A cappella ensemble is one of early music scene’s hottest acts
PREVIEW
What: Early Music Society of the Islands: In a Strange Land, with Stile Antico
When/where: 8 p.m., Saturday, Alix Goolden Hall; pre-concert talk at 7:10
Tickets: $35, seniors and students $30, members $28, student rush $10. Call 250-386-6121; online at rmts.bc.ca; in person at Ivy’s Bookshop, Long & McQuade, Munro’s Books and the McPherson box office What: Oak Bay Music: Kara Huber, piano When/where: 7 p.m., Saturday, Church of St. Mary the Virgin (1701 Elgin Rd.) Tickets: In advance $20, seniors $15, students $10; door $25/$20/$10. Online at eventbrite.ca; in person at Ivy’s Bookshop
Stile Antico is a 12-person, conductorless, a cappella ensemble made up of young British singers who specialize in Renaissance music. It was founded in 2001 and quickly became one of the hottest acts on the early music scene, widely admired for its technique, sound, expressive power and interpretive insight.
Hot acts don’t come cheap, though.
When the Early Music Society of the Islands first brought Stile Antico to Victoria, in April 2013, its artistic director, James O. Young, said it was the most expensive group the EMSI (founded in 1985) had ever booked. The EMSI classified that 2013 concert as a special event for which ticket prices were higher than usual, and such will be the case again on Saturday, when Stile Antico returns to Victoria.
Stile Antico regularly tours Europe and North America, and occasionally elsewhere, often appearing at the most prestigious venues and festivals, and its workshops and masterclasses are much in demand.
It has released a dozen CDs on the Harmonia Mundi label, all of them acclaimed, some of them bestsellers and award winners. (A new CD, recorded last month, of music by Tomás Luis de Victoria, is forthcoming.)
Last Friday, at the Boston Early Music Festival, Stile Antico launched a short North American tour, which will conclude with its concerts here and, on Sunday, in Vancouver — its only Canadian stops.
Stile Antico has always been particularly drawn to the music of Tudor England, which figures prominently among its CDs. (Its début disc, released in 2006, was devoted to Tallis, Byrd and Sheppard.) It also toured Europe, Asia and Australia with the pop singer Sting during his flirtation with the songs of Elizabethan composer John Dowland.
In its 2013 appearance here, Stile Antico included music by several important Tudor composers alongside that of continental contemporaries. This Saturday, its program will be given over to Tudor music, with an interesting focus on composers affected by Elizabeth I’s suppression of the Catholic faith.
The subtitle of the program is Elizabethan Composers in Exile, and here “exile” is used in both the physical and spiritual senses. Among the composers represented are some who moved abroad (Dowland, Peter Philips, John Dering) as well as some (Robert White, William Byrd) who chose an “inward exile” — living with the contradiction inherent in their predicament and expressing it in what Stile Antico rightly describes as “music of astonishing intensity and emotional impact.”
The program, which opens with Dowland’s most famous song, Flow, my tears, also includes music by Thomas Tallis and the Flemish composer Philippe de Monte.
Also on Saturday evening, Oak Bay Music, in its Master Pianists series, will present the rising young performer Kara Huber, who, over the next few days, is also scheduled to perform in West Vancouver, Vancouver and Chemainus. These concerts are doubling as run-throughs for Huber’s debut at Carnegie Hall in New York on March 16.
Huber is based in Toronto — she recently completed the Artist Diploma Program at the Royal Conservatory of Music’s Glenn Gould School — though she is American by birth, and the first half of her program is devoted to American music.
It is an interesting selection, reflecting Huber’s fondness for inventive programming and her demonstrated flair for contemporary music.
She will perform Earl Wild’s “virtuoso études,” after Gershwin’s songs Embraceable You and I Got Rhythm; No Longer Very Clear, a set of four pieces by Joan Tower, who is based at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, in New York; and four of the many substantial études composed over the years by David Rakowski, who is based at Brandeis University, near Boston.
In the four études, virtuosity is generously mixed with whimsy, to judge from both the music and the titles: Moody’s Blues (“rock and roll étude on repeated chords”), A Gliss Is Just a Gliss (“étude on glissandi”), Fists of Fury (“étude for fists”) and Absofunkinlutely (“funk étude”).
The second half of Huber’s program comprises all 13 of Rachmaninoff’s Op. 32 preludes, from 1910.
Huber’s performances of some of the pieces on her program (and of other works) can be found on her YouTube channel.