Early Music Vancouver ends its season with a passionate Vocal Concerto

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      Featuring the Portland Baroque Orchestra with Harry van der Kamp. An Early Music Vancouver presentation. At the Vancouver Playhouse on Friday, April 11. No remaining performances

      My new favourite composer died 308 years ago, and I look forward to hearing fresh music from him soon.

      Okay, so I know this is perplexing. It’s even more baffling given that the final installment of Early Music Vancouver’s 2013-14 season was supposed to focus on vocal music, while the Romanus Weichlein sonata that knocked my socks off was an instrumental composition. But let’s give credit to a simple virus: the common cold.

      Dutch singer Harry van der Kamp, the evening’s nominal star, was feeling under the weather on Friday night, to the degree that he had to truncate his program from four pieces to three. And while the songs he did perform were seemingly unmarred by his illness, neither were they transcendent: they were simply beautifully sung, with confidence and power, in a voice as dark and velvety as oatmeal stout.

      Van der Kamp’s concluding Wie bist du denn, o Gott, in Zorn auf mich entbrannt, in particular, suggested that Johann Christoph Bach has been done an injustice by the posthumous fame of his cousin, Johann Sebastian. This heartfelt plea for divine mercy moved gracefully from abject surrender to exultant acceptance, with both singer and musicians gathering force as they summoned the “loving kindness” of the Lord. Whether van der Kamp himself believes is a matter of conjecture, but for a good 10 minutes we were all among the blessed.

      The program was sprinkled with similarly excellent contributions from the members of the Portland Baroque Orchestra, notably Josh Lee’s viola da gamba in Dietrich Buxtehude’s Sonata in D Major for Bass Viol. Seattle-based guest Stephen Stubbs did not get a solo feature, alas, but his work on the awe-inspiring chitarrone, which looks like an oud crossed with a suspension bridge, was subtly integral to the flow.

      It was the orchestra’s artistic director, Monica Huggett, however, who commanded the spotlight. A grandmotherly presence with frizzy white hair, she nonetheless uncorked a devilish sense of humour in her remarks from the stage, and she played with comparable brio. Sounding at times more like a folk fiddler than a contemporary violin virtuoso, she brought enjoyable earthiness to this program of mostly sacred music, yet her rhythmic vitality did not come at the expense of precision.

      Nowhere did she sound better than on the aforementioned Weichlein’s Sonata No. 3 in A Minor, which she took at an aggressive clip—much faster, for instance, than the members of Linz’s Ars Antiqua Austria did on their formerly definitive survey of their 17th-century countryman’s scores, Encaenia Musices, Vol. 1. With Huggett spitting fire and second violinist Carla Moore following close behind, the work displayed almost Gypsy-like passion.

      Could there be more to the reportedly hot-blooded priest’s first name than a nod to the pope’s abode? That will be something for future historians to determine—although, intriguingly, Portland Baroque Orchestra gambist Erin Headley’s program notes allude to “exciting new discoveries” in the field of Weichlein scholarship.

      If that means further scores for Huggett and company to blaze through, I’m all ears.

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