Flutist, harpsichordist reunite in Baroque style
Soile Stratkauskas, the outstanding Finnishborn Baroque flutist, spent a decade based in the U.K. and France before moving to Victoria in 2010. Barely a year later, she had formed her own period-instrument ensemble, the Victoria Baroque Players.
She gives relatively few performances here as a soloist, however, so it is pleasant to report that the VBP’s next concert, on Friday, will be a showcase for Stratkauskas and the talented harpsichordist Christopher Bagan (7:30 p.m., Church of St. John the Divine, $28/$25/$5; victoria-baroque.com).
The two collaborated in several memorable concerts during Stratkauskas’s first years here, at which time Bagan was pursuing a doctorate at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. But after earning his degree, in 2012, he moved to Toronto; Friday’s concert will mark his first return visit to Victoria.
The duo will offer an intimate early-18thcentury program, including Bach’s great Flute Sonata in B Minor, a sonata by Vivaldi, a concerto by Telemann and a transcription of a Bach organ trio. All but the Vivaldi have obbligato (i.e., writtenout) harpsichord parts rather than basso continuo, and so count as true chamber music, with the flutist and the two hands of the harpsichordist being equal partners. Bagan alone will also play Bach’s D-major toccata.
This weekend is crazy-busy with noteworthy, wide-ranging concerts.
On Friday evening alone there will be three concerts, in one of which conductor Brian Wismath will bring together two of the five local ensembles he directs, the Victoria Choral Society and the chamber choir Vox Humana, accompanied by musicians from the Victoria Symphony (8 p.m., Farquhar Auditorium, University of Victoria Centre, $35/$10; victoriachoralsociety.ca, voxhumanachoir.ca).
The 130-plus voices of the VCS, plus five vocal soloists, will perform Bach’s glorious, popular Magnificat, while Vox Humana will give the British Columbia première of Arvo Pärt’s Adam’s Lament (2009), which is a setting of a Church Slavonic text by St. Silouan the Athonite, a Russian-born Eastern Orthodox monk, and follows Adam as he mourns his banishment from Eden. The two choirs will come together in Knut Nystedt’s Immortal Bach.
Also on Friday, Victoria-born, Toronto-based pianist Eve Egoyan, a new-music specialist, will be in town under the auspices of Open Space to perform Solo For Duet, which had its première in June at the Luminato Festival in Toronto (7:30 p.m., Metro Studio Theatre, by donation; openspace.ca). In this “multi-sensory journey,” contemporary Canadian piano works are combined with speaking, singing, movement, sound-sampling and video imagery to create a unique experience as much theatrical as musical.
The same evening, guitarist Alexander Dunn will partner with the Cuarteto Chroma, a Mexican string quartet currently studying in UVic’s School of Music, to celebrate Day of the Dead, the annual Mexican holiday (7:30 p.m., Wood Hall, Victoria Conservatory of Music, by donation; vcm.bc.ca). The all-Mexican program includes a new quartet by Gabrela Ortiz that will be accompanied by projected images and partly performed in traditional masks.
On Saturday, the Victoria Symphony, with guest conductor Berhnard Gueller, will offer a Masterworks program that includes Schumann’s joyful, lyrical Symphony No. 1 (Spring), as well as the Concerto for Trumpet by Marcus Goddard, the Vancouver-based trumpeter who has just been named the orchestra’s composer-in-residence. In this work, the first commissioned under Goddard’s tenure, the solo part will be taken by the Victoria Symphony’s principal trumpet, Ryan Cole.
And on Sunday, the third season of music at Wentworth Villa, the restored heritage home, will continue with an appearance by flutist Claire Marchand and harpist Albertina Chan (2:30 p.m., 1156 Fort St., $40/$25; wentworthvilla.com). The program, well suited to the house’s intimate concert space, comprises mostly contemporary music, much of it Canadian, including a commissioned piece by Montreal-based Nicole Lizée that is scheduled to have its première on Saturday in Vancouver.
As if all this were not enough, the conservatory is launching a new chamber-music series in its recently renovated Wood Hall, intended to hearken back to the chamber concerts offered decades ago by some of its founding faculty members. The inaugural concert will feature two VCM department heads, violinist Simon MacDonald and pianist Robert Holliston, in works by Mozart, Beethoven, Webern and Franck (Sunday, 2:30 p.m., $17; vcm.bc.ca).