Julie Freddino

Sunday Baroque will mark this solemn anniversary with reflective and uplifting music, including a magnificent 16th century motet and selections from Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion setting.

Sunday Baroque celebrates Labor Day weekend with a variety of music by one of the hardest working baroque composers: Georg Philipp Telemann. Over his 86 years, he earned a reputation as a respected and innovative musician, and a composer of record-setting scope.

“To sing well and to dance is to be well educated,” according to Plato. You can appreciate the joyful sounds of Renaissance and Baroque dance music, including Johann Sebastian Bach’s First Orchestral Suite, which features a variety of popular baroque era dance forms. Feel free to sing and dance along when you hear it this week on Sunday Baroque.

We’ll burst a few bubbles this weekend, taking a look at some of music’s apocryphal stories, questionable legends and misattributions. Did Albinoni really compose his famous Adagio? Did Palestrina really “save” church music? And was Handel really inspired by the humming of a blacksmith? Find out this weekend on Sunday Baroque.

Antonio Vivaldi is known as the “concerto king” for writing several hundred concertos. But what you may not know is that Vivaldi also wrote operas — nearly 100, according to the composer’s estimate — although only about 50 of them survive. You’ll hear selections from one of Vivaldi’s operas AND one of his concertos this week on Sunday Baroque.

Vying for the same jobs and courting the same patrons, Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann COULD have been rivals, but instead they were friends. In honor of National Friendship Day on Sunday, you’ll hear music by both men as a highlight of Sunday Baroque.

The 2016 Olympics open on August 5th in Rio de Janeiro, and Sunday Baroque will feature musicians engaged in feats of athleticism and competition, as well as an excerpt from Antonio Vivaldi’s Olympic-themed opera.

While you’re relaxing on the weekend Sunday Baroque will provide the perfect soundtrack of a few of the greatest hits of the baroque era, including Antonio Vivaldi’s lively double trumpet concerto and one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s legendary Brandenburg Concertos.

John Dowland composed a dance called MY LADY HUNSDON’S PUFFE. Maybe he meant the huffing and puffing of a dancer, or maybe he was making a joke about a patron being a “windbag”? It’s one of the selections on a new recording from the group Ayreheart, and you can hear it on Sunday Baroque while you’re catching your breath this weekend.

France’s big Bastille Day holiday is on July 14th. It’s the annual commemoration of the start of the Revolution in 1789. Sunday Baroque will mark the occasion with a variety of French music from the baroque era.