Weather Centre

This weekend, the Victoria Symphony will offer a final nod to Haydn's bicentenary, and a welcome reminder that this master of instrumental forms also composed splendid music for the stage, most of it still little known and underrated.

The program will open with selections from two of the many operas he composed and produced at the Esterházy family's estate in the Hungarian countryside, La fedeltà premiata (Fidelity Rewarded, 1781) and L'infedeltà delusa (Deceit Outwitted, 1773), and from his incidental music for the play Alfred, King of the Anglo-Saxons (1796).

The second half will be devoted to Mozart -- two arias and the Symphony No. 38 in D Major (Prague). Though it has three instead of the usual four movements (no minuet), the Prague is a work of unusual breadth, density and power, arguably Mozart's grandest, most profuse and most ambitious symphony -- and one of his greatest works. (He may not have performed it during his triumphant visit to Prague in January 1787 -- the evidence is shaky -- but the nickname has stuck.)

The arias by both composers will feature soprano Nancy Argenta, who was born near Nelson and moved to Victoria in 2007 after spending 25 years in England, where she developed a reputation as one of the world's finest singers of early music.

The mandate of the Classics Series has been pleasantly expanded on this occasion to include the young Prokofiev's Classical Symphony (1917), a product of the taste for Haydn and Mozart he had cultivated as a conservatory student and an ingratiating specimen of the neoclassical impulse that began sweeping through European music during the First World War.

This clever, affectionate homage to the 18th-century symphony includes updates of venerable forms (sonata, minuet, gavotte), and is transparently and ravishingly scored for a small, classical orchestra. Haydn was Prokofiev's principal model here, a fact obvious in the thematic manipulations, urbane wit and (in the third movement) allusions to peasant music.

And like any good parody, the Classical Symphony never wears out its welcome by belabouring its points: It's over in 15 minutes.

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Symphony-goers should grab an early dinner after the Classics concert and then head downtown for a concert featuring Toronto-based violinist Julia Wedman, who, since 1999, has been a member of the edgy, innovative early-music ensemble I Furiosi; she is also a member of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, plays in two string quartets, and maintains an international solo career. (Her playing was described as "zesty" in the Globe and Mail.)

With three local colleagues, Wedman will offer some unique, fascinating repertoire from the early Baroque: the Mystery (or Rosary) Sonatas for violin and continuo by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644-1704).

Biber was the greatest violin virtuoso and one of the finest composers of the 17th century. Born in Bohemia, he had a long, flourishing career in Salzburg, Austria (Wedman has visited his house there). His prolific output (much of it lost) included ensemble music, cantatas, operas, school dramas and sacred vocal works, but his fame has always rested primarily on his violin sonatas, especially those calling for scordatura, of which the Mystery Sonatas, completed around 1676, are the best known.

(In the one surviving manuscript source, the sonatas are illustrated with engravings showing various Mysteries of the Rosary -- hence the set's monikers. Biber probably performed these pieces in Salzburg Cathedral during the month of October, which was devoted to the mysteries.)

Scordatura is the practice of tuning a string instrument unconventionally in order to explore sonorities, multiple stops, counterpoint and programmatic effects not otherwise available. Biber used some form of scordatura in 14 of the 16 Mystery Sonatas, making each piece, in effect, both an étude and a mood piece, and the various movements include improvisational preludes, stylized dances and variation sets.

Wedman, who will record the Mystery Sonatas next year for the Dorian label, will perform and discuss nine of them on Sunday. And it's all for a good cause: Profits from the concert will go to Our Place and the Grace Lutheran Memorial Fund, which supports outreach projects.