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Alix Goolden Performance Hall
February 6, 2010
Now in its sixth season, the Pacific Baroque Festival is an increasingly important element of Victoria's cultural landscape. It provides an annual opportunity for Island audiences to hear Vancouver's Pacific Baroque Orchestra, rising local talent and international artists. This evening, the PBO, the Victoria Children's Choir and a young Victoria-based singer were showcased. The Orchestra is now under new management, harpsichordist Alex Weiman, but Festival audiences have the opportunity to hear it under the direction of its founder, Marc Destrubé.
The evening began with the orchestra (strings: 4-3-2-1-1 plus harpsichord) performing Telemann's Suite for Strings and Continuo in G Major, "La Bizarre" (TWV 55: G2), one of the composer's approximately 150 ouverture suites. To the modern ear it is not a particularly bizarre work. It is so-named, however, because at times in the first movement of the suite ("La Bizarre") the violins and the rest of the orchestra are playing in different meters. (Oh, Telemann, you madcap guy!) On top of this, there is some innovative use of seventh chords, but this is not always apparent unless you have a score in front of you. Otherwise, it sounds like a pretty typical late baroque/galant composition.
The Orchestra's playing ranged from the delicate and deft in the Courante, to a hint of hoedown in the bumptious Branle (a country dance). The Fantasie was maybe even a little raucous. Destrubé rendered the violin solos with his characteristic lithe and sinuous turn of phrase.
For the next work, a Sonata for Two Violins, Viola da Gamba and b.c. (BuxWV 271) by Dietrich Buxtehude, Nan Mackie put down her violone and took up her viol while Michael Jarvis stepped away from the harpsichord and over to the organ. Destrubé and an un-credited member of the orchestra took the violin parts. If anything, the Buxtehude is a more bizarre composition than the opening Telemann. Although composed à 4, it has long passages with only three voices, and contains a collection of diverse, quirky movements. The musicians rose to the occasion with some atmospheric playing. The penultimate movement, a lovely, tuneful adagio, deserves to be singled out as particularly delightful.
Next up was an unusual treat: Telemann's comic cantata, Der Schulmeister. If you missed it, you are unlikely to get another chance to hear it, this side of the Stygian ferryman. (And, no, I am not referring to BC Ferries.) The piece turns on a stiff and rather pompous schoolmaster trying to teach his charges to sing. The work is of no great musical distinction, but the delightful singing and acting of Paul Winkelmans and the choir members was great fun. The performance started with the children straggling on to the stage and forming groups, like children on a playground. One child sprawled in front of the stage. The self-important schoolmaster made his entrance and rounded up the children, prodding the sprawling child with a stick. The rest of the cantata was accompanied by similar stage business. My favourite part was the four adoring girls who hung on the schoolmaster's every word, swaying in time to his singing with rapt expressions on their faces.
Paul Winkelmans, a student of Ingrid Attrot at the Conservatory, is a promising young singer. And if he doesn't make it as a singer, he has a career as a comic actor.
The second half began with some instrumental works by Bach. First were three sinfonias - I assume they are overtures to some choral works, but they were not identified and I didn't recognize them. These were followed by the Concerto for Oboe and Violin in c minor (BWV 1060), a work also known in a version for two harpsichords. The first movement of this work was given a gracious reading: it was taken rather more slowly than is common. The second movement was, perhaps, the highlight, performed soulfully, the oboe and violin weaving over a pizzicato accompaniment, the harpsichord delicately playing on the buff stop. The third movement was essayed with lots of nervous energy, most of it the result of Destrubé's fine playing.
The evening concluded with Bach's Motet for Double Choir, "Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf", BWV 226, with the St. Christopher Singers joining the VCC and the Orchestra. This is hugely complex work and it is astounding that the VCC singers, who took the soprano and alto parts, could perform it with such confidence. I felt that the work sounded a little under-rehearsed: I don't mean that the children were under-rehearsed; I expect that they were drilled within an inch of their lives. But the whole thing was a bit baggy. Still, it would be churlish to quibble when one has the opportunity to hear such a grand performance.
The Pacific Baroque Festival is really a remarkable institution. There are lots of reasons to value it, but for me the most valuable features are the innovative programming and the opportunity for local audiences to hear large-scale works (such as Der Schulmeister) that otherwise they would simply never hear. These are works that are too large in scale to be toured to Victoria and which, in any case, are seldom performed anywhere else. I am already looking forward to next year's event. As always, thanks are due to the Festival's indefatigable Director, Brian Groos.
One suggestion: the Festival needs to do something about time management. By the time the sponsors had been thanked, two or three times, the concert did not begin until 8:15. The second half was not underway until 9:30.
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