Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra
Rachel Podger, Principal Guest Conductor
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Canada’s beloved and much-lauded Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra returns to Kelowna after almost 10 years! Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear the full 16-member ensemble. Tafelmusik uses period instruments, and is guided by historical performance and technique, offering concert experiences that delight lovers of baroque music.
Programme Notes:
Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra
Violin Rachel Podger, Patricia Ahern, Chloe Fedor, Johanna Novom,
Christopher Verrette, Julia Wedman, Cristina Zacharias
Viola Brandon Chui, Patrick G. Jordan
Violoncello Keiran Campbell, Michael Unterman
Double Bass Jussif Barakat Martínez
Oboe Daniel Ramírez Escudero, Marco Cera
Bassoon Dominic Teresi
Harpsichord Suren Barry
Rachel Podger, Principal Guest Director
Rachel Podger, “the unsurpassed British glory of the baroque violin” (The Times), has established herself as a leading interpreter of baroque and classical music. She was the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Royal Academy of Music/Kohn Foundation Bach Prize in October 2015, Gramophone Artist of the Year 2018, and the Ambassador for REMA’s Early Music Day 2020. A creative programmer, she is the founder and Artistic Director of Brecon Baroque Festival and her ensemble Brecon Baroque, is Patron of The Continuo Foundation, and an Ambassador for the Learned Society of Wales. Rachel was awarded BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Year and Instrumental Award for her solo album Tutta sola. Recent releases include The Muses Restor’d with Brecon Baroque, The Best of Biber 1681 Sonatas, and Haydn Symphonies 43 & 49 with Tafelmusik, described as “sensational” (Early Music America). A dedicated educator, she holds the Micaela Comberti Chair for Baroque Violin at the Royal Academy of Music, and the Jane Hodge Foundation International Chair in Baroque Violin at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Rachel also has a regular relationship with The
Juilliard School in New York.
Rachel Podger took up the position Principal Guest Director of Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra in September 2024.
Tafelmusik
Tafelmusik Artistic Co-Directors: Brandon Chui, Dominic Teresi, Cristina Zacharias
Every now and then a group of musicians comes along and changes the way we think about music. For over four decades, Tafelmusik has been synonymous worldwide with dynamic, engaging, and soulful performances informed by scholarship, passion, and artistic excellence. Performing on instruments and in styles appropriate to the era, Tafelmusik has performed in more than 350 cities in 32 countries. Its extensive discography on the Sony, CBC Records, Analekta, and Tafelmusik Media labels has garnered ten JUNOs and numerous international recording prizes. From a vibrant home season in Toronto, to international tours, award-winning recordings, and inspiring education programs, Tafelmusik is a musical powerhouse with a reputation for thrilling and delighting audiences.
Program Notes
By Charlotte Nediger
As Canada’s most toured orchestra, Tafelmusik’s music-making is enriched by the experience of sharing our passion with audiences far and wide. The concert hall is a natural home for a meeting of cultures, across borders and centuries, and this program was conceived with this is in mind. Principal Guest Director Rachel Podger brings delights from her native Britain by Handel and Avison. Avison in turn shakes hands with Scarlatti in Spain, Lully takes us to the French theatre, Telemann welcomes us to northern Germany—and Bach inspires us with music that transcends time and place.
Lully Suite from Roland
We open the concert with music by the famous Music Director of the French court, Jean-Baptiste Lully, who arrived in Paris from his native Italy (Gianbattisa Lulli) as a teenager and went on to create a uniquely French style that influenced all of Europe. He spent much of his time in the theatre, penning opera-ballets teeming with orchestral music to accompany the dance. In France and abroad, orchestral suites were excerpted from these grand spectacles for performance outside the theatre: at court, for example, or in drawing rooms. In keeping with this tradition, we bring a selection of dances from Lully’s opera Roland to the modern concert hall.
