Saturday, October 25, 2025, 4:00 pm
First Parish Church, Sudbury, MA Sunday, October 26, 2025, 4:00 pm
Old South Church, Boston, MA
and live-streamed at www.oldpostroad.org In-person Audience Tickets $10-$55, kids come free with an adultVirtual Audience Tickets: $35 individual, $70 family, $10 studentsTwo-time winner of the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society, Musicians of the Old Post Road begins its 37th season with Brilliant Borrowings, a program featuring works that illustrate the magic of inspiration and influence among Baroque luminaries.
Performances will be presented on
October 25 at 4 pm at First Parish Church in Sudbury and October 26 at 4 pm at Old South Church in Boston and online. The weekend marks the opening of the ensemble’s “Cross-Pollinations” season, celebrating inspiration among composers and across cultures in four programs exemplifying the ensemble’s signature programming of musical “rediscoveries” performed alongside beloved 18th-century works.
Brilliant Borrowings highlights ways that Baroque composers inspired each other, starting with one of Georg Philipp Telemann’s “Corelli” sonatas, named in tribute to the Italian Baroque composer Arcangelo Corelli. In this piece, Telemann incorporates the style of Corelli's trio sonatas, including dance forms, walking basses, and the harmonic language that took Europe by storm in the early 18th century, influencing the style of Baroque composers throughout the continent.
A fascinating piece from Nicolas Chédeville’s Le Printems ou Les saisons amusantes (Spring, or the Amusing Seasons) will also be included. A French Baroque oboist and hurdy-gurdy virtuoso, Chédeville freely arranged Vivaldi’s Four Seasons concertos. Although audiences will recognize many of the passages and melodies from Vivaldi’s original, Chedeville imbued his own style into the work. The ensemble will perform the Autumn concerto, Chédeville’s lively and rustic reimagining of the season.
George Frideric Handel was very much inspired by his good friend Georg Philipp Telemann. The two became close early in their careers, with frequent visits and correspondences between the two beginning in 1701. Handel’s Adagio and Allegro for flute strings, and continuo reflects the influence of Telemann’s Concerto in Bb Major for three violins and continuo and clearly demonstrates Handel’s talent at borrowing and reimagining motifs and themes from his friend’s works.
Charles Avison’s Concerto Grosso No. 2 in G Major is a fascinating adaptation of works by the outstanding harpsichordist Domenico Scarlatti. Scarlatti’s Essercizi per cembalo, a set of 30 harpsichord sonatas published in England in 1738, are among the most virtuoso of his oeuvre. The work inspired the English composer Charles Avison to refashion them and other Scarlatti sonatas as concerti grossi for strings and continuo. Published around 1744, Avison’s concertos are extensively re-imagined versions of Scarlatti’s works that work well as orchestrated pieces.
The concert concludes with the ensemble’s own arrangement of Bach’s Italian Concerto, BWV 971, originally intended as a work for solo harpsichord. Bach’s beloved solo piece represents the culmination of his nearly lifelong examination of the Italian concerto format, which greatly influenced his compositional style. In his early years, he made a study of the string and wind concertos of Vivaldi, Albinoni, Marcello and others by arranging them for solo keyboard. Old Post Road’s transcription of his Italian Concerto can be viewed as a "reverse engineering" of this process, taking his work for solo keyboard and orchestrating it for chamber ensemble. For this arrangement, Artistic Directors Daniel Ryan and Suzanne Stumpf surveyed Bach’s own orchestration techniques to model their adaptation after his approach.
Musicians for these concerts, all of whom will play on period instruments, include flutist Suzanne Stumpf, violinists Sarah Darling and Jesse Irons, violist Renée Hemsing, cellist Daniel Ryan, and harpsichordist Kelly Savage.
Single In-Person Tickets are $55 general admission, $50 seniors, $35 for under 35. Kids 18 and under are free with an adult.
Day-Of-Concert Rush Tickets (students and EBT Card holders only) are $10, availability permitting.
Virtual single tickets and
virtual subscriptions are also available.
For more information, visit
www.oldpostroad.org, email
musicians@oldpostroad.org, or call 781-466-6694.
The Sudbury concert is co-presented with the Sudbury Historical Society (members receive a $10 discount on their ticket).
ABOUT MUSICIANS OF THE OLD POST ROADMusicians of the Old Post Road takes its name from its acclaimed concert series that brings period instrument performances of music of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries to beautiful historic buildings along New England’s fabled Old Post Road, the first thoroughfare to connect Boston and New York City in the late 17th century.
Winner of the 1998 and 2023 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society, Musicians of the Old Post Road has also received programming awards from Early Music America, Chamber Music America and the US-Mexico Fund for Culture. The ensemble has toured in Germany, Austria, and Mexico, and has appeared at festivals and on concert series in the US, including the Indianapolis Early Music Festival, the Boston Early Music Festival Concert Series, the Castle Hill Festival, the Artists Series at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, and the Connecticut Early Music Festival. The ensemble has held a residency at Dartmouth College and was featured on WCVB television’s “Chronicle” program and 99.5 All Classical radio’s “Live from Fraser” program.
The ensemble’s discography includes seven recordings that have each been praised in the US and abroad. They include: The Virtuoso Double Bass (Titanic, 1994), Trios and Scottish Song Settings of J. N. Hummel (Meridian, 1999), Galant with an Attitude: Music of Juan and José Pla (Meridian, 2000), Quartets of Telemann and Bodinus (Meridian, 2004), Feliz Navidad: Christmas from Spain and New Spain (Meridian, 2008), Roman Handel (Centaur, 2013), and Earthly Baroque (Centaur, 2017). An 8th CD entitled Into the Light, featuring music by Christoph Graupner, is planned for release on September 26, 2025.
