The coming weekend鈥檚 concert schedule is even busier than last weekend鈥檚.
On Friday evening, for instance, American art critic Kay Larson will visit the University of Victoria鈥檚 School of Music to discuss and direct a performance of John Cage鈥檚 Zen-influenced Lecture on Nothing (), while Vox Humana will offer a program culminating in American composer David Lang鈥檚 powerful, Pulitzer Prize-winning The Little Match Girl Passion (2007), which the chamber choir previously performed, in different versions, in 2013 and 2015 ().
On Saturday evening, the Victoria chapter of the Royal 91原创 College of Organists will sponsor a family-friendly Halloween Organ Special at St. Andrew鈥檚 Presbyterian Church, showcasing local performers and including a screening of Buster Keaton鈥檚 short silent comedy The Haunted House with live accompaniment ().
And on Sunday afternoon, the Sooke Philharmonic Orchestra will launch its season with two big works, Haydn鈥檚 last symphony (No. 104) and Brahms鈥檚 Violin Concerto, the latter featuring 20-year-old Jeanel Liang, a UVic music student who won the orchestra鈥檚 annual concerto competition for young performers ().
Two early-music concerts on Saturday are particularly noteworthy, though, alas, they will run simultaneously.
The Victoria Philharmonic Choir will open its season with a magnificent unfinished work by Mozart that, for once, is not the Requiem: the Mass in C Minor, K. 427 (7:30 p.m., Farquhar Auditorium, UVic Centre, $39.50/$13.50, under 13 free; ).
The C-minor Mass is one of very few works that Mozart undertook for entirely personal reasons, which included a vow he made to God to write a Mass should his new wife recover from birth of their first child (which she did). But however strong the impetus, Mozart rarely finished a work without some immediate practical end (performance, publication) in mind, which he evidently did not have in this case.
That鈥檚 a shame: Completed, this ambitious, highly original, extraordinarily intense, impressively wide-ranging work would have rivalled Bach鈥檚 B-minor Mass and Beethoven鈥檚 Missa solemnis in size and scope.
But Mozart did leave behind about 50聽minutes鈥� worth of music, comprising a Kyrie, a Gloria, the opening of a Credo, a Sanctus and a Benedictus 鈥� and sacred choral music gets no better than this.
The VPC鈥檚 concert will open with a half-hour-long Vespers setting Mozart wrote in 1780 while employed as a court musician in his native Salzburg.
Saturday鈥檚 concert of the Early Music Society of the Islands will also be a season-opener, as its Oct. 5 concert had to be cancelled at the last minute. It will mark the Victoria debut of the London Haydn Quartet, an internationally celebrated period-instrument ensemble founded in 2000 (8 p.m., Alix Goolden Hall, $30/$25/$23, student rush $8; pre-concert talk 7:10; ).
The program opens with Haydn鈥檚 late, popular 鈥淟ark鈥� Quartet and Beethoven鈥檚 first published quartet, Op. 18/No. 1. (The LHQ has been systematically recording all of Haydn鈥檚 quartets since 2007, to great acclaim.) The LHQ will also join clarinetist Eric Hoeprich in Weber鈥檚 delightful Clarinet Quintet. Hoeprich recorded the Weber (splendidly) in 2007, but in June, made a new recording of it with the LHQ, with whom he has also recorded the Mozart and Brahms quintets.
Finally, on Sunday, the Aventa Ensemble, our premier contemporary-music ensemble, will launch its season with, they tell us, what is 鈥渨idely considered to be one of the most influential works of the late 20th century鈥�: Vortex temporum, by G茅rard Grisey (8 p.m., Phillip T. Young Recital Hall, $20; pre-concert talk 7:15; ).
Completed in 1996, two years before Grisey鈥檚 death, this 40-minute, three-movement work is scored for six players: flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello and piano.
One of the most important and influential French composers in the generation after Boulez, Grisey became, in the 1970s, a principal exponent of a new idiom known as 鈥渟pectral music,鈥� in which compositional materials are drawn from analysis of the acoustic properties of sound. The music of Vortex temporum is adventurous and kaleidoscopic, evidence of an extraordinary imagination, and spans a huge range in terms of texture, colour, technique and expression.
Aventa鈥檚 concert will open with two shorter chamber works: Scintillation (1993), by Danish composer Per N酶rg氓rd; and Everything is鈥� distorted (2017), by Toronto-based Bekah Simms.
