Sunday, December 08, 2024 | 5:30 pm

ACRONYM, Baroque ensemble (Baltimore Debut)

The Paul & Barbara Krieger Early Music Concert

Location: Shriver Hall

The Paul & Barbara Krieger Early Music Concert

One hundred years before Mozart and Beethoven, Vienna’s music scene was already on fire with stylus phantasticus, a genre combining Italian drama and Northern European formal complexity. ACRONYM, an “outstanding young early-music string ensemble” (The New Yorker), presents a feast of musical delights in the band’s Baltimore debut. ACRONYM’s 11 members perform on strings, violas da gamba, theorbo, and keyboards, bringing “gutsy, fresh explorations” (Early Music America) to these rare treasures.

"The players revivify with throbbing, red-blooded immediacy, a spirit of spontaneous adventure, as if inventing anew on the spot." -The Boston Musical Intelligencer

What You'll Hear

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ACRONYM, Baroque ensemble

Chloe Fedor, Edwin Huizinga, Johanna Novom, Adriane Post, Beth Wenstrom, violins
Kyle Miller, viola
Kivie Cahn-Lipman, viola da gamba & violoncello
Loren Ludwig, viola da gamba
Paul Dwyer, cello
Nathaniel Chase, violone
Daniel Swenberg, theorbo
Elliot Figg, harpsichord & organ

Baroque band ACRONYM—an “outstanding young early-music string ensemble” (The New Yorker)—is dedicated to giving modern premieres of the wild instrumental music of the 17th century. Playing with “consummate style, grace, and unity of spirit” (The New York Times), the group formed in 2012 and has released 10 critically acclaimed albums. Recent projects include the first modern performances and recordings of works by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Johann Rosenmüller, and Samuel Capricornus, among others. The band’s most recent album, “Cantica Obsoleta,” features the modern premiere recordings of nearly-lost works from Sweden’s Düben Collection. The Boston Globe raves, “this musical time-capsule offers enough resplendence to transport anyone.”

In the 2024-25 season, ACRONYM returns to the Naumburg Orchestral Concerts series in Central Park and makes its Baltimore debut with Shriver Hall Concert Series. Returning to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, ACRONYM collaborates with countertenor Reginald Mobley on a program of rarely-heard works from the early Baroque period.

Recent engagements includes repeat performances at the Boston Early Music Festival, the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival (OH), and Music Before 1800 in New York, as well as appearances with Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht (Netherlands), Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series, Hamilton College Performing Arts Series (Clinton, NY), Lincoln Friends of Chamber Music (NE), Arizona Early Music, Indianapolis Early Music Festival, Renaissance & Baroque (Pittsburgh), Chamber Music Wilmington (NC), Electric Earth Concerts (Peterborough, NH), and Five Boroughs Music Festival in New York. ACRONYM has held academic residencies at Youngstown State University and Vassar College, and the group’s musicians can also be heard in Tafelmusik, Les Arts Florissants, Apollo’s Fire, Handel + Haydn Society, and The English Concert.

ACRONYM’s website is acronymnensemble.com

ACRONYM performs "with moving grace." -New York Classical Review

Program Notes by ACRONYM

View Notes

Giovanni Valentini (c.1582-1649)

Sonata a5 in C major

Giovanni Valentini (c.1582-1649)

Sonata a5 in G minor

Antonio Bertali (1605-1669)

Sonata a5 in G minor

Giovanni Valentini (c.1582-1649)

Sonata a5 in A minor

Antonio Bertali (1605-1669)

Sonata a6 in E minor

Georg Piscator (fl. c.1610- after 1643)

Sonata a7 in A minor

Adam Drese (c. 1620-1701)

Sonata a6 in C major

Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (c.1620โ€“1680)

Sonata a5 in D minor

Marc'Antonio Ziani (c. 1653-1715)

Sonata

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704)

The Battle of Vienna in G minor (arr. A.A. Schmelzer)

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704)

Ballettae a8 in C major

Alessandro Poglietti (d. 1683)

Sonata a8 in A minor

Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (c.1620โ€“1680)

Serenata (Ciacona) a8 in A major

Program Subject to Change Without Notice