Three teenaged cellists will take centre stage next month as scores of Sunshine Coast musicians gather to venerate one of the Baroque era’s most prolific composers.
On March 8 and 9, the Coast Messiah Choir and Coast Messiah Orchestra will deliver the long-awaited sequel to its inaugural BachFest in 2019. The concerts are being organized and directed by David and Sara Poon, Gibsons residents who are themselves music teachers, soloists and conductors.
The concerts are slated to include a trio of senior students from Elphinstone Secondary School: Erin Payne, Esmé Woolliams, and Cael Read. The three will perform one of Bach’s Unaccompanied Cello Suites, composed in the early 18th century.
“I think everybody needs to know what a giant Bach was as a composer and as an artist,” said Sara Poon. “Bach has always been one of my favourite composers and there’s so much music that he wrote.”
German-born Johann Sebastian Bach created more than 1,128 pieces of music in his 65 years, making him one of the most prolific composers in history.
“There’s a reason the Western composers after Bach studied his music, copied it, extolled it, aspired to it,” said David Poon. “It’s music that transcends time and isn’t limited to specific orchestrations or languages; it speaks to the mind as well as it does the soul.”
The three teen cellists will share the task of performing Suite No. 3 in concert, blending their own interpretations. Each of Payne, Woolliams and Read became adept at the earlier suites (Bach wrote six in total) years ago while learning their instruments.
The third suite, explained Sara Poon, represents a step up in technical complexity while showcasing the unexpected versatility of the key of C major. (“There are still so many beautiful things to be said in C major,” said Poon, quoting Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev.)
Payne summarized the soloists’ feelings about Bach’s compositions for cello: “I love that you can tell your own story. I love how much emotion you can put in, and the music works perfectly for the instrument.”
“Each [movement] in the suite has a distinct feel,” added Read, “yet still retains the connectivity and the overarching idea.”
Woolliams compared the piece favourably to Bach’s first cello suite, which has appeared in hundreds of TV shows and films: “[Although] this one is not as famous, it’s more musically interesting [than Suite No. 1].”
All three teens are veterans of the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Performing Arts, where Read himself performed the prelude from Bach’s ubiquitous first cello suite last April.
The Coast Messiah Orchestra, two dozen string players from the Sunshine Coast, will lead the BachFest lineup with Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. The third concerto of the Brandenburg collection of six is marked by sets of three: three violin sections, three viola sections, and three cello sections. The three movements contain repeated themes evoking intense joy as the melody is passed from section to section.
The program will close with Coast Messiah Orchestra accompanying the Coast Messiah Choir in a performance of the first three movements of Mass in B minor. Bach employed chromatic motifs, harmony and counterpoint to craft a work fitting to the work’s central text: “Lord have mercy.”
The two BachFest concerts occur on Friday, March 8 at 7 p.m. and Saturday, March 9 at 2 p.m., both at St. Hilda’s in Sechelt. Tickets ($30) are available at Strait Music and online at www.coastmessiahchoir.ca.
