Two weeks of fantastic and often stunning music are drawing to a close. Even this early, one could say that this year’s Valletta International Baroque Music Festival is registering another success. Attendance for the over 20 events has been steady as regards visitors from abroad, some of whom are over for the fourth consecutive time. The festival is also attracting an increasing number of local music lovers, including newcomers to the genre.

A quick look at the events of the last few days of the festival reveals a continuation in the variety and richness of these events. This evening at the Manoel Theatre, the Arianna Art Ensemble is presenting a performance featuring live musicians and marionettes in the Sicilian tradition. It is all about the epic legend of Orlando Furioso dealing with battles, love and madness.

The ensemble is relatively new, having been founded in 2007 by lutenist/composer Paolo Rigano and harpsichordist Cinzia Guarino and owes its continued success to the blending of the traditional Sicilian contastorie (storytellers) and baroque music performed on period instruments.

Always at the Manoel, tomorrow’s performance goes French when the European Union Baroque Orchestra directed by Lars Ulrik Mortensen performs dances from Rameau’s lyric tragedy Zoroastre. Premiered in 1749 the opera took another seven years before it scored a success after Rameau revised it. Rameau’s dance music is extensive because he also composed a considerable number of ballet-operas. The programme also includes some music by Jean-Féry Rebel (1666-1747) who started as a child prodigy violinist who composed several ballets and chamber works.

On Friday, at noon, the scene shifts to the Church of All Souls/St Nicholas in Merchants Street. German lutenist Andreas Martin performs works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Jakob Froberger. During the Renaissance and Baroque periods the lute was an essential instrument either performed solo or in ensemble. The intimacy of the venue is ideal considering the gentle, soft sound of the lute, “the music of silence” as the recital is being dubbed.

Bach needs no introduction while Froberger (c. 1616-1667) was very well-known during his lifetime, so much so that Bonaventura Rubino inserted some of Froberger’s music in his 1653 Requiem – as heard during this year’s festival’s earlier days. Froberger suffered from some neglect but not totally as musicologists and various composers after him always referred to him in various ways.

As is customary, the festival concludes with the Baroque Festival Ball.

Niccolò Jommelli (1714-1774) was born in Aversa, near Naples and was highly respected in his time for his sacred and secular works. Mozart met Jommelli when he visited the Court of Duke Karl Eugen of Württemberg at Ludwigsburg. Mozart was later to find that the influence of Salieri’s music, Gassmann’s and Jommelli’s hindered his own quest for recognition in Viennese Court circles. Jommelli was the Duke’s Kapellmeister who in 1756 commissioned a Requiem Mass for his late mother, the Dowager Duchess Marie-Auguste, née Princess von Thurn und Taxis. The performance of this Requiem promises to be a treat and is being performed by the Ghislieri Choir and Consort which is one of the finest of its generation in Italy. This Requiem will be performed at the Jesuit Church, Merchants Street, on Friday at 7.30pm.

As all good things must, this fourth edition of the VIBM Festival ends with two events at the Manoel, where at noon The Beatles go Baroque. This is thanks to Gli Archi Ensemble and features well-known music by the Beatles which was arranged by pianist/conductor/composer Breiner Slovak.

As is customary the festival concludes with the Baroque Festival Ball, from 9pm until late.