What: Early Music Society of the Islands: War and Peace, with the Tallis Scholars.
When/where: Sunday, 3 p.m., Alix Goolden Hall; pre-concert talk 2:10.
Tickets: $40, seniors and students $35, members $30, student rush $10, under 18 free with ticket holder. Call 250-386-6121; online at rmts.bc.ca; in person at the Royal McPherson Box Office, Ivy鈥檚 Bookshop, 2188 Oak Bay Ave.; Long & McQuade. 756 Hillside Ave.; and Munro鈥檚 Books, 1108 Government St.
What: Victoria Symphony (Classics Series): Cheng Plays Mozart.
When/where: Sunday, 2:30 p.m., Farquhar Auditorium, University Centre, University of Victoria.
Tickets: $35-$55. Call 250-721-8480 or 250-385-6515; online at tickets.uvic.ca; in person at the UVic Ticket Centre and the Victoria Symphony Box Office, Suite 610, 620 View St.
Victoria is not large enough to attract the biggest stars of the mainstream classical-music world, except very rarely, under special circumstances. But we are often visited by equivalent figures from the early-music world, usually thanks to the Early Music Society of the Islands.
In just the decade since I began filling this space with ink, EMSI has sponsored high-profile North American and European soloists and groups including Emma Kirkby, Monica Huggett, Elizabeth Wallfisch, Kristian Bezuidenhout, Tafelmusik, Stile Antico, Collegium Vocale Gent, Concerto K枚ln, the Aulos Ensemble, and the operatic and instrumental ensembles of the Boston Early Music Festival.
On Sunday afternoon, EMSI will sponsor the Victoria debut of the Tallis Scholars, which is currently on a North American tour. This 10-member British vocal group, founded in 1973 (and still directed) by Peter Phillips, is arguably the most eminent early-music ensemble ever to stop here.
And eminence does not come cheap: EMSI鈥檚 artistic director, James O. Young, has said that the Tallis Scholars is the most expensive group he has ever engaged, and he recently joked that his hand shook as he signed their contract. (Or was he joking?)
The Tallis Scholars specialize in a cappella polyphonic music from various Renaissance repertoires (Franco-Flemish, Tudor, Iberian), and they have been hugely influential in creating an audience for such music. But the ensemble has also commissioned and performed works by 鈥渉oly minimalists鈥� and other contemporary composers whose styles are sympathetic to them, including Arvo P盲rt, Eric Whitacre and especially John Tavener.
(The group has released dozens of CDs spanning its whole repertoire, on its own label, Gimell Records.)
On Sunday, the Tallis Scholars will offer a program commemorating the centenary of the end of the First World War. It will include excerpts from two masses, by Josquin des Prez and Francisco Guerrero, based on L鈥檋omme arm茅 (The Armed Man, or The Man at Arms), a popular secular song whose melody became the basis for more than 40 mass settings from about 1450 through the end of the 17th century, all over Western Europe, including some by the greatest composers of the period.
The program will also include excerpts from another mass by Guerrero depicting a battle, from a mass by Palestrina and from a Requiem by Tom谩s Luis de Victoria; Renaissance motets written for royal funerals; a piece by P盲rt; and Tavener鈥檚 Song for Athene, an elegy sung at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997.
Also on Sunday, the Victoria Symphony鈥檚 Classics Series will come to a close with an all-18th-century program featuring the outstanding Canadian pianist Angela Cheng.
Cheng has appeared seven times with the Victoria Symphony, the first time in 1987, when she was still a student at Indiana University though already a multiple competition winner and an established professional concert artist. (She performed Beethoven鈥檚 鈥淓mperor鈥� Concerto on that occasion.) She appeared here most recently in March 2016, in a mini-festival that was part of the orchestra鈥檚 celebrations of its 75th-anniversary season. Over three concerts, she performed all five of Beethoven鈥檚 piano concertos.
On Sunday, under the baton of the orchestra鈥檚 new music director, Christian Kluxen, Cheng will perform the Mozart鈥檚 Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major, K. 271, a masterly, exuberantly original work bursting with delightful surprises.
Mozart was just shy of 21 when he composed it, and it might be considered his first large-scale adult masterpiece.
(The concerto鈥檚 traditional nickname, 鈥淛eunehomme,鈥� derives from the name of the French pianist for whom Mozart wrote it, Louise Victoire Jenamy.)
It is a concerto Cheng has long commanded. Indeed, she included it on her debut CD, in 1991, a widely acclaimed pairing of two Mozart concertos for CBC Records, with Mario Bernardi conducting the CBC Vancouver Orchestra.
Sunday鈥檚 program will open with an interesting obscurity: an overture by Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-1792), a German composer who spent most of his career based in Sweden. The overture is from incidental music Kraus wrote, shortly before his death, for a Stockholm production of Voltaire鈥檚 play, Olympie.
And the program will close grandly, with Haydn鈥檚 magnificent last symphony, No. 104, composed for performance in London in 1795.
