Marvels and Genius - with the Victoria Baroque Players

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Saturday, February 25th, 2017
7:30 PM to 9:30 PM

Grand Chamber Music for 18th-century Instruments.

On February 25th the Victoria Baroque Players celebrate grand chamber music of the Classical Era. This musical feast will feature Austrian, English and Italian composers and instruments from the second half of the 18th-century. The members of the Victoria Baroque Players - early music specialists with extensive performing careers in Canada and abroad - will play on models of instruments from the Classical Era, rather than on the Baroque instruments more usually heard in early music performances--in fact, it is a fairly rare and not-to-be-missed treat to hear period Classical instruments in Victoria.

These instruments lend themselves better to the lightness, elegance, longer phrases and virtuosity of this music. For example, the flute and bassoon have new keys added to them, but still retain an organic, intimate sound; the bows of the string instruments are longer, but not as heavy as modern bows, and the harpsichord gives way to the forte piano - a percussive, dynamic instrument like the modern piano it precedes, but with a lighter, clearer, again more intimate sound.

The concert will open with Giovanni Battista Cirri's joyous Sextet in D major for flute and strings. The forte piano will be featured by Michael Jarvis in a Piano Concerto No. 5 in D major by the British composer, James Hook. Bassoonist Katrina Russell will showcase the late-18th century bassoon in Joseph Fiala's virtuosic Bassoon Quartet No. 1.

The second half of the concert features two 18th century transcriptions: Mozart's Flute Quintet KV 577 (based on one of the alternative arias for his 'Marriage of Figaro'), and a transcription of Haydn's Miracle Symphony No. 96, made by Haydn's impresario, Johann Salomon, who brought Haydn to London in 1791 and 1794, and was the leader of the orchestra at the first performances of this symphony conducted by Haydn himself. Played as chamber music with just one player per part, these symphonies become incredibly transparent and personal without compromising Haydn's musical genius and imagination.