CONCERT PROGRAM
In its concerts Bravade wants to present its audiences with the rich tradition of recorder music all the way from the Middle Ages to the present. The aim of the Quartet is to make concert programs that are diverse and interesting entities proportionate to the characteristics of the stage and their audiences. Continuous alterations including the modification of programs and mapping of new programs are an important part of what Bravade does. Below is a sample of up-coming concert programs this season.
Bravade Recorder Quartet - Promotion Video »
WINDWAYS
The concert Windways is a versatile musical reflection on the 15 years history of the recorder quartet Bravade. The thread of the program is the geographical cross-section from South to North. The journey starts in Italy with medieval and renaissance pearls, continuing through the courts of England to Finland. Finally the wind takes the audience to the landscapes of the cathedrals in Central Europe and its huge baroque masters. Also the Japanese contemporary music will be represented as a remainder of Bravade´s tours in Japan. Sid Hille´s contemporary piece, commissioned in 2020 by Bravade, and some Swedish folk tunes arranged by Bravade, will give the program the perfect Northern breeze.
CENTURIES THROUGH THE LENS OF FEMALE COMPOSERS
The Recorder Quartet Bravade takes its audience guided by female composers from the medieval monasteries the whole way to our time. The Bravade Recorder Quartet specialized on renaissance recorders presents the essence of its repertoire through the lens of female composers, like Hildegard von Bingen, Vittoria Aleotti and Maddalena Casulana. Conemporary Finnish female composers are represented by Lotta Wennäkoski and also music by Calliope Tsoupaki will be heard. The program is completed with another Greek composer Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri and her touching piece Still LIfe, processing the horrors of the Holocaust in World War II.
THE DARK IS MY DELIGHT
- MUSIC FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO OUR TIMES WITH A CHRISTMAS TWIST
In this warm and atmospheric concert the recorder quartet Bravade takes its listeners from medieval convents to our time, combining familiar Christmas songs with beauties suitable for Christmas time. The renaissance recorders are perfect for organ music- in a big part of the organ pipes the sound is produced just like in the recorder. In this program the Christmas Oratorium by Johann Sebastian Bach is presented through a “human organ”.
IN THE ARMS OF THE NORTHERN NIGHT
Luminous musicians, Renaissance recorders and dark sounds in the night.
The audience is served an experience full of tension with music from the Renaissance and Baroque seasoned with contemporary masterpieces. During the concert contrasts work together and against each other; peace and conflict, meditative sounds and dissonance. Bravade creates a world of sounds, where the silence of the Nordic night is unexpectedly interrupted.
Music by J.S. Bach, Buxtehude, Vivaldi and Ishii. Renaissance music from England and France. The contemporary Finnish field will be represented by works of Sebastian Fagerlund and Olli Virtaperko. Not to forget the Finnish folk tunes.
FLOWING TEARS, CHEERFUL DANCES
Pearls of Renaissance and Baroque music for recorder quartet.
The virtuosic Bravade takes the audience on an enjoyable journey throughout the courts and churches of Europe. The quartet's rich and versatile program features the pearls of recorder quartet music from the Middle Ages up to the Renaissance and Baroque eras.
In the time of the Renaissance, recorder quartets became an essential part of court balls and church functions, alike. The program introduces the most popular tunes and composers of their time, Palestrina, Dowland and Byrd, from the Renaissance on the one hand, and the masters of the Baroque era: J.S. Bach, Buxtehude and Purcell, on the other. Have a pleasant journey!
THE BETTER TO SEE YOU WITH
Bravade & Co’s The better to see you with offers cross-artistic fireworks as Renaissance and Baroque music meet modern music, contemporary dance and multimedia art. A brainchild of the recorder quartet Bravade, the performance shakes up pre-existing notions about recorder music and utilises the entire scale of the unique instruments.
The common thread in the multisensory performance is identity and its nodes. At which point do we drift into learned roles? How do we want to be seen? The psychological journey into making art and personal boundaries becomes accessible through interviews edited by Minna Lindgren during the creation process of the performance.
The performance will present music by Merula, Rossi, Dowland and Black. A virtuoso quartet composed for Bravade by Sebastian Fagerlund is also performed.
Bravade Recorder Quartet
Dancers: Elina Häyrynen, Jukka Tarvainen
Director: Elina Lajunen
Lighting Designer: Hanna Käyhkö
Sound Technician: Timo Kurkikangas
The performance was premiered at the Helsinki music festival on the 21st of August 2017.
PUER NATUS IN BETHLEHEM
An exquisite ensemble of Yule-tide Renaissance and Baroque music. This concert includes the participation of cembalist Petteri Pitko and alto Teppo Lampela.
FROM SHEPHERDS’ TUNES TO JUBILATIONS OF DRINK/THE DARK IS MY DELIGHT
This concert, featuring 16th century consort songs, is performed with the sopranist Pasi Hyökki/soprano Tuuli Lindeberg. It proffers its audience moods deriving from merry tunes to heart-breaking plaintive declarations of love.
REDOING THE PIPES
"Have you heard of anything freakier: a recorder quartet meets a French horn quartet on stage! And then they perform together, to boot!" Here, the women in Bravade size up the men of The Golden Horns. In this renovation of the pipes we hear the two quartets in a joint performance of works, such as, “The Twin Choir” by Gabriel, “The Party” an amusing piece by W.W. van Nieuwkerk, as well as, Bulgarian folk music. The quartets also play their own separate repertoires, all nicely mastered into one complete package.
ORGAN & HUMAN ORGAN
A quartet concisting of recorders of various sizes, functioning as a ” human” organ combined with a real organ, is a very rare combination of instruments. In this concert they will be heard both together and separately. As instruments the recorders ar surprisingly similar to organs; a big part of the organ pipes are flue or labial pipes, where the sound is produced in a similar way as in a recorder, whereas in recorder playing the bellows of the organ are replaced by recorder player´s lungs.
In this concert the organist Markku Mäkinen and the Bravade recorder quartet play works by the big german organ composers J.S. Bach and D. Buxtehude.
REFLECTIONS OF THE PAST AND PRESENT
The concert whose theme reflects Bravade's first record presents recorder music from the Renaissance, the Baroque and the modern eras. Each new musical compositions will be accompanied by pieces from the great composers from the 16th through the 18th centuries. The presented compositions were the "punk" or radical music of their time. We will play e. g. Finnish and Dutch modern music. Among the composers you´ll find J.S. Bach, Byrd, Palestrina, Wennäkoski, Meijering.
The concert can also be performed as a crossover production: the dancers Jukka Tarvainen and Elina Häyrynen has made a stunning choreogrphy to the pieces performed by Bravade. The light designer Hanna Käyhkö takes part in the show by creating a world of it´s own within the performance, combining old and new, dance and music and making the show complete.
This program was premiered in February 2014 as the debut CD of the quartet was released in the Music hall in Helsinki and in the Tampere hall.