Two weekends of Baroque gigs

The setup for last night’s concert: you know the party’s really getting started when they bring out the third harpsichord. I got a break for the triple harpsichord concerto, however, which was appreciated since the remainder of the concert was the Handel coronation anthems and the 3rd Bach orchestral suite, which is enough continuo to satisfy any level of masochist. The legendary soft reed that I played for almost all my Baroque concerts last season finally requested a peaceful retirement, so I had to finish some new ones…

Which I won’t need next week, because next week’s Baroque show is BWV 149, a bassoon part that calls to mind Bach sitting at his desk thinking “gee, I sure hope someone completely reinvents this instrument in a hundred years or so.”