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The Winnipeg Baroque Festival will feature its first-ever transatlantic collaboration in 2025 in two distinct concerts at Canadian Mennonite University’s Laudamus Auditorium.
Local violin stalwart Karl Stobbe has joined forces with Berlin-based pianist Benjamin Moser to present The Goldberg Variations Plus and A New Take on an Old Mystery on April 14 and 16, respectively.
This collaboration has been years in the making for the two musicians. “We first played, I think, three years ago in Holland or something like that,” shares Moser, detailing a program that included works by Sergei Prokofiev, Arvo Pärt, and John Williams.
Their first concert together on Canadian soil will, as the title suggests, spotlights J.S. Bach’s iconic "Goldberg Variations" alongside the first violin sonata by the 19th century violin prodigy Eugène Ysaÿe. Both Moser and Stobbe can remember the first time they encountered the masterwork and the effect that it had on them.
“Obviously, I heard it with Mr. Gould for the first time,” smiles Moser as he recalls hearing the Canadian legend. “I was immediately spellbound. Couldn’t stop listening to it. I must have heard the piece a thousand times before I played it myself.”
Stobbe’s first encounter with the piece was also with Gould’s playing when he was a university student. “One of my teachers had said, ‘You should go and listen to this.’ I was playing some solo Bach, and they said, ‘You really need to have this in your head.’”
“I remember thinking, ‘I wish I could play the violin like this.’”
Although the experience was deeply moving for both men, it does create a unique challenge for Moser as he contemplates his own performance. “It’s not so easy to kind of discern yourself from that or to kind of, you know, find your own, let’s say.” One of the ways in which Moser is reminding himself of his own unique approach is, interestingly, through Glenn Gould, who recorded two starkly different versions of the work in his career.
“I think, over the years, you realize also how universal this music is, and how much you can do with it, you know, without kind of copying anybody. There are so many options.”
The options continue in the other hallmark piece of the two concerts: Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s "Mystery Sonatas", which will be the cornerstone of A New Take on an Old Mystery. In addition to sonatas by G.F Handel and Johannes Brahms, Stobbe will be performing a re-imagined version of the work (also known as the "Rosary Sonatas") by the Quebec composer Michael Oesterle.
“They’re wonderful pieces, but they’re not really written for a modern violinist,” explains Stobbe of the decision to remodel the pieces. “The violin for each of the sonatas is tuned differently, so you have very different tunings. In one case, actually, Biber says that you need cross the strings. So, these pieces don’t get a lot of airtime anymore because of the difficulties in adapting them to a modern violin.”
Part of Oesterle’s adaptation included adding a piano part that Stobbe says goes beyond a mere accompaniment of the violin. “It becomes a very colourful addition to it, which I think adds the different colours, layers that Biber had when he made the string tuning a little different.”
“You won’t be hearing Biber exactly. You’ll be hearing a take on it, a very colourful take on it.”
Both The Goldberg Variations Plus and A New Take on an Old Mystery will take the stage at CMU’s Laudamus Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. on April 14 and 16 respectively. Tickets can be purchased at the Winnipeg Baroque Festival’s website.