BY JOHN WHITELAW
For Bach on the Rock
Bach on the Rock is very excited to present our Canadian music program at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 8 at All Saints by-the-Sea Anglican Church.
The music was all written by Canadian composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, and we’ve had a fun time getting to know these beautiful works.
The orchestra will be performing Jean Couthard’s Burlesca for Piano and Strings, with our wonderful artistic director Jean-Sébastien Lévesque directing from the keyboard, as well as Murray Adaskin’s Suite for String Orchestra. Vancouverite Coulthard was one of a trio of women composers who dominated western Canadian music over much of the 20th century. She wrote mostly in a neo-Romantic style, unafraid to buck the orthodoxy of atonal serialist music of the ‘50s and ‘60s. In 1947 she was hired by Harry Adaskin, head of UBC’s music department; teaching there, she had a formative influence on many young Canadian composers.
Harry’s brother Murray Adaskin was an important Canadian composer and violinist. Born in Toronto, he moved to Saskatoon to be head of the University of Saskatchewan’s music department and eventually composer-in-residence. He retired from his academic roles in 1972 and moved to Victoria, where he composed more than half of his works. His musical style is influenced by Stravinsky’s pulsing rhythms as well as the drama of the Canadian landscape.
The choir joins the orchestra in two works by Québec composers, Cantate pour une joie by Pierre Mercure featuring soprano Cassidy Stahr, and Louis Desjarlais’ Blanche. Mercure was a talented young composer in the 1950s and ‘60s whose life was tragically cut short at the age of 38 by a car accident. His cross-disciplinary work joined music, poetry, dance, theatre, painting and sculpture. The Cantate sets to music seven poems by Gabriel Charpentier, which explore the search for joy in our complex modern world. The lyrics are often disturbing, and present distressing and hallucinatory scenes before the final movement, which expresses a cry of joy. Mercure wrote haunting melodies together with beautiful and surprising harmonies for the choir and orchestra.
Desjarlais, a friend of our artistic director, is currently based in Montreal. His piece Blanche is a setting of a love letter written by his great-grandfather Marius to his great-grandmother Blanche while he was a prisoner of war in a Pomeranian camp during the Second World War. Desjarlais is a singer and choral director with a deep understanding of choral writing. He has created a touching and tender presentation of Marius’ letter, expressing in music the love and joy he found even in dire circumstances.
Tickets are available at the door or online via bachontherock.com.