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Airs for the Seasons – CD Release Concert!
May 7, 2023 @ 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Sunday, May 7th, 3:30pm
St. David’s Anglican Church – 49 Donlands Ave, Toronto
James Oswald wrote 96 “Airs for the Seasons,” each named after a flower or plant.
The sonatas of Airs for the Seasons show a composer who delighted in compositional mastery at the miniature level, and each movement is both a technical and aesthetic marvel. Many feature plaintive Scottish melodies or jigs, but one also hears strains of French or Italian music in them. As a precursor to the capital-C Classical period, they represent a clever combination of style-galant chamber music and Scottish air.
Oswald was enough of a London celebrity to be appointed chamber composer to King George III in 1761, by which time he had become a wealthy man on the back of his publishing and composing ventures. His legacy is one of a talented and determined musician who could sate the appetite of a voracious musical public. His music continues to delight centuries later, and a modern listener can appreciate it much the same way Oswald’s contemporaries could. He had a gift for melody and was a classical composer with a distinctly Scottish flair.
Musicians:
Special Guest: Joanna Marsden, traverso
Rezan Onen-Lapointe and Kailey Richards, violins
Erika Nielsen, cello
David Podgorski, harpsichord
Benjamin Stein, lute and theorbo