François Couperin
Concert No. 14 from Les goûts réunis

Benjamin Britten
The Grasshopper from Two Insect Pieces

Claude Debussy (ed. Kenneth Cooper)
Images for oboe, horn and harpsichord

Thomas Adès
Sonata da caccia

Jean-Philippe Rameau
Pièces de clavecin en concerts: Concert V

Toshio Hosokawa
Spell Song for solo oboe

Antonio Vivaldi
Sonata for oboe and basso continuo in G minor, RV 28

Martin Daněk – oboe
Paweł Cal – horn
Mélusine de Pas – viola da gamba
Monika Knoblochová – harpsichord

An unusual instrumental combination of oboe, horn, and harpsichord will be presented in the opening concert of the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava’s chamber subscription series. The programme connects Baroque music with works of the 20th and 21st centuries, revealing the evolution of sound imagination across the centuries.

The French Baroque master François Couperin served at the courts of Louis XIV and Louis XV at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. For the festivities at Versailles, he composed in 1724 the cycle Les goûts réunis, in which he united French elegance with the virtuoso Italian style of Arcangelo Corelli.

A humorous contrast is provided by the portrait of a grasshopper from Benjamin Britten’s Two Insect Pieces (1935), while poetic sonic enchantment emerges in Images for oboe, horn, and harpsichord—drawn from Claude Debussy’s unfinished Sonata (1915–1918) in a reconstruction by Kenneth Cooper. The distinctive color of this instrumental combination, discovered by Debussy, inspired Thomas Adès in 1993 to compose Sonata da caccia, paying homage to both Debussy and Couperin.

Jean-Philippe Rameau, Couperin’s successor, created remarkable chamber works with brilliant harpsichord parts in his Pièces de clavecin en concerts (1741). After Toshio Hosokawa’s Spell Song for solo oboe (2015), inspired by Eastern calligraphy, the concert concludes with Antonio Vivaldi’s energetic Sonata for oboe and basso continuo in G minor.