Bach: Four Sonatas and a Concerto

Friday, August 5, 2022 | 1 p.m.Christ Church Cathedral

Subscriptions: To purchase tickets to this performance as part of a subscription to 3 or more concerts and receive a 25% discount off the full ticket price, please call Early Music Vancouver’s box office at 604-732-1610 or email boxoffice@earlymusic.bc.ca. Please note the subscription discount is not eligible in combination with other discount programs or on special events Rondeau and Tea Table Miscellany.

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Artists: Chloe Kim, violin and Avi Stein, keyboard

This program showcases the virtuosic brilliance of violinist Chloe Kim, named as one of Canada’s top 30 under 30 by CBC in 2020 when she was just 23 years old. An early reviewer of J.S. Bach’s now-famous music for unaccompanied violin wrote that it was “perhaps the greatest example in any art of the freedom and certainty with which a great master can move even when he is in chains.” This programme, by contrast, features music Bach wrote for the violin when he had left the chains behind. With the harmonic support of the harpsichord and added richness of the cello, Bach set his violin free in flights of lyricism and contrapuntal inventiveness. He also thrillingly renegotiated the usual terms of the chamber sonata, making the keyboard and violin newly equal partners. Dating from the composer’s years in Cöthen and Leipzig, these sonatas exemplify the full range—the witty ingenuity, the dazzling virtuosity, the quiet depth—of Bach’s musical craftsmanship.

From The Court of Louis XIV to Shippagan

Tuesday, August 2, 2022 | 1 p.m.Christ Church Cathedral

Subscriptions: To purchase tickets to this performance as part of a subscription to 3 or more concerts and receive a 25% discount off the full ticket price, please call Early Music Vancouver’s box office at 604-732-1610 or email boxoffice@earlymusic.bc.ca. Please note the subscription discount is not eligible in combination with other discount programs or on special events Rondeau and Tea Table Miscellany.

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Artists: Suzie LeBlanc, soprano; Vincent Lauzer, recorder; Marie Nadeau-Tremblay, violin; Sylvain Bergeron, archlute and baroque guitar

There is no doubt that the majority of traditional Acadian songs come from France, their origins can even be traced back to certain regions. Songs, just like people, are nomadic: they have no borders! The lyrics, like the melodies, often change as they travel. Songs also varied, not only from one Acadian region to another, but also from one performer to another, with each artist lending their own version.

Here, we juxtapose Acadian folk songs from Shippagan with 17th century ‘airs de cour’ from France and the court of Louis the XIV. The folksongs from Shippagan were collected by Dr. Joseph Dominique Gauthier between 1950 and 1957 who, after receiving a visit from two folklorists from Laval University, embarked on his own quest to find songs. Doctor Gauthier, a physician in Shippagan, said that getting songs and stories from his informants was the best way to do geriatrics!

The songs collected by Dr. Gauthier have melismas that are reminiscent of the ornamentation found in French ‘air de cour’ and this reveals the presence of certain archaisms in this isolated northeastern region of New Brunswick.

The Last Rose of Summer

Friday, July 29, 2022 | 1 p.m.Christ Church Cathedral

Subscriptions: To purchase tickets to this performance as part of a subscription to 3 or more concerts and receive a 25% discount off the full ticket price, please call Early Music Vancouver’s box office at 604-732-1610 or email boxoffice@earlymusic.bc.ca. Please note the subscription discount is not eligible in combination with other discount programs or on special events Rondeau and Tea Table Miscellany.

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Artists: Pierre-Antoine Tremblay, horn; Alexander Weimann, fortepiano

In 1805, the Irish poet Thomas Moore wrote a short poem entitled “The Last Rose of Summer,” which was later set to a traditional tune called “Aisling an Óigfhear” (The Young Man’s Dream). The poem and the tune were published together in 1813 in Volume 5 of Moore’s Selection of Irish Melodies. Dozens of classical composers created their own arrangements and fantasies based on the tune, including three of the five composers on this program, Beethoven (twice, in 1814 and 1818), Moscheles in 1826 in a work for piano and orchestra, and Mendelssohn (in 1830) with a piano piece that opens with a short Adagio introduction in which the melody is presented, after which it is subjected to a steady succession of treatments in terms of tempo, mood, and fragmentation.

The horn and the piano had been around for many years before anyone thought of writing a sonata combining the two instruments. That “anyone” was Beethoven, and the year was 1799. Scholars have so far found no precedent. It was to be the only sonata by this composer for a wind instrument, and it was written for a particular horn player named Jan Václav Štich (1748-1803), born in Bohemia, and who became Giovanni Punto when he moved to Italy. Renowned for his virtuosity, Punto had ample opportunity to prove himself in Beethoven’s acrobatic writing for the instrument. As Beethoven was a formidable pianist, he gave himself a substantial part as well. 

