Telemann finally gets the attention he deserves
Isaac, Monn, Stamitz, Gade, Méhul and Joplin are among the composers for whom 2017 is a major anniversary year, and celebrations of their work have so far been, to say the least, muted.
This year does, however, mark the 250th anniversary of the death of one very important composer, Georg Philipp Telemann (16811767), and already this season the milestone has been acknowledged in the programming of several local early-music organizations: the Luchkow-Jarvis Duo, the Victoria Baroque Players, the Early Music Society of the Islands.
And the 13th annual Pacific Baroque Festival, which begins next week, will be devoted to celebrating Telemann.
A little Telemannia is welcome for a change.
Today, Telemann languishes in the shadow of his greatest contemporaries, Bach and Handel, though he did not rank beneath them during his lifetime. We are forever reminded of his absurd fertility — he was prolific enough to earn a place in the Guinness Book of World Records — but hear too seldom about the originality and high quality of his music, or about the extraordinary versatility that allowed him to command a huge range of genres, forms and styles.
The festival’s diverse programming heavily favours Telemann, with a few contemporaries thrown in; for once, Telemann is the main attraction, rather than the “context.”
Marc Destrubé, the Victoriaborn violinist who has a thriving international career in both early music and standard repertoire, remains the festival’s artistic director, and will perform as a soloist, chamber musician and leader of the festival’s house ensemble.
Among the other local and visiting performers this year are flutist Soile Stratkauskas, gambists Natalie Mackie and Kenneth Slowik, and keyboard player Michael Jarvis — all top-notch early-music specialists. Christ Church Cathedral’s St. Christopher Singers and the Victoria Children’s Choir will supply the choral voices.
The five-concert schedule begins next Thursday morning, Feb. 16, with an intriguing program comprising selections from the fantasias Telemann wrote for unaccompanied flute, violin and viola da gamba. (The solo-gamba fantasias were published in 1735, but no copy was known to survive until one surfaced in 2015.)
That evening there will be an organ recital in Christ Church, the one concert not focused on Telemann — necessarily so, as he wrote almost no organ music (a rare gap in his output).
John Walthausen, a young New York native now based in Wilmington, Delaware, will perform a thoughtfully conceived, very substantial program comprising mostly Bach, though he will begin with a Telemann concerto transcribed by one of Bach’s cousins.
The evening concert on Feb. 17 will focus on chamber music in “quartet” form (i.e., three parts plus basso continuo), especially Telemann’s famous “Paris” Quartets — some of the most polished, delectable and sonorously rich chamber music in the Baroque repertoire.
The following evening’s program features larger orchestral forms (Italian-style concertos, French-style suites), by Telemann and his contemporaries, plus selections from his plentiful sacred vocal music: a German motet and a Latin Missa brevis (i.e., a Mass comprising just the Kyrie and Gloria).
On Feb. 19, the festival will close, as usual, with an expanded version of Christ Church’s regular Sunday-afternoon Choral Evensong service, this one featuring motets and a Magnificat setting by Telemann, as well as a cantata by Christoph Graupner that, in the opinion of experts, has probably not been performed since the early 18th century.
This year’s festival has a sort of prelude — one additional program, this weekend. It is admittedly offtopic but nonetheless welcome, as it includes a rare complete performance of Handel’s Nine German Arias (tomorrow, 7:30 p.m., Knox United Church, Parksville; Saturday, 7:30 p.m., Chapel of the New Jerusalem, Christ Church Cathedral; $25/$20).
These arias, settings of poems that celebrate the presence of God in Nature, were composed in the mid-1720s, but we don’t know why Handel wrote them. (He rarely set texts in his native language.)
Judging from the beauty and expressive fervour of the music, this may simply have been a labour of love.
This weekend’s performances will feature local soprano Catherine Webster, an early-music specialist who performs all over North America, accompanied by Destrubé, Mackie, and Jarvis. Instrumental works by Handel and an older contemporary, Erlebach, will round out the program.