Mostly Baroque Brings Works of Bach, Pergolesi and Florence Price to Arsht Center

Headlining the second night of the Mostly Baroque festival at the Arsht Center is bass-baritone vocal artist and composer Johan Hartman, pictured above. Mostly Baroque performs in a three concert engagement inside the Carnival Studio Theatre beginning Thursday, Feb. 26. (Photo courtesy of Mostly Baroque)

One pleasure in playing Baroque music, says David Hartman, music director of the Mostly Baroque ensemble is its liveliness. Violins, violas and cellos duel for pride of place with dramatic solos. “Everybody is wanting to say their line, have their comment. Each one has its moment in the sun,” says Hartman, violinist, concert master and leader of the group that he founded in 1997. Still, the audience is the real winner, treated to some of the most exciting and well-loved pieces in the classical repertoire along with others they may not have heard before.

Mostly Baroque performs in a three-concert engagement inside the Carnival Studio Theatre at the Adrienne Arsht Center, Miami, on Thursday, Feb. 26 with shows on Friday, Feb. 27 and Sunday, March 1.

Johan Hartman and Yi-Chun Sarah Tsai in performance. The married, also appear together in “La Serva Padrona,” a comic opera. (Photo courtesy of Mostly Baroque)

The program consists of  well-loved compositions with song cycles; work by early 20th century African American composer Florence Price – sung by the Miami Oratorio Society – and Pergolesi’s period opera “La Serva Padrona.” It’s Mostly Baroque’s first appearance at the Arsht and Hartman hopes it becomes a yearly event.

Hartman started Mostly Baroque in South Florida, where he met many of the group’s musicians, and first became friends and colleagues with Gloria Christian, Miami Oratorio Society president. While Hartman and his family later moved to Connecticut, where Mostly Baroque is now based, Florida ties remain strong.

As Hartman tells it, Baroque music’s unique elements set it apart. The period spans from about 1600 to the mid-18th century. Claudio Monteverdi is credited with launching the style, explains Hartman. Monteverdi’s expressive and dramatic music was a radical departure from earlier church-based compositions, while giving players latitude to experiment with trills, ornaments and rhythm variations. “There is a lot of freedom for the performers to do things,” he says, referring to Baroque compositions. By the time you get to Beethoven, he adds, “you have to play exactly what is on the page.”

David Hartman, Music Director, in performance. The violinist and founder of Mostly Baroque has a South Florida background and founded the group in 1997. (Photo courtesy of Mostly Baroque)

Opening night of the series will  feature Bach Brandenburg concertos, and Georg Philipp Telemann’s Don Quichotte suite. The orchestra – smaller than a grand orchestra at about 13 players and four soloists – includes nine string players, flute, oboe, double bass, harpsichord and trumpet, all performing on period instruments or faithful reproductions.

Headlining the second night on Friday, Feb. 27, is bass-baritone vocal artist and composer Johan Hartman – the son of Hartman and his wife Peggy Hartman (an oboist, who is also part of the ensemble).

Hartman will perform Gerald Finzi’s “Let Us Garlands Bring” (a set of five songs based on Shakespeare), plus the Don Quixote songs of Jacques Ibert (written for the 1933 film), along with works in English, French, German and Italian. Soprano Yi-Chun Sarah Tsai, Johan Hartman’s partner in art and in life will also participate. The pair met in graduate school, recently married and this month held their wedding celebration in Miami.

There will also be original song cycles set to poetry – an approach many composers have taken, including Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Benjamin Britten. Hartman’s piece is composed around “Blood and the Moon” by William Butler Yeats. “There is incredibly rich imagery in his poems,” he says. “There is some really great poetry out there in English.” He will also premier a piece set to the text of Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice.”

Johan Hartman is also a composer, who, among other compositions, sets music to poetry. (Photo courtesy of Mostly Baroque)

Though not part of this show, Hartman is working on an opera based on “The Signal-Man” a mystery-horror short story by Charles Dickens, published in 1866. It is within an innovative trend of horror and mystery as operatic themes being explored by young classical composers. “At the end of the day, it’s a good, human story that can exist in any genre,” says Hartman.

On Sunday, March 1, Tsai and Hartman play, respectively, scheming maidservant Serpina (the name says it all) and her boss, old bachelor Uberto in “La Serva Padrona,” the 1733 comic opera by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi.

In 2022, she and Hartman performed “La Serva Padrona,” at the Dennis C. Moss Cultural Arts Center – then the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center. “It’s always a lot of fun to revisit a role,” she says. “It’s like an old friend.”

Song cycles have their own charm, says Tsai, yet opera is different in interesting ways. “You need to go into the role: what is the background (of the character), the details, and what lead her into that place?” She compares songs and opera to “a single short story instead of a novel.”

In the opera, Tsai says, “Serpina thinks of herself as the boss of the house,” who incubates her own schemes to reach her goal – namely marrying the well-heeled Uberto. Such characters, are fun, she says. And, she adds, the work includes a lot of interesting details. “Every time you revisit (a piece) you learn something new from the composer and what they are trying to do – that is good music.”

Tsai, who sings both mezzo-soprano and soprano roles, earned her doctorate in vocal performance from the University of Miami this year. She and Hartman met as graduate students at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music where both were vocal performance majors. After living for some years in South Florida they moved to New Jersey, in order to be closer to New York and its professional opportunities.

Oratorio Society Member Joyce Thomas, left, performs with the group. (Photo courtesy of Mostly Baroque)

Rounding out the concert while bringing things full circle is an appearance by the Miami Oratorio Society, performing work by Florence Price, the African American classical composer, who in the last several years is finally getting the recognition her works deserve. The group will also perform choruses from George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah,” accompanied by the Mostly Baroque Chamber Orchestra.

Christian, the society’s president, is originally from Jamaica, where she learned and sang classical compositions in the church her family attended. She joined the group – founded in 1974 – around 1992, when she moved to Miami. The society, she explains, was originally formed to bring classical music to underserved communities – which it still does. “We do a lot of Baroque music,” she says. “We do anything you can think of.” Christian, who sings soprano, became president of the group a year or two after joining. She and David Hartman met when he was the orchestra coordinator for the group.

It’s very exciting, she says, to perform the work of Price. “She was a Black lady and you don’t hear about many of the Black composers,” she says. “Moreover, she is a woman and that makes it even better.” They will sing “Praise the Lord,” a church anthem. “It is absolutely beautiful,” she says. The group has previously performed at the Arsht, but not recently, according to Christian. “This is our second time. I’m really looking forward to it.”

WHAT: Mostly Baroque Concert Series
WHERE: Adrienne Arsht Center’s Carnival Studio Theater, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
WHEN: 7 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 26 and. Friday, Feb. 27; 3 p.m., Sunday, March 1.                               COST: Varies by date: $70.20, Feb. 26; $46.80, Feb. 27; $87.75,  March 1                  INFORMATION: (305) 949-6722 or arshtcenter.org

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