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Molti StrumentiBaroque Concertos for Strings and WindsThe Victoria Baroque Players, a group of twelve well-known musicians from the West Coast, present a varied and attractive programme of concertos for multiple instruments by Vivaldi, Graupner, Heinichen and Telemann, led by Kati Debretzeni, leader of the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
Victoria Baroque Players: Kati Debretzeni leader, violin
Tickets for either performance at $35 (students & seniors $3 discount) can be ordered on-line via our secure connection. They can also be ordered by phone (604 732-1610) from the office of Early Music Vancouver. Tickets are also available at Sikora’s Classical Records. Rush Seats for Students with valid ID on sale for $10, at the door only, from 7:00 pm on the evening of the concert. These concerts are included in our “Bring a Youth for Free” programme.
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Christoph Graupner (1683-1760):
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Christoph Graupner (1683-1760):
A favourite activity of the 18th century nobility was hunting, and it is known that Graupner’s patrons, the Landgraves of Hesse-Darmstadt were enthusiastic participants. Their musicians were required to perform at hunting lodges in the vicinity of Darmstadt, and a likely musical requirement at hunting parties would have used horns. These instruments were the means of communicating the stages of the hunt from the advance party to the followers by means of recognised fanfares. The “Corni di Selva” of the title are hunting horns - the only form of horn that existed at the start of that century. Graupner was a prolific composer who produced five decades of compositions for his court including hundreds of symphonies and suites. His obscurity was guaranteed on his death by a lengthy legal battle between his heirs and his patrons which was finally concluded by a court decision to deny the Graupner family the ability to perform or publish his work. His music is now becoming better known and for good reason: the Hesse-Darmstadt court employed many of the best musicians in Europe of a standard to rival the great courts at Dresden, Hamburg and Mannheim. Interestingly, both Graupner and Heinichen were born in the same year, studied law then music, and were both educated at the St Thomas School in Leipzig. This Overture pays homage to The Hunt in its use of the horns. This is particularly evident in the main section of the first movement where Graupner interweaves fugal writing with snippets of hunting tunes. The 6th movement is remarkable for its bird calls played by the flute accompanied by pizzicato strings. The reference is to a caged bird used either during the hunt, as a decoy, or imprisoned after its capture. Whilst hunting might bring to mind the pursuit of four-legged animals, it was also popular in the 18th century to capture songbirds, both for their songs and for the dinner table. — AC
Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767): Lully was famous, and Corelli ever praised:
But Telemann alone is over honour raised.  (A verse by Johann Mattheson, Germany’s most significant 18th century musical journalist and lexicographer, 1740)
It was Vivaldi's compositions that popularised the Italian concerto in Germany, and Telemann and many of his colleagues, including Bach, Graupner and Heinichen, studied his works closely. This Vivaldian influence is very present in the Concerto TWV52:e3 in its alternating solo sections and unison ritornelli. Graupner and Telemann were friends through their lifetime, and it is in a transcript by Graupner that this concerto survives. The concerto probably stems from Telemann's Frankfurt period, when Telemann was a Kappelmeister of the Franciscan Church, and the the director of the Collegium Musicum of the Fraunstein Society. He also had close links to the Court at Darmstadt, where Graupner worked. With these connections, Telemann had no shortage of skillful instrumentalists to perform his works. Instead of the typical three-movement concerto format, Telemann composed two brief middle movements following the second movement, the Presto being a burst of fireworks for the solo violin, and the following Adagio a tender interlude leading to the finale. — SS
Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741):
During his lifetime, Antonio Vivaldi was primarily known for his virtuosity on the violin, rather than as a composer, and violin was clearly his favoured instrument in his compositions; out of his 640 instrumental works, 253 are violin concertos. The title of Vivaldi's Concerto "Il Grosso Mogul" alludes to the great Mughai Empire in India. Vivaldi composed this concerto for himself to play, and it is a great testimony to his virtuosity, with its lengthy and technically demanding cadenzas in the outer movements. This is also one of the concerti by Vivaldi which Johann Sebastian Bach studied closely, and it inspired his Organ Concerto in C, BWV 594, which is a modified transcription of the work. — SS
Georg Philipp Telemann:
