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VICTORIA CHAMBER ORCHESTRA 18TH SEASON! Friday October 19, 2012 8:00 PM First Metropolitan United Church, 932 Balmoral Road (at Quadra) BACH The Art of Fugue Saturday November 17, 2012 8:00 PM First Metropolitan United Church, 932 Balmoral Road Sunday November 18 2:30 PM St. Elizabeth’s Church, 10030 3rd Street, Sidney PRIMA Choir and Soloists Wade Noble & Yariv Aloni, Conductors PURCELL Dido and Aeneas Friday February 22, 2013 8:00 PM First Metropolitan United Church Lawrence de la Haye, Clarinet GÁL Serenade for Strings HANDEL-BARBIROLLI Clarinet Concerto TCHAIKOVSKY Souvenir de Florence Friday April 12, 2013 8:00 PM First Metropolitan United Church Sunday April 14 12:30 PM Saturna Island Recreation and Cultural Centre WILLAN Poem for Strings Concerto, featuring the 2013 Louis Sherman Concerto Competition winner MOZART Symphony No. 40 in G minor Tickets: $20 (adult) & $15 (senior over 65) (Free admission for music students!) Available at Long & McQuade, Ivy’s Bookshop, Cadboro Bay Books, or at the door Season tickets: $65 (adult) & $50 (senior over 65) To order, please call 250-598-1966 THE VICTORIA CHAMBER ORCHESTRA PO Box 31122 #314-3980 Shelbourne St Victoria, BC V8N 6J3 Tel: 250-598-1966 Email: victoriachamberorchestra@gmail.com www.victoriachamberorchestra.org

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A PRESENTATION OF THE ISLAND STRING PLAYERS SOCIETY

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

THE ART OF THE FUGUE

Yariv Aloni Music Director

Colin Tilney

Organ

Friday, October 19, 2012

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Bach: The Art of Fugue Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is rightly recognized as one of the great masters—if not the great master—of contrapuntal music. In his many fugues and canons, he wove together multiple melodic threads to create glorious sounds. Through his life he composed a great many fugues that stand as consummate examples of the form. But late in his life, Bach created The Art of Fugue (Die Kunst der Fuge), a collection of contrapuntal pieces that is dazzling even by Bach’s standards. Throughout this masterpiece, Bach works with a single theme, (shown below in the simple four-bar form that is initially stated in Contrapunctus I.)

The theme is varied through the course of the piece, with a series of rhythmic modifications and melodic embellishments. In addition to these “variations” on the theme a dazzling array of contrapuntal techniques are applied to the theme. The broad structure of The Art of Fugue contains four groups of fugues, the unfin-ished Contrapunctus 14, and four canons. Each group of fugues displays a more complex contrapuntal technique than the previous one: Four simple fugues

No.1: A fugue with one theme No.2: Same theme with rhythmic variant No.3: The theme played "upside down" No.4: Another fugue with an upside-down theme.

Three stretto or counter fugues No.5: The theme and its counter are heard at the same time. No.6: Both themes come in two different time values, in the style of a French

overture. No.7: The themes come in three different time values.

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DONORS PLATINUM $500+ Marian and Robert Moody Robert Moody Janis Kerr Richard Backus Yasuko Eastman GOLD $250-499 Colin Millard Janet Sankey Colin Mailer Claudia Chance Trevor and Michele MacHattie SILVER $100-249 Raven Baroque and Don Kissinger Gwen Isaacs Annette Barclay Mary Smith BRONZE $0-99 Susan Colonval and Mike Klazek Mary Murray Cathy Reader Fiona Millard

THE VICTORIA CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Violin 1 Yasuko Eastman, concertmaster Anja Rebstock Gwen Isaacs Leah Norgrove Don Kissinger Violin 2 Sue Innes, leader Cathy Reader Fiona Millard Julia Hostetler Heather Gatland Violas Janet Sankey, leader Lee Anderson Mary Clarke Catheryn Kennedy Michele MacHattie Jon O’Riordan Celli Mary Smith, leader Ellen Himmer Janis Kerr Trevor MacHattie Karen Whyte Bassi Richard Watters, leader Richard Backus Organ Colin Tilney Harpsichord Daniel Jordan

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Four double/triple fugues No.8: Fugue for three voices with the three themes eventually running at the

same time. Nos. 9-10: Fugues with two themes eventually running at the same time. No.11: Fugue for four voices with the three themes eventually running at the

same time. including a theme of B flat-A-C-B natural - that is, in German notation,"BACH"

