May 7, 2015
TEMPESTA DI MARE CONCLUDES 2014-2015 SEASON WITH LAVISH SUITES BY LECLAIR AND RAMEAU
Tempesta di Mare
Tempesta di Mare

Tempesta di Mare, the Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra, concludes its 2014-15 season in grand style, performing orchestral rediscoveries by two titans of the French high baroque era: Jean-Philippe Rameau’s ballet Les Fêtes de Polymnie, and Jean-Marie Leclair’s opera Scylla et Glaucus. The program also brings to a climactic conclusion Tempesta’s two-season celebration of French baroque music for the theater. Performances take place on Saturday and Sunday, June 6 and 7, at the Curtis Institute’s Gould Recital Hall. The performances will be repeated on June 12 at the Connecticut Early Music Festival in New London.

Les Fêtes de Polymnie (The Celebrations of Polyhymnia), one of many ballets scored by Rameau, was written to celebrate the French victory at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745. Scylla et Glaucus, Leclair’s only full-length opera, is based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and was premiered in 1746. Tempesta di Mare will assemble a full 25-piece orchestra to perform extended suites of music from these two lavish 18th century stage works.

Tempesta dusted off Rameau’s
 Les Fêtes de Polymnie for the first time in 2011, on the occasion of the orchestra’s 10th anniversary, prompting the Philadelphia Inquirer to describe “a score so inventive, colorful, and overstuffed as to be delightfully
 subversive.” The orchestra first performed excerpts from Leclair’s Scylla et Glaucus – a “major revelation,” according to the Inquirer – 10 years ago.

“It's a thrill for us to learn music we'd never heard before, which was the case for both the Rameau and the Leclair,” remarks Tempesta di Mare’s co-director Richard Stone. “When we first played the music from Scylla in 2005, it was the first season that we had an orchestra big enough to take on that sort of repertoire – French high baroque grand opera. While we'd only played the music from its prologue back then, this time we'll play that and the lion's share of the orchestral music from its five acts. Leclair and Rameau were thinking along similar musical lines, not a surprise since these works were premiered within a year of each other, yet even then, two really distinct and distinctive voices come across.”

Comédie & Tragédie, Tempesta di Mare's two-season curatorial focus on French baroque orchestral music for the theater, has comprised concerts, recordings, workshops and broadcasts, and attracted wide-spread acclaim. The first of two related recordings, Comédie & Tragédie, vol. 1, was released on Chandos Records in March 2015, and is by turns “dignified … lilting and swaggering,” according to Gramophone magazine. It was selected by WGBH (Boston) and WCLV (Cleveland) as CD of the Week. Immediately following the June concerts, Tempesta di Mare will record the Leclair and Rameau suites together with incidental music from Charpentier’s comédie-ballet Le Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid, or The Hypochondriac), which the orchestra performed in March. Comédie & Tragédie, vol. 2 is scheduled for release in 2016.

Comédie & Tragédie is supported and made possible in part by a grant through The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage.

Additional support provided by The Presser Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, The William Penn Foundation and Cancer Treatment Centers for America.


TEMPESTA DI MARE PHILADELPHIA BAROQUE ORCHESTRA & CHAMBER PLAYERS
Fanfare magazine has hailed Tempesta di Mare for its "abundant energy, immaculate ensemble, impeccable intonation, and an undeniable sense of purpose." Led by directors Gwyn Roberts and Richard Stone with concertmaster Emlyn Ngai, Tempesta performs baroque music on baroque instruments with a repertoire that ranges from staged opera to chamber music. The group performs all orchestral repertoire without a conductor, as was the practice when this music was new. Tempesta's Philadelphia Concert Series, noted by the Philadelphia Inquirer for its "off-the-grid chic factor," emphasizes creating a sense of discovery for artists and audiences alike. Launched in 2002, the series has included 31 modern world premieres of lost or forgotten baroque masterpieces, leading the Inquirer to describe Tempesta as "an old-music group that acts like a new-music group, by pushing the cutting edge back rather than forward." Its supporters include the Pew Charitable Trusts, the William Penn Foundation, the Presser Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. 
 
In a marketplace dominated by European ensembles, Tempesta is the only American baroque music group to record for the prestigious British-based Chandos label. Releases include Weiss: Lute Concerti (2004), Handel: Flaming Rose (2007), Scarlatti: Cantatas and Chamber Music (2010), Fasch: Orchestral Music, vol.1 (2008), vol.2 (2011) and vol.3 (2012), Mancini: Solos for a Flute (2014), Bach Trio Sonatas (2014), and Comédie & Tragédie, vol.1 (2015). Live performances have been broadcast nationally on SymphonyCast, Performance Today, Sunday Baroque and Harmonia. Tempesta di Mare's concert recordings are distributed worldwide via the European Broadcasting Union, the world's foremost alliance of public service media organizations, with members in 56 countries in Europe and beyond.

Tempesta di Mare has toured from Oregon to Prague. Notable recent appearances have included the International Handel Festival in Göttingen, Germany; the group's New York debut at the Frick Collection; the orchestra's first European tour to the International Fasch Festival in Zerbst and a sold-out appearance on the Richard P. Garmany Chamber Music Series in Hartford, Connecticut. 

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For further information, image or interview requests please contact Melanne Mueller, MusicCo International, 917 907 2785, melanne@musiccointernational.com

For further details about Tempesta di Mare, please visit http://tempestadimare.org

PERFORMANCE DETAILS
Comédie & Tragédie: Tempesta plays Rameau & Leclair Saturday, June 6, 2015 – 8:00 pm 

Sunday, June 7 – 7:00


Rameau Music from Les Fêtes de Polymnie
Leclair Music from Scylla et Glaucus

Single tickets $28, $38;
Full-time students and Youth (4th-12th grade) free at the door.

Gould Hall
Curtis Institute of Music
1616 Locust Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103

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