Performance includes Bach’s fourth Brandenburg Concerto

The Vivace Chamber Players will perform at 4 p.m. Sunday, May 1, at Trinity Lutheran Church.

Organized by violinist Emily Sipiorski, the local 16-piece chamber orchestra brings together professional and amateur musicians from the area.

The concert will feature Bach’s fourth Brandenburg Concerto, scored for strings, two flutes and continuo.

“It is a challenging and charming dance-like work, one of six that Bach presented in 1721 to Christian Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg,” according to Georgia Calvo, who can be heard playing piano in this concert. “Presumably because they are virtuosic, difficult works, they were never performed during Bach’s lifetime. Nevertheless they are much loved today, and widely considered to be Bach’s finest orchestral works.”

Violinist Sipiorski grew up in Stevens Point and began her studies at the Suzuki Institute at the age of 4. She earned degrees from UW-Stevens Point and UW-Milwaukee in music performance and pedagogy, and has played in orchestras and ensembles throughout Wisconsin and the Midwest, including the Wisconsin Philharmonic, Racine Symphony, the Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra and the Bel Canto Chorus Orchestra.

She was a featured soloist at the Urbania Music Festival, in a touring ensemble in Southern Italy.

In addition to the Bach, the concert will also feature works by Vivaldi and Haydn.

Vivaldi’s Concerto in D was written for lute, strings and continuo. Jonathan Stoffregen will be a featured soloist on mandolin.

Vivaldi was an Italian, trained and ordained as a priest. Most of his compositions were written for a girls’ string orchestra, virtually all of whom he had taught, at an institution for abandoned and orphaned children in Venice.

The third major work will be the first movement of Haydn’s first cello concerto, performed by Stephan Wucherer, cellist, local music educator and resident of Weyauwega.

Wucherer holds a bachelor’s degree in cello performance from UW-Oshkosh and master’s degrees from both Butler University and Marian University. He has played and performed in orchestras throughout Wisconsin, Indiana, and New York, as well in Italy and Switzerland.

This Hayden concerto was apparently lost, until a musicologist discovered a copy in the Prague National Museum in 1961. It has since become a popular work for cello.

Haydn wrote it for a friend who was principal cellist in the Esterhazy Orchestra, and it was scored for a small baroque chamber orchestra much like the Vivace Chamber Players.

There will be no admission charge for the concert, but donations to the Vivace Chamber Players will be welcome. There will be a reception after the concert.