On Sunday, December 9, we present the Oberlin Baroque Ensemble as a part of our special concert series held here at the cathedral. Members of the ensemble include Marilyn McDonald on violin, Catharina Meints on viol and cello and Webb Wiggins on harpsichord and organ. Admission is free and open to the public.
This recital is made possible by contributions to the cathedral's Friends of Music Fund.
Program
Canzon Prima à Due. Soprano & Basso
Bartolomé de Selma y Salaverde (c1595-c1638)
Sonata IV in A minor
Johannes Schenk (1660-c1712)
Adagio - Adagio - Canzona. Allegro - Adagio - Adagio - Allegro - Adagio -
Adagio & grave - Alla breve - Adagio - Aria - Presto
Suite I in E minor (1656)
Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-1667)
Allemande - Gigue - Courante - Sarabande
Sonata VI in C minor (1681)
Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704)
(Moderato) - Passacaglia - (Moderato) - Gavotte - Adagio - Allegro
Sonata III in A minor, Op 1, BuxWV 254
Dieterich Buxtehude (c1637-1707)
Adagio - Allegro - Lento - Vivace - Largo - Presto - Adagio
About the Performers
Marilyn McDonald, a founding member of the Castle Trio and the Smithson and
Axelrod quartets, has toured worldwide as a chamber musician playing repertoire
that runs the gamut from baroque to contemporary.
Concertmaster
of the Peninsula Music Festival and Boston Baroque, Marilyn's appearances
reflect her versatility: she has been soloist with the Milwaukee and Omaha
Symphonies, and performed concerts at the Caramoor Festival, Yale University, the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and the Utrecht
Festival, among others.
Marilyn's students
have been international prize winners in the Locatelli, Berkeley Bach, and
Naumberg competitions. She has been artist in residence at Boston University
and has held visiting professorships at the Eastman School of Music and at
Indiana University. She teaches each summer at the Oberlin Baroque Performance
Institute and this past year, she was honored with the "Excellence in Teaching"
award at Oberlin.
Marilyn's recordings are heard on the Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Virgin
Classics, Decca, Gasparo, Smithsonian, and Telarc labels.
Catharina
Meints has a distinguished career performing on viola da gamba, baroque cello
and modern cello. Retired after thirty-five years in the Cleveland Orchestra,
she has been teaching at Oberlin as associate professor of those instruments.
As
an active chamber music and solo, she has completed over two dozen recordings
with a variety of groups. Catharine started the Baroque Performance Institute
at Oberlin, which just celebrated its fortieth year, with her husband James
Caldwell. Throughout the years, they have formed an important collection of
antique viols and cellos, which were chronicled in the recently published The Caldwell Collection of Viols—A Life
Together in the Pursuit of Beauty.
Webb Wiggins is
recognized and lauded internationally for his innovative and musical continuo
realizations. He has performed and recorded with many US ensembles, including the
Oberlin Baroque Ensemble, the Catacoustic Consort, the Baltimore Consort, the
Violins of Lafayette, Apollo's Fire, the Smithsonian Chamber Players and
Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony, and the
Baltimore Chamber Orchestra. His collaborations
with soloists, both vocal and instrumental, have earned him high respect among
his colleagues in the world of baroque music.
Webb is also one
of the foremost teachers of harpsichord, as well as a coach for chamber music
and director of baroque opera. He is
associate professor of harpsichord at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music
and serves on the faculty of the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute and the
Amherst Early Music Festival. Webb was
also the coordinator of the early music program at the Peabody Conservatory of
Music for fifteen years.
Webb holds
degrees in organ performance from Stetson University and the Eastman School of
Music and has done additional harpsichord study at the Sweelinck Conservatory
in Amsterdam. He is one of few harpsichordists
to give multiple performances on trans-Atlantic voyages.
