Performing will be the soloists, chamber choir and chamber ensemble of the Clarion Music Society, the recently reborn period-instrument ensemble directed by Steven Fox, a young American who founded Russia's first period-instrument orchestra, Musica Antiqua St. Petersburg.
The program includes keyboard sonatas by Galuppi and Bortniansky, a string quartet by the German composer Anton Ferdinand Tietz, and selections from Bortniansky's French-language opera Le Fils rival and Yevstigney Fomin's Russian-language work Yamchiki na podstave ("The Coachmen at the Relay Station"). There will also be two examples, by Bortniansky and Berezovsky, of a particular Russian genre, the choral concerto — a cappella settings of sacred texts in Old Church Slavonic intended for concert performance.
In addition, the concert features a setting by Berezovsky of Psalm 51, arranged for choir and string quartet by Sarti. Fox discovered the manuscript for this work in London last year.
"The Eastern Enlightenment: Russian Jewels from the Court of Catherine the Great" begins at 8 p.m. at Weill Recital Hall, just to the left of Carnegie Hall's main entrance on West 57th Street. More information is available at www.clarionmusic.org.