IX Tallinn feat. Reval: experimental baroque – Mustpeade Maja, Tallinn

IX Tallinn feat. Reval – experimental baroque.

Programme: Jacob Klein der Jüngere, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann, Jean-Philippe Rameau.

Performers: Pavel Serbin, baroque cello (Hungary); Reinut Tepp, harpsichord.

The programme is devoted to the baroque cello repertoire and to 18th-century composers seeking new compositional possibilities. The cello was still a new solo instrument at the time: the first printed cello sonatas appeared in Italy around 1697. Jacob Klein der Jüngere, a Dutch businessman, highly skilled cellist and composer of extraordinary imagination, published a collection of sonatas for basse de violon in Amsterdam in 1717. Following Corelli's model, he drew on the freer style of the stylus phantasticus, combining it with discordato tunings of the cello.

The second theme is transcription. The programme includes a bright but now little-known collection published in Paris around 1750, with folk tunes (such as “Fürstemberg”) and excerpts from Rameau's operas arranged for two cellos and basso continuo. The melodies are not simply transposed; they are also varied and modified.

The third theme is a modern experiment with transcriptions. The aim is not to recompose the work or make a collage, but to find its historical background. Among Telemann's twelve fantasias for viola da gamba, four may originally have been intended for cello, so returning them to their presumed original form is a challenge in itself. In Bach's Second Suite we highlight its French character by placing it in the form of the French pièce de viole, intended for two cellos and harpsichord.

For festival tickets, free concerts, youth concerts, masterclasses and workshops, see tallinnfeatreval.eu.

Time and place: 25 November 2026, 19:00, Mustpeade Maja, Pikk 26, Tallinn.