“Lettres d’amour/Love Letters”, Baroque Concert, Friday June 16th in Kuressaare

At the Kuressaare Town Hall (Raekojas) for the Ajatu Muusika Festival, the baroque ensemble LaBande will play “Lettres d’amour” (Love Letters ):  some airs de cour from composers Michel Lambert, Honoré D’Ambruis et Joseph Chabanceau de La Barre. The ensemble will also perform instrumental compositions of Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, Louis and Francois Couperin.  Some of this program’s melodies will be for the first time played in Estonia.

The baroque ensemble “LaBande” – Helis Naeris (mezzosoprano), Anna-Liisa Eller (kannel – Estonian zither), Kaari Uus (viola da gamba), Kristiina Are (harpsichord). The baroque ensemble LaBande was officially founded in November 2016 after years of playing together. Its first big venue is “Lettres d’amour” which was performed for the first time in May 2016.

In the court of Louis XIII and Louis XIV filled with love and intrigues, expressing feelings through writing was a crucial skill, something which was characteristic to the love letters and the poetry of that time. Vocational poets such as Philippe Quinault and Jean Bouillon, as well as courtiers enriched the poetry’s metaphorical beauty that soon was manifested in the music as air de cour.

June 16th, 9 P.M. – Free entrance

The concert is supported by Institut Français in Estonia, Eesti Kultuurkapital