New Year’s Eve & First Day Concerts

The Baroque triple harp at
Harvard University's Sanders Theatre.
In the opera Giulio Cesare and in the oratorio Saul, Handel calls for a harp to lend its color to special dramatic moments. But it is in the "pure music" of his concerto that the harp shines as a virtuosic solo instrument. The pedal mechanism on the modern harp allows the player to raise and lower notes to create sharps and flats. In Handel's time, there was no such mechanism, yet the music of the day required chromatic notes and changes of key. To accomplish this, the triple harp—similar to what became known as the Welsh harp—used three rows of strings. The outer two rows, one played by the right hand, the other by the left, generally had the natural notes, equivalent to the white keys on the piano. Running down the middle was a third row of strings containing the chromatic notes, equivalent to the black keys on the piano. The sharps or flats could thus be played by either hand reaching to the inside.

Barbara Poeschl-Edrich, who now teaches harp at Boston University, studied the Baroque harp while a student in the Historical Performance Department at BU, the program in which Boston Baroque is in residence. She has performed on Baroque harp with Boston Baroque, the Boston Camerata, Handel and Haydn Society, and other ensembles. As a modern harpist, she has played with the Boston Symphony and was a soloist in an orchestral work written by Martin Pearlman.

Soloists
Mary Wilson has become a favorite of Boston Baroque audiences, having performed with us in operas and in concert, including a stunning appearance in Boston Baroque's concert at the Casals Festival in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Of her appearance this past March in our concert of "Jewels and Discoveries," the Hub Review wrote, "Ms. Wilson's voice is just about perfect for Handel—her tone is ripe with sun, and her phrasings so flexible they seem to almost ripple…"

Arcangelo Corelli
Concerto Grosso
J.S. Bach
Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043
G.F. Handel
Concerto for harp in B-flat major, Op. 4, No. 6