Four mirror fugues (Whatever the motive does, the counterpoint motive does the

opposite, as if a mirror were held to the score.) No.12a: Fugue for four voices No.12b: A mirror image fugue of all four voices No.13a: Fugue for three voices No.13b: A mirror image fugue of all three voices

Quadruple Fugue “Fuga a 3 Soggetti” No.14: In the manuscript, this four-part fugue is unfinished: only three sub-

jects are introduced, none of which are the piece’s main theme, and the final theme spells B-A-C-H. After all the three themes are played togeth-er it is very clear that Bach's intention was to bring back the main Art of Fugue theme and integrate it with the other three. You will hear this accomplished tonight with the added conclusion by Davitt Moroney.

Canons: At the eighth (Ottava) At the tenth (Decima) At the twelfth (Duodecima) Canon in Augmentation and counter-motion

The Art of Fugue was Bach's last work. As such it belongs in the company of other celebrated late works which we listen to reverently as the “last testaments” of their creators: Mozart's Requiem, Beethoven’s late string quartets and piano sonatas, and the last symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler. Bach scholar Malcolm Boyd has written: “In works such as the Musical Offering, the Art of Fugue and the Canonic Variations [Bach] addressed himself at most to a small coterie of connoisseurs; but they are above all works in which Bach, the composer-philosopher, is alone with the impenetrable mysteries of his art.” If you wish to read a detailed musical analysis of The Art of Fugue, you are re-ferred to the following websites: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~tas3/introaof.html http://pipedreams.publicradio.org/articles/artoffugue/index.shtml Notes by Martin Monkman & Yariv Aloni

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Yariv Aloni, director of the Victoria Chamber Orchestra since 1995, is also the

founder and music director of the Galiano Ensemble of Victoria and music director of the Greater Victoria Youth Orchestra. Acclaimed by critics for his sensitivity and virtuosity, he performs in major concert halls around the world. He received his early training in Israel, where he studied viola with David Chen at the Rubin Acad-emy of Music in Jerusalem and subsequently with the late Daniel Benyamini, principal violist of the Israel Philharmonic. His chamber music studies took him to the United States, where he studied with Michael Tree of the Guarneri String Quartet at the University of Maryland. A former member of the Aviv and the Pen-derecki Quartets, he can be heard on CDs issued by the United, Marquise, Trito-nus and CBC labels, and has recorded for the CBC, the BBC, National Public Radio, Radio-France and the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation. Mr. Aloni studied conducting with the Hungarian conductor János Sándor, and he participated in conducting workshops with Gustav Mayer and Helmuth Rilling. As a conductor, he has received praise for conducting his impassioned, inspiring and "magnificently right" interpretations of major orchestral and choral repertoire. Reviewers also describe him as "a musician of considerable insight and impeccable taste."

Colin Tilney is internationally known for his harpsichord, clavichord and fortepi-

ano playing, with many solo recordings on DG (Archiv ), EMI Electrola, Decca, Hyperion, Dorian, Doremi and CBC SM 5000. He became well known working in London as an accompanist and repetiteur. In 1979 he moved to Toronto, where he taught at the Royal Conservatory of Music and founded the chamber group Les Coucous Bénévoles. In 2002 he moved to Victoria and plays harpsichord for the Victoria Symphony Orchestra; and teaches, conducts very popular master classes, and performs as a member of the Music School of the University of Victo-ria. In 2009 he recorded on an eighteenth-century Italian harpsichord Fugue: Bach and his Forerunners, eight movements from The Art of Fugue, together with music by Frescobaldi, Froberger and Louis Couperin.

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Programme

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)

Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080 Contrapunctus 1

Contrapunctus 2

Canon alla Ottava (Organ)

Contrapunctus 3

Contrapunctus 4

Canon alla Decima (Organ)

Contrapunctus 5

Contrapunctus 6 in Stylo Francese

Canon alla Duodecima (Violin and Cello)

Contrapunctus 7

Contrapunctus 8 (String Trio)

Contrapunctus 9

Canon per augmentationem in Contrario Motu (Organ)

Contrapunctus 10

Contrapunctus 11

Contrapunctus 12

Contrapunctus 12a (mirror)

Contrapunctus 13 (Trio and Keyboard)

Contrapunctus 13a (mirror)

Contrapunctus 14 (completed by Davitt Moroney)

Please note there will be no intermission.