VSO offers new works, fresh takes on classics
Besides newer works, VSO program offers different takes on classics
Is everything old new again? The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Festival suggests so. Over the course of five days, there’s a strong old/new thread running through the 2018 programming.
Central to the enterprise is the VSO’s popular composer-in-residence Jocelyn Morlock.
“This is my fourth festival as programmer,” she told Postmedia News last week. “The first was put together by Edward Top when he was composer-in-residence.”
Morlock is just the person to ask about the new/old connections.
“Last year Early Music Vancouver presented a highly successful event called New Music for Old Instruments — something I’ve been doing personally since last century. It’s tremendous fun to write for early instruments,” she said.
The 2018 festival sees another EMV/Pacific Baroque New Music for Old Instruments program with the provocative subtitle After Bach (Jan. 19) featuring new/ old repertoire by the VSO’s first composer-in-residence, Rodney Sharman, Morlock, Ligeti, and a new take on Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto by Bramwell Tovey.
Morlock and Sharman also have other historically-informed works in the festival: Sharman’s rethinking of music by William Byrd features on the festival’s opening show Standing Wave (Jan. 18), while Morlock’s Purcell-infused piece Night, Herself, is premiered in the windup concert Dawn to Dusk: From Aurora to Winter Sky (Jan. 22).
There will be also revivals of two important works from half a century ago.
“We’re pleased to present the Canadian premiere of Alfred Schnittke’s 1976 Concerto Grosso in a version for two flutes,” says Morlock. “Several pieces we wanted to do this year stem from Schnittke’s ‘polystylism.’ ” It concludes Cobalt Clouds and Clear Blue Seas on Jan. 20, while Louis Andriessen’s Workers Union, which also dates from the mid1970s, ends the Standing Wave program.
To continue the ’70s theme, Nico Muhly (born in 1981) is represented in Standing Wave by Doublespeak, which he notes “harks back to a time in the 1970s when classical music perfected obsessive repetition.”
This is also a festival heavy on works for soloists and orchestra, such as John Estacio’s Trumpet Concerto, which features in Cobalt Clouds and Clear Blue Seas, and the remarkable American violinist Rachel Barton Pine premieres a new concerto by VSO composer-in-association Marcus Goddard in Dawn to Dusk.
“Marcus has been working closely with her,” says Morlock. “I am really impressed that she is so willing to play new music, including a piece by me.”
Exciting plans for audiences, but how do the VSO players feel about it?
“Orchestras are always under stress when playing new music. There is never enough rehearsal time. Our musicians are unusually accommodating.”
Does this extend to the growing new music audience? “I think the more our audience is exposed to stuff that we are excited to present, the more interested they get,” Morlock says, emphasizing audience participation add-ons.
“We have informal pre-concert 6:30 p.m. talks in the Orpheum lounge, not in lecture hall mode but hanging out together on bar stools. There’s also the post-concert ‘now let’s go upstairs to the lounge and have a drink and argue about what we just heard.’ This audience definitely wants to talk to the composers and ask cogent questions.”
Any personal highlights? “The Intimate Cabaret (Jan. 21) really interests me. And the festival features several strong Canadian composers like Andrew Staniland and Samy Moussa that we just don’t get to hear out west,” says Morlock.
I think the more our audience is exposed to stuff that we are excited to present, the more interested they get.