55. Coffee Concert

55. Coffee Concert
‘The Muses restor’d’ Violin Music of the English Baroque
Rachel Podger has put together a delectable programme of captivating violin-led chamber music from Jacobean to early Georgian England ranging from the gentle intimacy of consort idioms to the full-blown instrumental virtuosity of the evolving Baroque period. Apart from Handel and Purcell, the glories of English instrumental music of the 17th and early 18th centuries are largely unknown. There is a rich tradition of intimate chamber music where the violin joins a selection of keyboards, lutes, gamba and cello creating sonatas, fantasies, suites, grounds and popular folk tunes. Again this was a time when folk and Baroque music had but a thin dividing line between them.