The Musical Offering - Johann Sebastian Bach

With Wilbert Hazelzet (baroque flute), Maya Homburger (baroque violin), Marja Gaynor (baroque violin), Sarah McMahon (baroque cello) and Malcolm Proud (harpsichord)

The Musical Offering owes its genesis to J. S. Bach’s visit in 1747 to the court of Frederick the Great in Potsdam, during which he played and improvised for the music-loving King of Prussia. Bach later completed The i on the 'Royal Theme' he had worked with in Potsdam. Here, as in some of his other great works, one finds an almost scientific exploration of the possibilities of canon and counterpoint.

This concert at the CCI is an opportunity to appreciate the virtuosity of the Camerata Kilkenny who, as Michael Dervan writes in the Irish Times, "are lucid guides to Bach’s displays of contrapuntal wizardry, grasping the sensual in performance as well as the more rarefied aspects of his exceptional compositional achievements". Flautist Wilbert Hazelzet was a member of the world-renowned Musica Antiqua Koln and both Maya Homburger and Malcolm Proud have performed and recorded with Sir John Eliot Gardiner's English Baroque Soloists.