A Feast of Sound - Tafelmusik : Tafelmusik

Jeanne Lamon Hall, Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre

Following our high-octane oboe extravaganza in 2025, the irrepressible Alfredo Bernardini returns as guest director and soloist in a chef’s curation of sensuous and colourful music from England, Spain, France, Italy, and Germany.

The program opens with the unmistakable musical signature of English composer Henry Purcell, whose incidental theatrical music from The Gordian Knot Untied is redolent with pungent harmonies and lively dances. French and Italian styles intermingle in Rebel’s Les caractèreres de la danse, originally composed to showcase the astonishing virtuosic talents of three celebrated French dancers.

Moving fully to Italy, Alfredo Bernardini and Tafelmusik’s own Dominic Teresi partner in Vivaldi’s vivacious Concerto for oboe and bassoon. Arcangelo Corelli’s masterful writing for orchestra is on full display in a selection from his beloved Concerti Grossi, op. 6. With its sudden harmonic shifts and jaunty rhythms, Zelenka’s enigmatically titled Hypochondria in A Major lives up to the composer’s reputation for inventiveness and originality.

To close this program, Bernardini joins Tafelmusik’s Marco Cera and Daniel Ramírez Escudero to provide a distinctive texture in an Ouverture-Suite for 3 oboes and orchestra by Telemann, the cosmopolitan master of baroque musical fusion.

Box Office

Tafelmusik

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Running Time

120 minutes

Style of Music

Baroque orchestra

Guest artists

Alfredo Bernardini

Guest director & oboe soloist

The Italian-born oboist Alfredo Bernardini studied early music in the Netherlands, graduating in 1987. He has since performed all over the world as a member of ensembles such as Hesperion XX, Le Concert des Nations, La Petite Bande, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, The English Concert, Bach Collegium Japan, Tafelmusik, and others. He has played in more than 100 recordings. In 1989 he founded the ensemble ZEFIRO, which has been awarded major international prizes. He has been a guest director of baroque orchestras all over Europe, in Canada, Australia, Venezuela, Cuba, Israel, and with the European Union Baroque Orchestra and Theresia Classical Youth Orchestra. He is currently professor at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg.