Concerts accompanying conference highlight 17th and 18th century Hamburg

During the first week of November, Cornell's Institute for German Cultural Studies will present a three-day conference on campus titled "Patriotism, Cosmopolitanism and National Culture." With support from the ZEIT and Max Kade Foundations, the Cornell Council for the Arts and the Department of Music, the conference will explore public culture in Hamburg, Germany, from 1700 to 2000. As part of the conference, the Department of Music will present a festival of three concerts, Nov. 1-4, highlighting music written and performed in Hamburg during the 17th and 18th centuries.

The concerts -- organized by music faculty Annette Richards and David Yearsley, as well as graduate student Thomas Irvine -- are free and open to the public. All performances are in Barnes Hall.

• The first concert, scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 1, at 8 p.m., features chamber music from Hamburg by Georg Philipp Telemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Johannes Brahms. The first half of the program is dominated by works of Telemann: a Concerto in B Minor for flute, obbligato harpsichord and cello; Fantasias for both solo flute and solo violin; and the Quartet in G Major, for flute, oboe, violin and continuo.

  The musicians are members of Die musicalischen Patrioten and include flutist Steven Zohn, oboist Geoffrey Burgess, violinist Brian Brooks, cellist Christopher Haritatos and harpsichordist David Yearsley. Founded in 1995 by Yearsley and Brooks, Die musicalischen Patrioten members are dedicated to performances of Hamburg music of the 17th and 18th centuries. Less a fixed group than a fluid gathering of critical musicians, the band takes its name from Johann Mattheson's 1728 treatise, Der musicalische Patriot, a spirited defense of musical culture.

  Following intermission, soprano Judith Kellock, Cornell associate professor of music, and pianist Miri Yampolsky will present songs by both C.P.E. Bach and Brahms. The program closes with members of Die musicalischen Patrioten, including violist Thomas Irvine, performing C.P.E. Bach's Empfindungen for violin and fortepiano, and the Quartet in D Major, for fortepiano, flute, viola and cello, Wq. 94.

  Soprano Ann Monoyios performs at the Nov. 2 concert in Barnes Hall, "An Evening at the Hamburg Opera." Robin Holland

• "An Evening at the Hamburg Opera" is featured on Nov. 2 at 8 p.m. Warren Stewart directs the orchestra Die musicalischen Patrioten in overtures, arias, duets and trios from Handel's Almira, Mattheson's Cleopatra and Keiser's Masaniello furioso for this Friday evening performance. Guest singers include soprano Ann Monoyios, tenor Thomas Young and baritone Peter Becker.

  The Seattle Times has said that "Ann Monoyios [is] an airborne soprano of ethereal clarity, technical finesse and great taste," while Gramophone regards her as "one of the very best singers performing baroque repertoire today." Although she is primarily a specialist in the performance of baroque and classical music, her repertory extends from Bach to Britten and de Falla. She can be heard on many recording labels, including Deutsche Grammophon Archiv, Sony Vivarte, EMI, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi and Erato.

  Young made his Lyric Opera of Chicago debut in the world premiere (his seventh) of Anthony Davis's Amistad. His first collaboration with Davis was for the world premiere of X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. Young's most recent success is the Great Performances telecast of "Three Mo' Tenors," which features him with colleagues Roderick Dixon and Victor Trent Cook.

• "At Home in the Musical Republic" features Cornell's David Yearsley, assistant professor of music, Nov. 4 at 3 p.m. For this Sunday afternoon concert, Yearsley will present a program of keyboard music by a group of musicians/composers with ties to the city of Hamburg. Using both fortepiano and harpsichord, he will perform music of Georg Böhm, Johann Reincken, Matthias Weckmann, Heinrich Scheidemann, Johann Mattheson, Georg Friedrich Händel and C.P.E. Bach.

First-prize winner at the 1994 Bruges Early Music Festival, Yearsley enjoys an active recital career throughout the United States and Europe as an organist, harpsichordist and clavichordist. His scholarly work has appeared in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Music & Letters and the Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, and his recording of the music of Delphin and Nicolaus Adam Strungk, played on the historic Arp Schnitger organ in Germany, recently was issued on Loft; his Bach, Scarlatti, Handel is forthcoming from the same label.