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Classical Music: Period duo spotlights music of overachieving astronomer

PREVIEW What: On the Construction of the Heav’ns: Music by William Herschel, with the Luchkow-Jarvis Duo When/where: 7:30 p.m.

PREVIEW

What: On the Construction of the Heav’ns: Music by William Herschel, with the Luchkow-Jarvis Duo

When/where: 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Chapel of the New Jerusalem (Christ Church Cathedral); pre-concert talk at 7

Tickets: $25, seniors and students $20. In person at Ivy’s Bookshop, Munro’s Books, Long & McQuade, and the cathedral office.

 

What: Galiano Ensemble of Victoria: Hungarian Inspiration

When/where: 8 p.m., Wed., Jan. 25, Phillip T. Young Recital Hall (School of Music, MacLaurin Building, University of Victoria)

Tickets: $33, seniors $30. Call 250-704-2580; online at galiano.ca; email galianoensemble@gmail.com; in person at Ivy’s Bookshop and Munro’s Books

 

On Saturday, the period-instrument duo comprising violinist Paul Luchkow and keyboard player Michael Jarvis will explore the rarely heard compositions of William Herschel (1738-1822), who today is best known as one of history’s great astronomers.

Born in Hannover, Germany, Herschel was drawn to both music and science as a boy. In 1756, he visited England as a teenage military musician, and decided to settle there. He worked in London and various provincial cities before accepting an organist position in Bath in 1767.

His musical career flourished there, yet he was increasingly drawn to astronomy. In 1777, he reported spending all his spare time preparing telescopes, and he claimed to have “looked further into space than ever human did before me.” In 1781, he discovered Uranus, and the following year, now a celebrity, he was appointed astronomer to King George III and granted a stipend that allowed him to give up his musical career.

He went on to catalogue thousands of astronomical phenomena, discover infrared radiation and publish 70 papers. He was knighted in 1817 and elected the first president of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1821.

Herschel’s compositions, most written between 1759 and 1770, include 24 symphonies, a dozen concertos for instruments he played (oboe, violin, viola, organ), and chamber, keyboard and vocal music.

Jarvis hears various influences in Herschel’s music: Geminiani, J.C. and C.P.E. Bach, and especially the Scarlatti arrangements of Charles Avison. (In 1761, Herschel played violin in Avison’s orchestra in Newcastle.) But Jarvis also hears much that is experimental, even astonishing, and detects a love of order that suggests the influence of Herschel’s scientific mind.

On Saturday, the duo, joined by cellist Nathan Whittaker, an early-music specialist from Seattle, will perform short pieces by Herschel for organ, for unaccompanied violin, and for violin and basso continuo, as well as three of his six harpsichord sonatas with optional parts for violin and cello, published in 1769. So obscure is Herschel’s music today that the performers had to obtain copies of manuscripts and first editions from the British Library and other archives.

The music will be accompanied by projected images of deep space that Jarvis, a lifelong astronomy fan, describes as “stunning.” All were photographed by members of the Victoria chapter of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, mostly at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, in rural Saanich.

The concert will also include readings from Herschel’s diaries and those of his sister Caroline, who was an accomplished musician and astronomer and was her brother’s lifelong partner in both pursuits.

Since it launched its annual concert series here in 2015, after eight years based in Vancouver, the Luchkow-Jarvis Duo has performed in the intimate confines of Christ Church Cathedral’s Chapel of the New Jerusalem, which seats 175 at most, so buying tickets in advance is advised.

 

The Galiano Ensemble of Victoria, now in its 17th season, is fond of programming along national lines. This excellent string orchestra has always had special affection for English music, but has also given programs devoted to Russian, Eastern European, Czech, Scandinavian, Baltic, Italian and American repertoire.

On Wednesday, it will be Hungary’s turn, in a program featuring three of that country’s most prominent composers.

The oldest work is Liszt’s moving Angelus!, published as a piano piece in 1883 in the third volume of his Années de pèlerinage. Subtitled Prayer to the Guardian Angels and dedicated to his granddaughter, it was one of Liszt’s favourites among his works, and he liked it enough to make various arrangements of it. (His string-quintet version was the Galiano’s source.)

The ensemble will also perform Bartók’s neoclassical, folk-music-tinged Divertimento (1939), and the Divertimento No. 2 (1938) by his contemporary Leó Weiner (1885-1960). The latter, subtitled Hungarian Folk Tunes, is an entertaining quasi-symphony with movements titled Wedding Dance, Joking, Plaintive Song and Swineherd’s Song.

The one other work on the program is Canadian: the Suite Hébraïque No. 1 (1963), a six-movement celebration of Jewish song and dance by the prolific and versatile Srul Irving Glick (1934-2002).

The Galiano has performed this suite once before, in 2000, in the first concert of its first full season.