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The Dawn of VirtuosityRecreating the First Trumpet & Keyboard RecitalTrumpet player Kris Kwapis, well-known in Vancouver for her many appearances in our annual Bach Cantatas and other Chan Centre concerts, will be joined by the brilliant young harpsichordist Mehan Esfahani, who will be heard later in the week during The Goldberg Experience. Together they will recreate an event that event thant sent a shock throughout the musical world in the seventeenth century: a recital where the trumpet, till then a military instrument, was featured for the first time in history in a concert performance. Kris Kwapis baroque trumpet
Ticket prices: $25 per concert; Series Tickets for all five concerts $ Rush Seats for Students with valid ID on sale for $10, at the door only, from 6:30 pm on the evening of the concert. These concerts are included in our “Bring a Youth for Free” programme.
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“Girolamo a Due”
– programme subject to changes
In the spring of 1634, Rome’s Villa Borghese played host to a now-legendary recital by Girolamo Fantini, the Chief Court Trumpeter to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Girolamo Frescobaldi, organist at St. Peter’s Basilica. This single event sent a shock throughout the musical world: not only was the trumpet, previously confined to military circles, now a new arrival to the concert hall, but also as far as Paris the chronicler Marin Mersenne exclaimed that Fantini had played in ‘all keys’. This was indeed the dawn of a new age, one in which the instrument finally came into its own as vehicles for both impressive technical display and an effort to probe the depths of the soul. This programme pays tribute, through a selection of works by both Fantini and Frescobaldi, to the most accomplished Italian instrumentalists of their time - two of the first great ‘virtuosi’. Before the 1638 Florence publication of Girolamo Fantini’s Modo per imparare a sonare di tromba (mode for learning to sound the trumpet), the trumpet was not seen as an instrument that was included in the sort of music making that other instruments of the time took for granted. It wasn’t until the famous concert in Rome in 1634 that we have the first documented occasion in which a trumpeter was the soloist. At this performance, Fantini was accompanied by none other than Girolamo Frescobaldi, one of the greatest keyboard players of the early 17th century. Regarded as a great celebrity in his time, several documents of the period illustrate a position of esteem reserved for a chosen few musicians in which poems dedicated to Fantini praised him as “Monarch of the Trumpet” and mention that he was the greatest trumpeter in all of Italy, among other colourful characterizations. His valuable publication not only served as a tutorial for articulation and other aspects of trumpet playing, but also included roughly fifty pieces, mostly for trumpet with keyboard accompaniment, the first to include continuo with a solo trumpet. These pieces represent what was a new custom of learning and playing the trumpet in a manner that was “no longer haphazardly, as was previously the custom, but with the real foundation like the other perfect instruments”. Furthermore, his work toward the development of the higher register in the new art of the clarino, the use of variety in articulation, and the demands of musical phrasing were instrumental in “that utmost perfection, which until now has never been achieved.”
Kris Kwapis baroque trumpet Kris is the Director of La Voce di Gabriele (Gabriel’s Voice) and former Artistic Director of Spiritus Collective. She was a student of Armando Ghitalla on modern trumpet, holds a DMA in historical performance and lectures on brass performance practice with recent appearances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, University of Wyoming, Madison Early Music Festival, University of Louisville, University of Minnesota – Duluth, Pacific Lutheran University and Rutgers University. Kris is a faculty member at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music Early Music Institute (teaching cornetto and baroque trumpet), and teaches at the new early music programme led by Stephen Stubbs at Seattle’s Cornish School of the Arts. Mahan Esfahani harpsichord |
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Thank You.
Doors open at 6:30 pm - Come for a drink, or a meal! All ages welcome. Music starts around 8:00 pm.
Praised by The Times as ‘exceptionally gifted’ and by Early Music Today for his ‘sensitivity and vibrance’. the Iranian-born Mahan Esfahani (b. 1984) is quickly establishing himself as the leading concert harpsichordist of his generation. He was the first harpsichordist to be named a BBC New Generation Artist and to be awarded a fellowship prize by the Borletti-Buitoni Trust. Recent highlights have included performances of of Kalabis’ Concert for Harpsichord and Orchestra (1975) with the BBC Concert Orchestra, Martinu’s Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra (1935) with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Jiri Belohlavek, and Poulenc’s Concert Champetre (1928) with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Last season, he also gave his solo debut at the Wigmore Hall (of which the Daily Telegraph exclaimed: “the harpsichord comes out of hiding...magnificent”) and appeared at the City of London and York Early Music Festivals. In addition, his recording of the Poulenc concert was selected as a CD of the month for the May 2010 issue of BBC Music Magazine, and he has been featured as a “Hot Property” by Classic FM magazine.