Avison Concerto
The Newcastle-based British composer Charles Avison published several volumes of instrumental concertos and sonatas. Arguably his best work is found in his 1744 publication of Twelve Concertos based on harpsichord sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti. Originally from Naples, Scarlatti settled in Lisbon and Madrid, writing some 500 harpsichord sonatas for the Infanta Barbara of Portugal (later Queen of Spain). A selection of these sonatas was published in England in 1739 and enjoyed great popularity. Avison’s inventive transcriptions for string orchestra (each concerto is made up of four sonatas) were as popular as the original sonatas. They are charming works, a winning combination of Scarlatti’s flamboyance and Avison’s practical skill.
Bach Violin Concerto in G Minor / Prelude and Fugue
Bach was renowned in his day as an extraordinary keyboard player and left a wealth of music for harpsichord and organ. Three of his many harpsichord concertos survive in versions for violin: two for solo violin and one for two violins. It is clear that Bach wrote the violin versions first, later transcribing them for harpsichord as concert vehicles not only for himself, but also for his sons and gifted pupils. Which begs the question, what about the other harpsichord concertos? Are they transcriptions of violin concertos whose scores didn’t survive? It seems entirely plausible, and in this concert, we offer the possible original version of Bach’s F-Minor Harpsichord Concerto in a sort of reverse transcription.
The beautiful slow movement of the concerto also appears as the sinfonia to Bach’s Cantata 156, in this case featuring solo oboe. The piece can thus be heard in three soundscapes, with the harpsichord, violin, and oboe each offering a different perspective. Such an exploration of sound is the genesis for the other Bach transcription on the program, the Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Major, BWV 552. The two parts of this monumental work frame the third volume of Bach’s Clavier Übung, a series of four books of keyboard music self-published by Bach as a testament to his mastery of keyboard writing. In hearing a colleague play the work on baroque organ with its range of colours, Artistic Co-Director Dominic Teresi imagined how it might sound played by a baroque orchestra. The result is the transcription we are premiering on this tour.
Telemann Concerto for 2 oboes and bassoon
One of the most prolific composers of any time or place, Telemann had a particular affinity for writing for wind instruments. He was largely self-taught, taking up recorder, flute, and oboe, as well as several string instruments. Both resourceful and productive, he established a very successful career as composer and music director in Frankfurt and Hamburg. The libraries of baroque orchestras then and now contain multitudes of his concertos, suites, and chamber works for a range of orchestrations. The Concerto in D Minor is one of many works by Telemann scored for the core of the Tafelmusik Orchestra: two oboes, bassoon, strings, and continuo.
Handel Concerto grosso
Handel’s concerti grossi have been at the heart of Tafelmusik’s repertoire for over four decades. The Opus 6 collection of twelve concertos was published in London in 1739. The publisher took advantage of the public’s enthusiasm for Handel’s works by offering them by subscription: you could have individual concertos delivered as each was ready. Enthusiastic readings would have been heard in homes around the country.
The nobly tragic opening movements of the sixth concerto melt into the centrepiece of the concerto, an extended pastoral Musette. The concerto was performed at a massive Handel Commemoration at Westminster Abbey in 1784: the 18th-century writer Charles Burney noted that it was included because the Musette was “always in favour with the composer himself, as well as the public.”
We end the concerto with a grand French-style chaconne by Handel written to accompany dancers in his opera-ballet Terpsicore—an homage to the Lully with which we began the concert, and a fitting end to our musical journey.
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Program
- Suite from Roland: Ouverture – Air gay – Gavotte – Gigue – Chaconne ~ Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687)
- Concerto no. 6 in D Major, after Scarlatti: Largo – Con furia – Adagio – Vivacemente ~ Charles Avison (1709–1770)
- Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Major, after BWV 552 ~ Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
- Intermission
- Concerto for 2 Oboes and Bassoon in D Minor, TWV 53:d1 Grave – Allegro – Affetuoso Adagio – Vivace ~ Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)
- Concerto for violin in G Minor , after BWV 1056: Allegro – Adagio – Presto Rachel Podger, violin soloist ~ J.S. Bach
- Concerto grosso in G Minor, op. 6, no. 6: Larghetto e affettuoso – A tempo giusto – Musette – Allegro - Allegro ~ George Frideric Handel (1685–1759)
- Chaconne (from Terpsicore) ~ Handel
