Marcelino Rojas

Vivaldi: The Four Seasons – complete
Boccherini: Fandango & Madrid for Guitar and Strings
Albéniz: Asturias and other famous Spanish compositions for Guitar

Vladyslav Indyk - Guitar, Marcelino Rojas - Violin & Residence-Soloists

A Spanish-Italian Evening: Music Full of Sun and Passion

We begin in Baroque Venice, where the “Red Priest,” Antonio Vivaldi, made history with The Four Seasons. A master at making nature speak without a single word, Vivaldi pushed the violin to its expressive limits. The Four Seasons is more than a melody; it is an immersive experience that brings the renewal of nature directly into the concert hall.

Isaac Albéniz – Asturias
Although the title suggests the green north of Spain, this piece breathes the fiery soul of Andalusia. Originally composed for piano in 1892, it became an icon of Spanish music through its transcription for guitar—an instrument Albéniz often “tailored” his music for. He initially titled it simply Leyenda (Legend), a fitting name for a work that has since become one of the most globally recognized melodies in classical music.

Luigi Boccherini – La Musica Notturna delle Strade di Madrid
Imagine sitting at an open window on a warm summer night in 1780. Outside, the winding streets of Madrid come alive. Luigi Boccherini, the Italian virtuoso living in Spain, captures these fleeting moments in his String Quintet Op. 30 No. 6—a work so exclusive that he believed no one outside Spain could truly grasp its charm. This piece is more than chamber music; it is an acoustic painting, blurring the line between concert hall and street. Immerse yourself in a world of shadow, light, and the unbridled rhythm of old Spain.

His famous Fandango is a deliberate provocation of courtly etiquette: he brought the passionate, almost seductive street dance into chamber music, often crowned with the crisp rhythm of real castanets.

Vivaldi: Concerto for Piccolo Flute Il Cardellino
Vivaldi: Flute Concerto La tempesta di mare
Vivaldi: Concerto for Piccolo Flute in C Major
Vivaldi: Spring & Summer from The Four Seasons
Mozart: Overture from The Magic Flute
Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Suite
Gershwin: Summertime 
 

Janine Schöllhorn – flute, Marcelino Rojas– violin & Residence-Soloists

From Baroque Birds to Gershwin’s Jazz Dream

In the quiet halls of the Ospedale della Pietà for orphaned girls in Venice, music was created to reach far beyond its walls. Antonio Vivaldi composed his flute and piccolo concertos for the exceptionally talented young musicians of the institute—virtuosos who became both his performers and his experimental canvas. In the piccolo concerto Il Cardellino (The Goldfinch), the tiny instrument comes alive: it chirps, flutters, and trills as if a little bird were perched within the orchestra. Vivaldi does not treat nature as mere decoration—he makes it a sonic event.

In the flute concerto La tempesta di mare, nature erupts from the idyllic into the elemental. Rapid runs leap across registers, cascading waves of sound rise and fall, and the strings tremble under an imaginary wind. Here, the sea is not painted—it rages. In the piccolo concerto, the instrument itself becomes a marvel: soaring to extreme heights, moving at breathtaking speed, a performance at the very edge of possibility. Virtuosity is never an end in itself—it is the expression of overflowing energy.

With The Four Seasons, Vivaldi expands the view to the cyclical rhythms of nature. In Spring (La Primavera), the awakening of the world is heard: bird song threads through the violins, streams murmur in gentle figures. Vivaldi even published explanatory sonnets to accompany his concertos, anchoring the music firmly in imagery—the second movement depicts a sleeping shepherd under the watch of a viola, while a dog barks in the distance. Summer (L’Estate), by contrast, is heavy and oppressive. The heat shimmers in dense harmonies, fatigue spreads, and the finale erupts into a thunderstorm: lightning flashes, thunder rolls, nature unleashes itself with dramatic force.

Another gateway opens with Mozart’s overture to The Magic Flute. Three solemn chords stand like pillars in the room—serious, symbolic, imbued with Masonic gravitas. But soon everything is in motion: a lively fugato unfolds, clever, spirited, and full of theatrical tension. Mozart composed this overture under immense time pressure; it is said the sheets were still wet with ink at the premiere in 1791. Perhaps it is precisely this risk of the moment that one feels in every turn of the music.

The evening concludes with Summertime—the floating, haunting melody from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. It echoes tradition, spirituals, and folk songs, yet it is entirely new. Gershwin composes authenticity; he invents a musical memory. Perhaps that is the secret of the song: it feels as if it has always existed, waiting only to be recognized.

The result is a concert that weaves together nature and theater, Baroque delight, classical symbolism, and the dreamlike world of Romantic and American music.

J.S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 2
J.S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 4
J.S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 5
J.S. Bach: Double Concerto for Oboe and Violin
Händel: "Water Music"

Michael Kofler – Flute (MPhil), Gabriele Cassone – Trumpet, Giovanni De Angeli – Oboe, Karsten Gebhardt – Violin, Marcelino Rojas – Violin, Tun-Han Hu – Harpsichord & Residenz Soloists (Residenz-Solisten)

Baroque Brilliance: From the Court to the River

Baroque music often owes its most dazzling moments to practical coincidences or courtly obligations, as seen in Johann Sebastian Bach’s famous Brandenburg Concertos. When Bach sent the scores to the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1721, it was essentially a musical job application. The Concerto No. 2 stands out for its almost acrobatic trumpet part. It is said that Bach wrote it specifically for a virtuoso in Köthen; in Brandenburg, however, the scores likely gathered dust in the archives, as no musician in the local chapel could master those dizzying heights.

In Concerto No. 4, Bach’s fondness for sonic experimentation shines through as he combines a solo violin with two "echo flutes," giving the work a bright, pastoral character. Bach’s pragmatic side is evident in Concerto No. 5, which is considered the birth of the modern keyboard concerto. He moved the harpsichord—previously a background accompaniment—into the spotlight. Anecdote has it that he composed this work as a "test drive" for a precious new harpsichord he had just acquired from Berlin for his Prince; the monumental solo cadenza in the first movement was quite simply intended to impress the audience (and the buyer).

Bach’s Double Concerto for Oboe and Violin also has a storied past. Today, the work officially survives only in a version for two pianos. However, musicologists reconstructed the original version because the flowing, almost sighing melodies of the slow movement were so clearly crafted for the "breathing" oboe and the singing violin. The famous Bach scholar Albert Schweitzer even believed that only in this instrumentation does the true soul of the piece emerge.

In stark contrast to Bach’s more intimate court music, George Frideric Handel’s "Water Music" was designed for grand outdoor spectacle. In July 1717, Handel accompanied King George I of England on a nocturnal boat trip along the Thames. The King was so enchanted by the festive splendor of the music that he forced the musicians to play the entire suite three times in a row. For the orchestra, seated on a swaying boat alongside the royal barge, this meant hours of continuous performance without a break—a feat of endurance that transformed the Thames into a massive concert stage until the early hours of the morning.