Another composer to highlight on this programme is Fanny Mendelsshon who was an outstanding pianist and one of the foremost women composers of the nineteenth century. 

Armonico Tributo

Tuesday, August 2, 2022 | 7:30 p.m.Christ Church Cathedral

Subscriptions: To purchase tickets to this performance as part of a subscription to 3 or more concerts and receive a 25% discount off the full ticket price, please call Early Music Vancouver’s box office at 604-732-1610 or email boxoffice@earlymusic.bc.ca. Please note the subscription discount is not eligible in combination with other discount programs or on special events Rondeau and Tea Table Miscellany.

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Artists: Baroque Orchestra Mentorship Programme (BOMP) under the direction of EMV 2022 Artist-in-Residence David McGuinness and Chloe Meyers; Isaiah Bell, tenor; and Ellen Torrie, soprano 

Scottish music found its way into European consciousness in the 17th and 18th centuries. Georg Muffat’s family left Scotland to escape religious persecution. They settled in Savoie in the French Alps, and Muffat grew to be one of the century’s most cosmopolitan musicians – spending time with Lully in Paris and Corelli in Rome. His elegant and lush Armonico Tributo sonatas bring together aspects of both French and Italian music and were given their first performances by Corelli’s orchestra.

Francesco Gemignani’s wonderfully elaborate arrangements of Scottish songs and tunes appeared in a book entitled A Treatise of Good Taste in the Art of Music. He did know a thing or two about good taste, being an art dealer, as well as a violin virtuoso and composer who had studied with Corelli in Rome several decades after Georg Muffat. We do not know if Geminiani ever set foot in Scotland. He made his arrangements of Scottish music from some tunes he found in the immensely popular songbook The Tea- Table Miscellany, by Allan Ramsay. Songs from Ramsey’s Tea-Table Miscellany will be featured in a concert later in the Festival.

The Baroque Orchestra Mentorship Programme is a collaboration between Early Music Vancouver, the UBC School of Music and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra. This year-long programme gives student and community musicians the chance to play side by side with experts in historically-informed performance. This unique mentorship initiative is designed to foster and inspire the next generation of early music performers, and support the region’s early music community.

Pre-concert talk: Join us at 6:45 p.m.  for a pre-concert interview with Suzie LeBlanc and Marie Nadeau-Tremblay. This talk is included in the live concert ticket price.

Out of the Deep

Thursday, Aug 4, 2022 | 7:30 p.m.Christ Church Cathedral

Subscriptions: To purchase tickets to this performance as part of a subscription to 3 or more concerts and receive a 25% discount off the full ticket price, please call Early Music Vancouver’s box office at 604-732-1610 or email boxoffice@earlymusic.bc.ca. Please note the subscription discount is not eligible in combination with other discount programs or on special events Rondeau and Tea Table Miscellany.

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Artists: Jonathon Adams, baritone; Chloe Kim, violin; Marie-Nadeau Tremblay, violin; Margaret Little, viola da gamba; Lucas Harris, theorbo; Avi Stein, keyboard

Emanating from seventeenth-century Italy, music of the “stylus phantasticus” was free and extravagant, marked by an uninhibited play of the compositional imagination. This programme shows the power and creativity of the fantastical style as it was taken up in the courts and chapels of Germany and Austria, featuring the stunning instrumental virtuosity of composers like Biber and Buxtehude alongside concerted psalm settings that treat the baritone voice with equal skill and imaginativeness. Filled with moving language and some of the best of the period’s musical fancy, these ancient songs of praise and supplication continue to speak with freshness and drama today.

Les Nations

Friday, July 29, 2022 | 7:30 p.m.Christ Church Cathedral

Subscriptions: To purchase tickets to this performance as part of a subscription to 3 or more concerts and receive a 25% discount off the full ticket price, please call Early Music Vancouver’s box office at 604-732-1610 or email boxoffice@earlymusic.bc.ca. Please note the subscription discount is not eligible in combination with other discount programs or on special events Rondeau and Tea Table Miscellany.

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Artists: Contrasto Armonico

Born in 1668, François Couperin was the only son of Charles Couperin, the harpsichordist and organist at the old Parisian Church of Saint-Gervais. During his lifetime, François Couperin, the most illustrious member of a distinguished musical family, was highly esteemed, both as performer (on the organ and the harpsichord), and as composer, and it was his contemporaries who conferred upon him the surname of “The Great.”

Les Nations is a vast project of extended trio sonatas in which the virtues of both the French and Italian styles are set next to each other. Each of the four Ordres celebrates a Catholic power of Europe, France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Savoy dynasty of Piedmont, and each is a combination of an Italianate trio sonata with its free-form virtuosity and a large-scale and elaborate French dance suite. 

Although the collection was published in 1726, some of the pieces were composed by Couperin some thirty or more years earlier, inspired by his enthusiasm for the newly-discovered Italian instrumental style, like many other composers of his generation.