Past Events - Early Music Vancouver

Prophets Outside Their Country – Corelli & the Italians | DCH

Wednesday January 19, 2022 | 7:30PMOnline

The history of European music has been shaped by the uprooting and travels of artists seeking work, fame, knowledge or financial stability. In this programme, we tell the stories of Italian composers Geminiani, Brescianello, Locatelli, and Corelli who left home to seek a better future. This concert will showcase the virtuosic brilliance of violinist Chloe Kim, named as one of Canada’s top 30 under 30 by CBC last year when she was just 23-years-old.

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The (Very) First Viennese School – CANCELLED

Friday, January 7, 2022 | 7:30 pmChrist Church Cathedral

The Baroque ensemble Quicksilver has had to cancelled their tour due to the rising cases of Covid 19. We look forward to when they’ll be able to perform with us in the future.

When the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II moved his court to Vienna in 1619, this great Hapsburg city became home to a thriving international musical scene. Emissaries sought out the best players and composers from all over Italy to make Ferdinand’s court as cosmopolitan and sophisticated as possible. This was the birth of what we could call today the very first Viennese school, long before the great Classical period. Like the Classical composers, these musicians made a specialty of the great instrumental form of the sonata. But unlike those of Mozart and Haydn, the seventeenth-century sonata was a novel and experimental form that supported a way to create a purely instrumental discourse in music.

This concert is generously supported by José Verstappen.

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Festive Cantatas: Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with The Pacific Baroque Orchestra

Wednesday, December 22, 2021 | 7:30PMOnline

This year, EMV’s Festive Cantatas features some of the most popular Christmas music of Germany in the 18th century by Johann Kuhanu and J.S. Bach. Kuhnau was cantor in the Thomaskirche of Leipzig before Bach and in addition to being a remarkable composer, he was a lawyer and a linguist who wrote a satirical novel, Der musicalische Quacksalber (1700). Only recently has Kuhnau’s church music been given a bit of the attention it deserves. Kuhnau’s cantata « Wie Schön leuchtet der Morgenstern » (How brightly shines the morning star) is filled with moments of lyric beauty and expertly-rendered Italianate ritornelli echoed in the solo vocal lines. The quality of this work is an excellent argument for exploring more deeply the musical culture that preceded and influenced J.S. Bach. This cantata contains some of the earliest orchestral writing for natural horns and this may have inspired Bach to do the same in his cantata by the same name as well as in Cantata V of the Christmas Oratorio. The Christmas Oratorio was originally written as six cantatas for six different days between Christmas and the feast of Epiphany.

For this performance of Cantatas IV and V from the Christmas Oratorio, five Canadian soloists of international renown join the musicians of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, under the direction of Alexander Weimann.

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Clair-Obscur: Corsican Polyphony feat. Constantinople & A Filetta

Friday, December 3, 2021 | 5:30 pm & 7:30 pmPacific Spirit United Church (formerly Ryerson Church)

Constantinople partners with the seminal Corsican polyphonic singing group A Filetta, to create an enchanting sonic tableau where light and shadow meet, through sacred and secular songs from the rich Corsican musical tradition. Polyphony by the prodigious vocalists of A Filetta, as well as songs and music orchestrated by Kiya Tabassian, will come together in a deeply moving concert.

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Bach’s Sons feat. Elinor Frey, cello & Pacific Baroque Orchestra | EMV DCH

Wednesday, November 24, 2021 | 7:30PMOnline

Of J.S. Bach’s children that survived into adulthood, four became composers whose music we still perform. While their musical facility reflects their father’s influence, each son had a very different path of travel, employment, and development of their musical voice. Johann Christian’s Chromatic Fugue on B-A-C-H pays homage to the serious, contrapuntal style of the past, but usually the Bach sons write in the galant style of their own generation, characterized by simplicity and immediacy of appeal. The closeness of the Bachs sometimes complicates the attribution of their music. The Orchestral Suite in G minor, BWV 1070, once thought to be by father Johann Sebastian, was more likely written by Wilhelm Friedemann. The Cello Sonata in A Major of Johann Christoph Friedrich seems liberated, natural, and comprehensible when played on a cello fit with a fifth string whereas the Cello Concerto in A minor of his older brother, Carl Philipp Emanuel fits well on the more popular 4-string instrument. Each work demonstrates the language of Sensibility (Empfindsamkeit): intimate, sensitive, and subjective. In their music, emotions are fleeting and instantaneous and, above all, the beauty of melody is emphasized.

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Lab’rinths: Purcell & his Contemporaries | EMV DCH

Wednesday November 10, 2021 | 7:30PMOnline

The program name ‘Lab’rinths’ evokes the spiritual mystery and human turmoil captured so clearly by Purcell and his contemporaries. Taken from a collection of sacred songs published in 1688 by Henry Playford, ‘Harmonia Sacra’, these devotional songs by Purcell can often be interpreted as biblical ‘mad scenes’: they offer the listener a glimpse into his most dramatic and harmonically adventurous explorations of personal loss, confusion, spiritual angst and delirious ecstasy. These songs will be sung by baritone Jonathon Adams and accompanied by Mélisande Corriveau on viola da gamba and Eric Milnes on organ and harpsichord. Interpolating these vivid scenes are pieces written for two viols by contemporaries of Purcell. Susie Napper will join Corriveau and Milnes for these instrumental selections.

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Alexander Weimann Inaugurates EMV’s Graf Fortepiano with Mozart, Schubert & Beethoven | DCH

Wednesday October 27, 2021 | 7:30 pm

EMV highlights Alexander Weimann, one of the most sought-after ensemble directors, soloists, keyboardists and chamber music partners of his generation, as he inaugurates the newest acquisition of our instrument collection: a fortepiano modelled on an 1819 instrument by Conrad Graf (1782-1851), built by the world-famous Paul McNulty. Graf did much of his most important work during the short life of Franz Schubert, and although he rose to prominence after Mozart and Haydn had died, he was continuing the tradition of Viennese fortepianos with which they were familiar.

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Pilgrimage to Bach feat. Jonathon Adams, baritone, Pacific Baroque Orchestra | EMV DCH

Wednesday, October 13, 2021 | 7:30PMOnline

EMV’s summer artist-in-residence, Jonathon Adams, a Two-Spirit, nêhiyaw michif (Cree-Métis) baritone and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra led from the organ and harpsichord by Alexander Weimann perform J.S. Bach’s BWV 82 “Ich habe genug” (It is enough). The cantata represents a solo journey, or transition, from this world to the next. This multimedia presentation centers on the tension between the physical body and the caged spirit within.

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Chaconne: In Memory of Jeanne Lamon | EMV DCH

Wednesday, October 6 2021 | 7:30 pmOnline

Eight notes of one famous bass line have placed Johann Pachelbel among the world’s most well- recognized composers. Yet there is much more to him than his ever-popular Canon. This program presents two rarely heard suites from Pachelbel’s major surviving chamber music work, Musikalische Ergötzung (Musical Delight). Featured gems for solo violin and continuo include ciaconnas by Italian composers Antonio Bertali and Nicola Matteis. Both were violin virtuosi who left their native country for successful careers in Vienna and London, respectively. Matteis contributed to steering the English taste toward the florid and fiery Italian school of violin playing. From the earthly to the ethereal, explore the remarkable spectrum of what the chaconne has to offer with these four talented local artists.

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