Here’s a hot take: baroque music is about to get EXCITING.
Stay with me – I have a confession to make. I didn’t always love baroque music. As a young musician, I joked about baroque being “music to do math by,” and grumbled when my ever-patient teachers tried to impart their passion.
I got on the baroque train only a decade ago, feeling ready to dig a bit deeper. Nothing gets me going like feeling as though I’ve “discovered” new-to-me music! You can have the same experience on October 6, 2018 at Knox United Church, because I’m about to drop another bomb: all but one of the six concerti in this concert were new to the Saskatoon Symphony music library. Even better? The sheet music for the Stamitz concerto for clarinet (Margaret Wilson) and the Punto concerto for horn (Carol-Marie Cottin) had to be transcribed by hand for this performance because they were unavailable in print. Yeah, you heard me – hot off the presses, new to Saskatoon, and delivered to your ear.
That means unique, fresh performances coming directly to Saskatoon by Saskatoon-based musicians. See? Exciting!
Also new to this series is Veronique Mathieu, violinist and holder of the David L. Kaplan Chair in Music at the University of Saskatchewan. She’s performing the incredible and now beloved Autumn from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons as well as the Bach oboe and violin concerto, with our principal oboe, Erin Brophey. Veronique is a recent and highly-lauded voice on the Saskatoon scene.
With a program also including the Vivaldi Paris Concerto no. 1 for strings and the Vivaldi Concerto alla Rustica for strings, the audience is sure to experience the kind of music one can imagine featured in the ballrooms of the late 17th and early 18th century that probably melted a few wigs – and tore many a pair of hose. You can anticipate the vigour of danceable movements, the touching lament and whispered confessions of love in every drawn-out chord in the andante movements, and that satisfying sensation of each piece drawing to a close with dramatic resolution.
If you’re not fully stoked yet, please take my word for it as a relatively new fan of baroque music – this will be an evening you won’t want to miss!
From SSO Blogger Michelle Telford
Michelle Telford teams up with the SSO this season to bring a wide range of blog posts – her creative work has focused in the world of opera, recently winning the Musique 3 Femmes Prize as librettist for a work composed by Saskatoon composer Kendra Harder, Book of Faces. Her custom surtitles have been seen above the stages of many opera productions in Canada.