Interweaving dramatic action with a performance of Bach’s three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord, two actors and two musicians reveal the unexpected and controversial friendship that developed between the middle-aged Johann Sebastian Bach and his patron, the young Prince Leopold of Germany, a friendship that sliced through the barriers of age, status and religion.
For the recently imprisoned and poverty-stricken Bach the appointment as Kapellmeister held little promise – a Calvinist Court and a young patron with a domineering mother who hated music. Yet thanks to the Prince, Bach, in his overcrowded lodgings and faced with religious hostility and indifference, was able to write some of his most beautiful, personal and experimental music.
Witty and poetic, David Napthine’s script explores the importance of friendship and the often-unpromising conditions in which great music is produced.
Some press comments
As I watched, I gained a fascinating insight into musical history. Greg Pullen (viola da Gamba) and Duncan Brown (harpsichord) enthralled us...An inspiring, most unusual play'
The Pocklington Star
'To hear all three [sonatas] as part of the play was not merely a bonus. It also set a Baroque ambience that any amount of scenery would have struggled to establish.... Napthine himself played the composer as something of a firebrand, matched by Carl Kennedy's equally determined Leopold. A fascinating sidelight to musical history'
York Evening Press
Commissioned for Bishop Auckland Music Festival, 2005
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