NZ Barok under the direction of violinist Miranda Hutton performs two baroque treasures: Handel's Water Music and Purcell's The Fairy Queen.
Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing by William Blake, c. 1786 Photo: Public Domain
HANDEL: Water Music, selections
On the evening of 17 July 1717, King George I took a trip with a bunch of friends up the River Thames from Whitehall Palace to Chelsea. Accompanying them on a second barge were about 50 musicians playing music that George Frederick Handel had written especially for the party.
When they got to Chelsea, the King disembarked for a while and the musicians got a breather. Then the King got back on board and back they went to Chelsea and the music was played all over again. The musicians were playing from 8pm until well after midnight.
The excursion was not only an entertainment for the King and his companions, but also a way to remind Londoners that he was still there and that he was well able to put on a grand gesture ... his son had been upstaging him somewhat with his lavish parties.
Handel’s music is a series of shortish movements, collected into three suites.
In this concert, NZ Barok played a selection of movements from all three suites although they swapped the second and third suites in order to end with the grander D major music.
PURCELL: The Fairy Queen, selections
From music for a king to music about a Queen. The ensemble plays music from Henry Purcell’s semi-opera The Fairy-Queen.
A semi-opera was a theatrical entertainment popular in the 16th and 17th centuries – a kind of hybrid in which a straight play is interrupted occasionally by masques of singing and dances. These masques may have been only marginally related to the plot of the play and were mostly likely performed by a completely separate troupe of actors.
Purcell’s The Fairy Queen was written in 1692 and was a heavily adapted version of Shakepeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The adaptation and libretto were by persons unknown – possibly it was by Thomas Bretterton, the manager of the theatre where it was first staged.
Purcell’s music accompanies masques relating to a variety of scenes – a drunken poet; the queen of the fairies Titania falling to sleep; an entertainment for Bottom, the fellow endowed with the head of an ass; a celebration of nature and the four seasons; we even get exotic and venture to China in the final act. To repeat ... only marginally related to the play at times.
NZ Barok performed a selection of excerpts from The Fairy Queen. We start with the so-called ‘First Music’ – that’s the music Purcell wrote for playing while the audience was taking their seats – and end with the ‘Dance of the Chinese Man and Woman’.
They are joined by soprano Jayne Tankersley and the speaker is Erin Atchison.
Soprano Jayne Tankersley (with flower head garland) and speaker Erin Atchison (green trousers) with the members of NZ Barok. Photo: RNZ/Tim Dodd
Recorded by RNZ Concert in St Luke's Church, Remuera, Auckland, 13 May 2023
Producer: Tim Dodd
Engineer: Adrian Hollay