Telemann wrote four concerti for four violins without basso continuo, TWV40:201-204. The occasion these were written for is unknown; perhaps he wrote these for his excellent colleagues to play, or to meet the demands of amateur players, or perhaps he just enjoyed the challenge of creating maximal tonal variety while being limited to just four identical instruments – a task in which he succeeded admirably. Each of the concerti are short and sweet and written in Telemann's favoured four-part format: slow-fast-slow-fast. The concerto in G major dwells on beautiful sonorities in its slow movements; the second movement is a fugue; and the final movement is based on a theme that could be an imitation of the call of a hunting horn. — SS
Johann David Heinichen (1683-1729):
1708 was an illustrious year in the history of horn players. In the Dresden court two trumpeters were paid extra to stop playing the trumpet and concentrate on being the best horn players that they could become. The goal was to make the orchestra the envy of Europe and it was decided that the horn players might play their instruments better if they didn’t have to play other instruments. Prior to that date there had not been a full time horn player post anywhere in the world. Some 12 years later Heinichen was appointed Kapellmeister in Dresden, where he wrote a large number of compositions including several concertos with two horns. The horn players in Dresden must have become highly skilled by this time, since the horn parts in most of these concertos, including this one, are quite virtuosic, with many special effects, such as crossing parts, imitative entries, fast articulation, high notes, echoes (particularly in the last movement), and (of course) references to hunting music. Tonight’s horn players will also be glad to accept any additional payments in return for not playing the trumpet… — AC
Antonio Vivaldi:
Like Graupner and Telemann, Vivaldi can be thanked for writing for unusual combinations of instruments, giving us such delightful works as the Concerto for flute, violin, bassoon and continuo in F major RV100. Whomever the bassoon player Vivaldi had in mind when writing this concerto, he or she must have been a skillful one. In the fast movements of this concerto Vivaldi gives each of the solo instruments a chance to shine, reserving, however, the busiest part for the bassoon. The second movement is a transparent aria-like movement scored just for flute and bassoon, the flute floating in an improvisatory manner above the beautiful descending ostinato-like bassoon line. Vivaldi clearly had a soft spot for the bassoon – he gave us some 39 solo concerti for the instrument, a number only exceeded by his violin concerti. — SS
Georg Philipp Telemann:
Another friend to the 18th century horn players was the Dresden concert-master Johann Georg Pisendel, who added horn parts to many of the court compositions (once they had horn players to employ), as well as writing his own compositions for them. In the case of this Concerto he actually changed the trumpet part of the original work to a horn part.
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Kati Debretzeni violin Born in Transylvania, Kati studied the violin with Ora Shiran in Israel, and the Baroque violin with Catherine Mackintosh and Walter Reiter at the Royal College of Music in London. Since the year 2000 she leads the English Baroque Soloists under Sir John Eliot Gardiner, and since 2008 she is one of the leaders of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, which she has directed and lead in the UK, Europe and the US under Ivan Fischer, Sir Roger Norrington, Stephen Isserlis, Robert Levin, Robin Ticciati and others. She recorded chamber music with Florilegium (Chanel Classics), Ricordo (Linn Records) and most recently Trio Goya (Chandos). Kati features as soloist on two versions of Bach's Brandenburg concertos, with the European Brandenburg Ensemble under Trevor Pinnock (Gramaphone Award, 2008), and again with the English Baroque Soloists. She has directed from the violin various ensembles in Israel, Poland, Norway, Iceland and the UK, and teaches the Baroque and Classical violin at the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague. Victoria Baroque Players The Victoria Baroque Players played their debut concert on Palm Sunday April 17th 2011. The Victoria-based period instrument ensemble was formed with the mission of bringing high-quality performances of Baroque music to the Victoria audience, using the abundance of local skill and talent. The musicians are all from Victoria and nearby areas, and are well-established figures on the West-Coast music scene. The experiences of individual players include playing with groups such as the Pacific and Portland Baroque Orchestras, and the Vancouver Island, Vancouver, and Victoria Symphonies. The group's wind players--Soile Stratkauskas, Katrina Russell, and Andrew Clark--have years of experience working with many world-class period instrument ensembles in England and Europe, such as the English Consort, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. Since its formation, the ensemble has played a total of seven concerts based largely around cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach at the Church of St John the Divine, and has been the guest ensemble for the Victoria Conservatory of Music's Oratorio Programme and the Victoria Children's Choir's Classical Christmas Concert. The Victoria Baroque Players is now in its second full season, and its upcoming concerts include Bach's St John Passion directed by Timothy Vernon at the Church of St John the Divine in March 2013. |
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