BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:1.0 TZ:-07 BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:From Princes to Frogs URL:http://www.harbourliving.ca/event/from-princes-to-frogs/ LOCATION:Duncan Christian Reform Church :: 930 Trunk Rd. Duncan, DESCRIPTION;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:

Straight From London's Royal Albert Hall Christmas Concert, world-famous Steven Devine is bringing to Duncan his Victoria Baroque Players, augmented with four hunting horn artists!  Steven will simultaneously conduct and  play the harpsichord, in the Christian Reformed Church, Duncan on January 14th at 7:30 pm. His concert is entitled “From Princes to Frogs”

The Royal Albert has 5,272 seats. World-wide television, which broadcast his Christmas concert, has millions of viewers. In total contrast, the Christian Reformed Church in Duncan has only 450 available seats for an intimate Cowichan Symphony Society fourth main-series concert. Some tickets are still available and can be purchased at the Cowichan Theatre Ticket Centre.  Phone 250-748-7529.

Steven Devine made his London conducting debut in 2002 at the Royal Albert Hall and is now a regular performer there - including making his Proms' music-directing debut in August 2007 with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.  He has conducted the Mozart Festival Orchestra in every major concert hall in the UK and also across Switzerland. Steven is Music Director for New Chamber Opera in Oxford and with them has performed repertoire from Cavalli to Rossini. For the Dartington Festival Opera he has conducted Handel's Orlando and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas.

From 2016 Steven will be Curator of Early Music for the Norwegian Wind Ensemble and will complete his complete Rameau solo recording for Resonus Classics. He has recorded over thirty discs with other artists and ensembles, and made six solo recordings. His recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations (Chandos Records) has received critical acclaim – including Gramophone magazine describing it as "among the best".

Program notes for “From Princes to Frogs”:

What happens when the best musical minds are given free reign to depict royalty as well as the life of villagers and mariners? In this grand Baroque orchestral program, the splendor of four hunting horns provides the pomp and circumstance for music of royal grandeur, as well as the humorous characterization of animals and raucous village life. Orchestral highlights from operas by Handel and Rameau are featured alongside two of Telemann’s biggest concert pieces - his “Water Music” and “Alster Overture”, both of which provide musical descriptions of the ebb and flow of life along the rivers of Hamburg. This is a concert of kings and princes, gods of sea and the air, nymphs, merry mariners, frogs, and crows.

Four Horns - Contemporary audiences are accustomed these days to seeing orchestras sporting a horn section of four players, each playing an independent part. In the early to mid-eighteenth century, however, this was a very unusual and dramatic event. Handel was one of the first composers to invite the hunting horn from the forests and fields into the (usually!) more genteel milieu of the orchestra. Indeed, in the first performance of his now famous Water Music (1717) the British public heard horns in an orchestral concert for the first time. In keeping with European practices, from this point onward horns were most generally used in pairs, but two of the works presented in this program - one by Handel and one by his contemporary, Telemann - demonstrate the origins of the symphonic horn section of four players. It should be noted that this will be the first time the Victoria Baroque Players have allowed such a plethora of brass players into their ensemble!

DTSTART:19691231 DTEND:19700101 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR