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2017 SALISH SEA EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL
~ seven programs of early music on period instruments in Vancouver ~
WHAT: A Little Concert for Louis XIV
Salish Sea Early Music Festival
WHEN: Friday, January 13, 2017 at 7:30 PM
WHERE: Ryerson United Church at 2195 West 45th Avenue, Vancouver
ADMISSION: suggested donation: $15, $20 or $25 (a free will
offering), 18 & under free.
MORE INFO: please see www.salishseafestival.org/vancouver or
call Ryerson United Church at (604) 266-5377
For further information for the press:
Jeffrey Cohan• (360) 445-3164• cohanjeffrey@aol.com
• • • FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE • • •
Suites assembled in 1713 for "little evening concerts" for Louis XIV of his favorite music from many decades will be premiered, possibly for the first time anywhere in the world since the death of Louis XIV in 1715 in this performance. A Little Concert for Louis XIV will take place on Friday, January 13 at 7:30 PM at Ryerson United Church at 2195 West 45th Avenue in Vancouver with baroque bassoonist Anna Marsh, baroque violinist Romaric Pokorny, baroque violist Stephen Chrswell and baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan.
A remarkable and almost completely unknown manuscript of 770 pages discovered in Paris by Jeffrey Cohan was prepared in 1713 for evening performances for the aging Louis XIV by his long-time music librarian Andre Danican Philidor l'aine, who organized and transcribed some of Louis' favorite music from at least the previous 54 years, possibly for performance by a select group of the king's favorite instrumentalists. Two years before his death in 1715, Louis XIV was particularly anxious to revisit the music of his youth and the ensuing decades, and Philidor dates some of these selections as far back as 1659, when Louis XIV was 21 and had danced for eight years already in ballet performances at court, most famously as the sun god Apollo.
Many of the 67 suites from this unique manuscript have probably not otherwise been heard anywhere since the death of Louis XIV in 1715. Eleven of them have been performed in the last few years by Jeffrey Cohan in Washington, DC for the Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival, and for the Salish Sea Early Music Festival.
The suites of between two and twelve movements each, some very short and others quite long, often with colorful titles representative of the opera texts, consist of transcriptions for a smaller ensemble of excerpts from operas and instrumental works mostly by Jean-Baptiste Lully, the king's indispensable court composer since 1653 who had been dead already for 26 years in 1713, and other composers such as the younger Michel-Richard de la Lande and Philidor himself.
Entitled “Collection of Symphonies and Trios by Mr. Lully and several Trios by Mr. De la Lande/ For the little concerts given for his Majesty in the evenings/ collected and put in order by Philidor le Pere", the manuscript contains individual parts for two soprano instruments (flutes, violins or oboes), an haute-contre or high tenor part, and an unfigured bass, implying that no chordal instrument (such as harpsichord or lute) was used, with each part consisting of 145 manuscript pages to which is affixed the same engraved nine pages of title page and table of contents. This exciting and extensive new source of chamber music at the court of Louis XIV is to be explored on the baroque instruments with which the king was familiar.
The baroque bassoon was a favored bass instrument, particularly in chamber music settings, as is evidenced by a beautifully bound manuscript in the Library of Congress, the "Simphonies Choisies" assembled in 1695 by Philidor as a present from Louis XIV to the Duke of Bavaria, which also contains no figures to be realized by any chordal instrument and mentions no bass instrument other than bassoon.
The 2017 Salish Sea Early Music Festival presents several contrasting programs from January through June of renaissance, baroque and Beethoven-era chamber music on period instruments in Vancouver, with special guests from Hannover and Lübeck, Germany, and from around the United States and Canada. Additional information is available at www.salishseafestival.org/vancouver
~ + ~ + ~
Upcoming Vancouver 2017 Salish Sea Early Music Festival performance schedule
at Ryerson United Church at 2195 West 45th Avenue
— Friday, January 13, 2017 at 7:30 PM —
• A Little Concert for Louis XIV •
A never before heard selection of Suites prepared for evening performances
for Louis XIV from a remarkable and unknown manuscript from 1713.
Jeffrey Cohan, flute
Rom Pokorny, violin
Stephen Creswell, viola
Anna Marsh, baroque bassoon
— Thursday, February 9, 2017 at 7:30 PM —
• French Baroque: Viola da Gamba & Friends •
Lully, Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, Couperin, Marais ... fabulous French trios and solos!
Susie Napper, cello (Montreal)
Hans-Juergen Schnoor, harpsichord Luebeck, Germany)
Jeffrey Cohan, flute
— Tuesday, March 14, 2017 at 7:30 PM —
• Celebrating 250 Years of Telemann •
Honoring the Baroque's most prolific composer.
Bernward Lohr, harpsichord (Hannover, Germany)
Anne Roehrig, violin (Hannover, Germany)
Jeffrey Cohan, baroque flute