Emmanuel Music, having performed over 125 sacred cantatas of J.S. Bach. His various recordings feature a diverse list of composers—including Bach, Handel, Rameau, Praetorius, and Laurenti—and received excellent reviews throughout the world. Early Music America Magazine has said of his performance of the J.S. Bach concertos: “His well-proportioned elegance carries the day quite stylishly.” Mr. Sponseller has been on the faculty at Longy School of Music and Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute, and is associate music director of Bach Collegium San Diego.

Susanna ogata, violin

Susanna Ogata enjoys an active performance schedule in greater New England and beyond. She has been a soloist and participant in concerts presented by Arcadia Players, The Bach Ensemble led by Joshua Rifkin, Sarasa, Connecticut Early Music Festival, and the Boston Early Music Festival, and is a founding member of the Boston Classical Trio. She has been the Assistant Concertmaster for the Handel and Haydn Society since 2014. Her playing has been praised for its “airborne lyricism” (Fanfare Magazine) and for being “witty, responsive, making the tops of phrases gleam” (Gramophone Magazine).

With fortepianist Ian Watson, Susanna completed “The Beethoven Project”, a venture to record Beethoven’s Sonatas for Fortepiano and Violin on period instruments for the CORO label. The recordings have received accolades, including praise in The New York Times for “elegant readings that are attentive to quicksilver changes in dynamics and articulation” as well as an eminent release distinction in the Boston Globe in 2017. Their performances included appearances on The Cambridge Society for Early Music series, Tage Alte Musik Festival in Regensburg, Germany, as well as a two-year residency at MIT.
 susannaogata.com

CHRISTINA DAY MARTINSON, violin

Born in Saskatchewan, Canada, Christina Day Martinson has been a featured soloist with Boston Baroque, the Handel and Haydn Society, The Bach Ensemble, Tempesta di Mare, the Unicamp Symphony Orchestra in Brazil and the Philharmonisch Orkest Mozart in Amsterdam. A recipient of the NetherlandAmerica Foundation Grant and Frank Huntington Beebe Award, Martinson holds degrees from New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, the Royal Conservatory in The Netherlands, and received her Master of Music in Historical Performance from Boston University.   In 2018, Martinson was nominated for a GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo for her tour-de-force performance of the complete cycle of Heinrich Biber’s The Mystery Sonatas, with Boston Baroque.

Martinson serves as Concertmaster for Boston Baroque, and has performed as Concertmaster under conductors such as Roger Norrington, Richard Egarr, Bernard Labadie, Martin Pearlman, Nicholas McGegan, Laurence Cummings, and Harry Christophers. She is the Associate Concertmaster at the Handel and Haydn Society. Martinson's performances of the complete Mystery Sonatas in 2012-13 were hailed by The Boston Globe as a Top 10 Performance of the Year in 2012 and chosen by Jeremy Eichler for his Top Concerts of 2013.  

Martinson recorded Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with Boston Baroque for Telarc.