Festival European Christmas. Sinfonietta Rīga. Bach, Müthel, Haydn

Johann Gottfried Müthel, the last pupil of the great Baroque master Johann Sebastian Bach, moved to Riga from his native Germany in 1753. He spent more than half of his life here and earned fame as an unsurpassed harpsichord virtuoso and an extraordinary composer. The work of this talented artist, included in the Latvian Cultural Canon, not only balances between Baroque impulsiveness and Classical orderliness, but also reveals itself through the aesthetics of the era of "storm and stress".

In the interpretation of early music expert Ieva Saliete and under the direction of Amsterdam's concertmaster of the "Orchestra of the 18th Century" Aleksandar Janiček, Sinfonietta Rīga will perform Müthel's Harpsichord Concerto, symbolically paired with his admired teacher's stately Third Brandenburg Concerto. Engaging musical parallels also emerge with the work of Johann Sebastian's son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, whose music greatly inspired the Viennese classics, including Joseph Haydn, who in his London Symphony respectfully bows before the talent of the 18th-century masters.