Rogers & Hart, Gilbert & Sullivan, Abbot & Costello, Batman & Robin… History is full of great partnerships and 18th century England was no exception. Join Paul Luchkow and Michael Jarvis as they explore the music of Handel and his favourite pupil and personal secretary, John Christopher Smith, as well as music by the famous Bach-Abel partnership, which resulted in the fashionable London subscription concert series.
A remounting of last year’s cancelled event which also celebrated the Pacific Baroque Orchestra’s 30th anniversary, New Music for Old Instruments returns in collaboration with Van Pro Musica as part of their Sonic Boom Festival. This special concert features new compositions written for the period instruments of the PBO. All composers are BC-based, highlighting the emerging talent of BC’s burgeoning composers.
A collaboration between Early Music Vancouver, the UBC School of Music, and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, the Baroque Orchestra Mentorship Programme gives student and community players the chance to play side by side with experts in historically informed performance. This unique mentorship initiative is designed to foster the next generation of early music performers. Members of the Baroque Mentorship Orchestra reconvened at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in July, 2020, to record this varied programme of German and Italian instrumental music. Smaller chamber ensembles and the full baroque string orchestra play the music of Arcangelo Corelli, J.G. Janitsch, and J.B. Bach, one of J.S. Bach’s talented cousins.
The audience for ‘classical music’ is well familiar with instrumental music from Corelli to Stravinsky, but largely ignores some wonderful repertoire composed before and since. This program highlights instrumental music composed in Austria and Italy in the 17th century, a time when composers innovated and experimented with musical forms, and explored the technical possibilities and distinct sonorities of individual instruments, including the sackbut (early trombone) and dulcian (early bassoon) as well as string and keyboard instruments.
Love Near, Love Far – a timely and timeless state of longing. Early Music Vancouver recently received an historic and beautifully maintained 1875 Broadwood piano that still possesses its original parts as a gift to the society from Patricia and Nicholas Lee. This instrument has been meticulously restored to sound exactly as it would have 150 years ago and is the perfect vehicle for these late 19th century songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Charles Gounod, Cécile Chaminade, and Hugo Wolf.
These two most beloved of Bach’s concertos exuberantly celebrate ensemble playing, a joy keenly felt by the musicians of Pacific Baroque Orchestra after a long time of isolation. Each concerto features not a single soloist but rather a trio – flute, violin and harpsichord in Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 and two violins accompanied by bass instruments in the Double Violin Concerto. The rest of the ensemble supports the soloists and comments on their playing often in a song-like alternation of catchy tutti refrain and fanciful solo verse.
Enjoy two of Canada’s most revered and influential violinists specializing in historically informed performance practice, Jeanne Lamon, Tafelmusik Music Director Emerita, and Marc Destrube, longtime concertmaster of the Orchestra of the 18th century as they sample the splendours of Baroque chamber music as realized by the great J.S. Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, and French composers Jean-Marie Leclair and Marin Marais.
The riches of the West Coast’s early music scene continue to develop year after year, and the PBO is thrilled to welcome long-time collaborator, mezzo soprano Krisztina Szabo, to join them for a programme of baroque music for Christmas. Krisztina has recently been appointed as a professor at the University of British Columbia which will allow for many more innovative and exciting collaborations in the coming years. Music in this festive concert includes Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerto fatto per la notte di Natale, Alessandro Scarlatti’s Cantata pastorale per la Natività and Georg Frederick Handel’s Concerto Grosso op 6 no 8.
Ariadne/Arianna was performed in London in February 1791 by the soprano castrato Gasparo Pacchierotti, with Haydn accompanying on the harpsichord. At the time a prominent critic wrote: “It abounds with such a variety of dramatic modulations—and is so exquisitely captivating in its larmoyant passages, that it touched and dissolved the audience.” Join one of Canada’s most promising young singers, mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel for a riveting account of one of Haydn’s most spectacular works for voice.
All of the works on this programme are taken from traditional Chinese repertoires and feature traditional Chinese instruments with a special focus on music from the Tang Dynasty. This programme is designed as an introduction to Chinese classical music for EMV’s audience. Though the Vancouver-based musicians of Silk Road Music Ensemble are not playing on period instruments, in collaboration with EMV, they have begun to explore the notion of historically informed performance practice for future seasons. They are already in the process of making contact with specialists in China who we plan to co-present in Vancouver in coming seasons.
Bach’s Musical Offering was initiated in in 1747 when Frederik the Great invited 62-year-old J.S. Bach to his court with a challenge: to improvise a three-part fugue on a complicated musical theme chosen by Frederik himself. To the amazement of all present, “Old Bach” met the challenge with unprecedented creativity and innovation. Bach sent the King The Musical Offering, a brilliant collection of canons and fugues, and a trio sonata that is without parallel in 18th century chamber music, all dedicated to exploring and exhausting the contrapuntal possibilities of the same musical theme. Composed in 2002, Vancouver composer Jocelyn Morlock’s “Revenant” is based on reversing the same royal theme.
Join the PBO’s Music Director and one of Canada’s finest organists, Alexander Weimann, for an organ recital filmed on the magnificent instrument at Christ Church Cathedral in Victoria, BC. Built by Hellmuth Wolff & Associes Ltee of Montreal in 2005, all of the composers on this programme hail from a Southern German/Austrian tradition of organ composition and were chosen because they are a perfect fit for the design of this particular instrument. Works by composers including Johann Kaspar Kerll (1627-1693), Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612) , Georg Muffat (1653-1704, Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706), Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-1667), and ending with Johann Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s (1756-1791) Andante für eine Walze in eine kleine Orgel, KV 616.
