Handel and Bach

It's the 1700s and you're sipping a glass of champagne.

Beautiful music is playing through the open air, and you listen to the instruments while cruising gently down the river with your friends. It's a scene fit for a king, which is exactly why George Frideric Handel composed Water Music. King George I commissioned this soundtrack for an outdoor party on the River Thames, and enjoyed it so much he told the musicians to play it over and over again. It still fits the bill for a delightful occasion some three centuries on.

The MSO has turned this event into a miniature Baroque festival because they're graced with the presence of Kristian Bezuidenhout, an Australian keyboard player and early music specialist now based in London. He'll play his own harpsichord arrangement of a piece from J.S. Bach's The Art of Fugue.

Listen out for two more of Bach's pieces on this program, alongside Handel's stately Concerto Grosso and richly coloured overture to the opera Admeto.

Tickets

Single tickets on sale Thursday 30 October 2025.

Want to book Season Tickets? 

Season tickets are on sale now via the MSO website.

Artists

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Kristian Bezuidenhout harpsichord

Program

J.S. Bach
Suite No.1 in C, BWV 1066

J.S. Bach (arr. Bezuidenhout)
Contrapunctus XIV from The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080

George Frideric Handel
Overture to Admeto
Concerto Grosso, Op.3, No.5 in D minor

J.S. Bach
Sinfonia from Cantata, BWV 52, 'Falsche Welt, dir trau ich nicht'

George Frideric Handel
Water Music: Suite No.1 & Suite No.2