The Galileo Project (2009)

New and imaginative ways of programming Baroque repertoire that was never intended for the modern concert or CD formats are always welcome and Tafelmusik have found a corker here. Inspired by the 400th anniversary of Galileo first using his telescope, the Canadian orchestra's double-bassist Alison McKay has devised an hour-long 'Harmony of the Spheres' sequence which unpretentiously harnesses music by several Baroque greats with readings from Shakespeare, Ovid, Kepler and Galileo, and descriptions of lsaac Newton and the opulent Festival of the Planets mounted for a Dresden royal wedding in 1719. The whole is given in front of a suspended circle on to which astronomical images are projected, and the performers move around on a similarly patterned floor, playing from memory, intermingling and reforming (almost everyone gets a solo) amid changing lighting effects.