Venice is the fulcrum of the early baroque, particularly for sacred music. The maestri di cappella in the Basilica of San Marco were given, through this prominence, the opportunity to create imposing music for large forces for all of the Church's feast days. But even the normal evening Mass, or other services, required music be written for them. In this concert we hear sacred works for small forces--four voices and basso continuo--in a manner similar to how they may have been heard in the small chapels and pallazzi of the lagoon city.  European music of the seventeenth century was continually influenced by waves of international, particularly Italian, influences. In the German-speaking musical world, Dresden's Hofkapellmeister Heinrich Schütz was long a prominent influence. Twice he travelled to distant Italy to study the latest musical developments. In his works, however, he never lost his way in the stylistic sphere of modernity, although the expierences in his transalpine journeys left durable traces, and flowed noticeably into his later works. These influences were then taken up by his contemporaries, and flowed farther.

Ensemble Polyharmonique kindles the musical fervor of this intimate music into a warming fire, illuminating the many colors, the clear harmonies and subtle tonal language that come from both sides of the Alps.

Kentucky was the first non-coastal region west of the Appalachian Mountains to be settled by the English, Scottish, and Irish—the first towns being founded in the 1750s. As they arrived in their strange, forbidding new homeland, the settlers took with them little more than the clothes on their backs, and their music. In each deep valley, melodies changed, evolved, and new songs were constantly added to this treasury, though the poignant, aching musical language remained.

Dr Robert Crowe takes you on a Christmas journey to his homeland, in this concert with lutenist and guitarist Johannes Vogt and soprano Sandra Röddiger. You will hear music from across the southern Appalachian region, and from both the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries—American “Alte Musik”—but the program will be concentrated on the hills of Kentucky, and on the earliest years. While this singing inheritance had its roots in Europe, and in the Baroque era, it influenced and shaped so much modern popular music: Country, Rock ‘n Roll, Bluegrass, Gospel, as well as classical composers like Aaron Copland, Charles Ives and Leonard Bernstein.

The Sophisticated Orchestra takes you on a swinging, elegant and curious journey through time to the rhythm to which people are dancing again in the world's metropolises.

The Sophisticated Orchestra accompanies "Monsieur Nagel" on microphone, guitar and theremin.
Axel Nagel will get a lot of space for his baritone voice due to the fine dynamics of the orchestra. Together with Andrew Andrews on drums and Georg Bomhard on double bass, he will interpret musical pearls from the early days of jazz.
from the early days of jazz and bring back memories of the great days of the "Crooners".

Memories of the jazz clubs in Harlem to some historical songs from the "roaring twenties" in Berlin.

In case of bad weather the concert will take place in Wintergarten.

The solo matinee by the artist Daniela Wartenberg will introduce us to the interplay of various pieces. A Bach suite, a capriccio by Giuseppe Maria Dall'Abaco and three sonatas, which she will accompany herself with a looper and an amplifier. The solo will be rounded off with a ricerar by Domenico Gebrielli.