Marc Destrubé on the Festival

What is a festival? It can be many things, but essentially it provides an opportunity to explore one aspect of a culture through more than a single event. In this case we are exploring music of the baroque period (1600 to 1750 more or less), and each year we are focusing on one composer, or a geographical area, or some particular aspect of music in baroque times.

Now about to have its fourth incarnation, the Pacific Baroque Festival is starting to take on a recognizable form: two main concerts on a Friday and Saturday night in early February as well as smaller events before and after. These events feature Canadian musicians along with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, The Festivals' 'ensemble in residence'.

Why baroque music? Well, in some strange way, the modern world perhaps resembles the baroque world more than it resembles the romantic era, whose music and style of music making most of us grew up with. Composers in the baroque period were not romantic heroes, they were hard working practicing musicians, primarily concerned with preparing for an upcominig performance, and they certainly did not imagine that their music was being written for posterity, given that their audiences were only interested in new and recent music. Indeed, Vivaldi's music fell into obscurity after his death until the early part of the 20th Century (the Gloria first appeared in 1939 during Alfredo Casella's 'Vivaldi's Week')

Baroque music in the early 20th Century was performed in a thoroughly romantic style - it was turned into romantic music! - and only with the advent of a widespread interest in period instruments and performance practice in the 1970's did the music of Vivaldi and his fellows begin to sound something like what it might have done in his time. A main thrust of the period instrument movement was to approach old music like new music, and this is indeed the reason for us to be including the premiere of a new work at this year's festival by a talented Canadian virtuoso, Terri Hron; it gives us a more real sense of the experience of an audience in the 18th Century, hearing a completely unknown work for the very first time, in a performance directly involving a composer.

This leads me straight on to another important aspect of the Pacific Baroque Festival, the featuring of guest artists from close to home who are known internationally. We are blessed with an extraordinary wealth of talent on the Canadian landscape, particularly amongst singers (there are at least 5 internationally renowned singers from Vancouver Island that spring immediately to mind, including Diana Krall), and the festival will continue to include them (maybe not the latter...)

The music of the festival will bring some cheer to the typical rainy days of February. For me, it gives me a more tangible connection with the wonderful place where I spent the first two decades of my life, and a chance to give something back to the community which gave me so much in my growing-up years.