On Saturday, the Early Music Society of the Islands will present the acclaimed French vocal ensemble Diabolus in Musica, which made its Victoria debut in 2010 and is returning for the first time (8 p.m., Alix Goolden Hall, $30/$25/$22/$8; earlymusicsocietyoftheislands.ca).
Diabolus in Musica, formed in 1992, is dedicated to medieval music, especially French repertoire. Saturday’s program will focus on sacred music from that relatively brief period, in the 14th century, when Avignon, in the south of France, was the seat of the papal court and attracted some of the greatest artists in Europe.
The program, to be performed a cappella by six male voices, includes two polyphonic Mass settings, motets and Gregorian chants. The ensemble claims to be performing some of this music for the first time since the 14th century.
Also on Saturday, as part of its 50th-anniversary season, the University of Victoria’s School of Music will offer a French-themed program in its Faculty Chamber Music Series, which can be paired with a pre-concert dinner and talk at the University Club (concert 8 p.m., Phillip T. Young Recital Hall; dinner 6 p.m.; $25/$20/$10, with dinner $80; finearts.uvic.ca/music/50th).
The program comprises Poulenc’s first work, Rapsodie nègre (1917), composed when he was 18; the suite from Soldier’s Tale (1918), Stravinsky’s highly original theatre piece; and Saint-Saëns’s delightful, perennially popular Carnival of the Animals (1886).
This is chamber music on a grand scale-multi-movement works requiring unusual combinations of seven to 10 instrumentalists, augmented by other performers. The Poulenc has a vocal interlude, Honoloulou; the Stravinsky will have narration by CBC Radio host Gregor Craigie; and the Saint-Saëns will be accompanied by the verses Ogden Nash wrote for it decades later, recited by Donovan Waters, a professor emeritus in UVic’s Faculty of Law.
Among the performers will be faculty members including tenor Benjamin Butterfield (singing as a baritone in Honoloulou), the Lafayette String Quartet and pianist Arthur Rowe, as well as UVic alumni, including Vancouver-based composer Owen Underhill, who will conduct Soldier’s Tale.
On Sunday, the Victoria Symphony will offer its first Classics Series program of the season, featuring Vancouver-born pianist Ian Parker in his 10th appearance with the orchestra (2:30 p.m., Farquhar Auditorium, UVic Centre, $32-$55; victoriasymphony.ca). Parker last performed with the Victoria Symphony in 2013 and 2015, both times in Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
The program will be conducted by Nathan Brock, a Canadian who has been based at the Hamburg State Opera since 2015. (He conducted the Victoria Symphony in Messiah three years ago.)
Sunday’s program - Mendelssohn’s overture The Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave), Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Beethoven’s First Symphony - reflects the tendency of recent Classics Series to lean heavily on 19th-century fare, which is surely sufficiently represented in the Masterworks Series.
Also on Sunday, the Aventa Ensemble will launch its season with an eclectic program that includes three North American premieres and a world premiere (8 p.m., Phillip T. Young Recital Hall, $20; aventa.ca).
The five works, the earliest of which dates from 2003, represent British, Swedish and Belgian composers as well as the Hungarian-born Dániel Péter Biró, who teaches at UVic. The world premiere is a work for ensemble, video and electronics by Giorgio Magnanensi, who is Italian but lives on the Sunshine Coast and has been artistic director of Vancouver New Music since 2000.
Aventa has been performing Magnanensi’s music for more than a decade now, locally and on tour, and has commissioned several works from him.
Speaking of new music, the series A Place to Listen will return on Wednesday, Oct. 18, with a program comprising a single work by one of its founders, Daniel Brandes, performed by its house ensemble (7 p.m., James Bay United Church, $10/$5; aplacetolisten.wordpress.com).
The work, titled each one: enfolded…loved..., was composed this summer after news broke of 39 migrant workers found in a transport truck in San Antonio, Texas. The music is “very open and porous,” Brandes says, “with each player (in their own way and in their own time) gently making their way through a series of single, very soft, very long tones or sounds.”
He describes the work as “a place to linger, together and alone, and ‘alone-together.’ ”
