.png)
The second week of the Winnipeg Baroque Festival gets underway in earnest this week with the largest ensemble to perform in the festival’s history taking the stage at the Crescent Arts Centre.
The Manitoba Chamber Orchestra will be presenting a program entitled Solace as its debut festival offering. The program features 18th century stalwarts like J.S. and C.P.E. Bach and Antonio Vivaldi, but also 20th century pieces that speak across the centuries to the Baroque era by composers like Krzysztof Penderecki.
Then, there’s the piece that gives the concert its name: “Solace” by the late Manitoban composer Jocelyn Morlock. The piece was suggested by the orchestra to the concert’s conductor, acclaimed violinist and leader Aisslinn Nosky, who used the idea of solace to then build out the rest of the program.
“Getting to know [Morlock’s] music has really been a revelation to me,” Nosky shared in an interview on Morning Light. “I really fell in love with it and thought that the gentle, really sort of comforting nature of the tuneful orchestral writing that she does is very evocative of Baroque music.”
“Jocelyn’s work as a whole, I would say, is very sincere, personal and emotional, with many layers of depth,” adds oboist Caitlin Broms-Jacobs, who will be one of the concert’s featured soloists. “I think that in quite a different way, many of those things actually apply to Bach as well. [Bach’s] music is joyful and dark and incredibly meaningful, personal, but I think above all, sincere, and there’s a commonality there.”
Commonality is another theme that rings strong in this program, not only between repertoire, but between musicians and their playing styles. Nosky, a frequent MCO collaborator, is one of the leading figures in the Canadian Baroque music scene with appearances with Tafelmusik and the Eybler Quartet. The MCO, for their part, is one of the ensembles that is able to perform larger Baroque works on a more consistent basis than other Manitoba groups because of its size.
Broms-Jacobs notes that the frequency with which the orchestra plays music from this era makes them adept at playing the music with an appreciation for how the repertoire would have been played three centuries ago. “I think we’re all quite versed in the style, which I think then allows us to maybe even appreciate what Aisslinn has to offer even more.”
Nosky’s offering includes a turn as a soloist alongside Broms-Jacobs in Vivaldi’s "Concerto for Oboe and Violin", a piece she describes as “rambunctious”. Despite her wealth of experience in performance practices from the Baroque era, Nosky is also aware of the balance that she has to strike while featuring more modern pieces alongside works by Vivaldi and Bach.
“I’m always trying to make the music seem like something the composer would recognize if they walked in the room to listen to it,” she explains, noting that the same principle guides her approach to composers like Penderecki. “I like that very much about very new music and very old music. I often say when I’m working with composers who are still living, I’m asking the questions I wish I could ask Bach.”
Solace takes the stage on April 9 at 7:30 p.m. at the Crescent Arts Centre in Osborne Village. For more information about this program, patrons are encouraged to visit the websites of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra or the Winnipeg Baroque Festival.