Jazz Concerts  ||  Summer Festivals  ||  Chamber Concerts Series  ||  New Music  ||  Mini-Concerts 
Special Concerts  ||  Calendar   ||  Maps and Directions

Commemorating the 325th Anniversary Birth of composer Johann Sebastian Bach

Special Chamber Concert
Sunday, March 21
Members $20/nonmembers $25
Reserve your seats by calling (858) 454-5872

Victoria Martino and James Lent depicted here
performing at the Athenaeum in Spring 2009.

Following the resounding success of the Handel 250th (death) anniversary concert at the Athenaeum last October, Baroque violinist Victoria Martino returns for a special Bach Birthday concert on March 21, the 325th anniversary of the composer Johann Sebastian Bach's birth. She will perform all six of the sonatas for violin and continuo, accompanied by James Lent on Ms. Martino's custom-built Taylor&Boody Baroque continuo organ, which had its acclaimed debut at the Athenaeum in the Handel concert.

This is a unique opportunity to hear some of the most beloved chamber works by J.S. Bach performed on his birthday on period instruments. Ms. Martino plays a museum-quality original Baroque violin from 1760 (never modernized), and her Taylor&Boody organ is a hand-carved masterpiece after a 17th century prototype. The instrument has five stops and all-wooden pipes, and is exactly the type of organ upon which chamber music would have been performed in Bach's time.

Bach's six sonatas for violin and continuo are among the most complex and challenging works in the early music repertoire, with a haunting beauty that has enthralled audiences for nearly three centuries. The rich sonorities of the Baroque organ are especially suited to the contrapuntal continuo part, which ordinarily is played on the harpsichord. It is rare to hear all six sonatas in a single concert, due to the extraordinarily virtuostic demands these pieces place upon the performers.

For those Athenaeum fans who remember Professor Konrad Oberhuber, Ms. Martino's late husband, there will be a special added incentive for attending the concert. Professor Oberhuber, who died unexpectedly two and a half years ago from a brain tumor, would have celebrated his 75th birthday on March 31. Ms. Martino is honoring the birthdays of Bach and Oberhuber, dedicating this concert to the memory of her late husband, whose last wish was to proceed with the commission for the Taylor&Boody organ to be built.