Orpheus Baroque in a Musical Offering

Since its formation in 2015, Orpheus Baroque has grown into an important part of the capital city’s music offering, serving as a meeting place for orchestra members and some of Sweden’s foremost freelance Baroque musicians.

The critically acclaimed ensemble collaborates with guest conductors such as Alfredo Bernardini, Dan Laurin, Peter Spissky, Luca Guglielmi, Göran Karlsson and Mariangiola Martello, and soloists such as Anders J. Dahlin and Kristina Hammarström. The artistic directors are the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra’s solo cellist Johannes Rostamo, and concertmaster and Baroque violinist Elin Gabrielsson.

Here, the ensemble takes on one of the great Baroque masterpieces: Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Musical Offering, which was the result of a meeting between Bach and Frederick II of Prussia, also known as Frederick the Great. He was not only king and elector of Brandenburg; he was also a keen amateur musician and composer. When they met at the royal residence in Potsdam, Frederick the Great gave Bach a clever and original theme as the basis for improvising a three-part fugue. Bach did just that, but declined the challenge to also improvise a six-part fugue. Instead, a few months later he published a collection of pieces based on the theme, which he dedicated to Frederick II of Prussia. This contrapuntal masterpiece would come to be called Musikalischer Opfer – the Musical Offering.

The concert is presented (in Swedish) by Gunno Klingfors, expert in the performance practise of the 17th and 18th centuries – in particular in relation to the music of Johann Sebastan Bach.