Category: Preview

Now Hear This
new music festival
New Music Edmonton
March 21-23

For Mark Morris’ preview of Edmonton’s new music festival, Now Hear This, in the Edmonton Journal, click here.

The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra are devoting five concerts over two weeks to the music of Sibelius in their first mini-festival devoted to a single composer, including three of the symphonies (2, 4, and 5), many of the tone poems, the Violin Concerto, and some of the orchestral songs.

For Mark Morris’ full preview in the Edmonton Journal, click here.

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Edmonton Opera

For Mark Morris’ preview of Edmonton Opera’s new production of La Traviata, click here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alberta Pianofest

The Edmonton Chamber Music Society’s summer festival, the Summer Solstice Festival, runs from Thursday June 21 through Sunday June 25. Artists include the

exciting young American string quartet, the Accatta Quartet, pianist Krzysztof Jablonski, Canadian violinist Timothy Chooi, and the ESO’s concertmaster, Robert Uchida. The festival includes many Canadian compositions, for Canada’s 150th anniversary, and masterclasses and outreach events.

To read Mark Morris’ full preview for the Edmonton Journal, click here.

For full details of the festival, click here.

For Mark Morris’ Edmonton Journal preview of this year’s Early Music Festival, presented by Early Music Alberta from Friday May 5 to Sunday May 7, click here.

Details at the Early Music Alberta website.

The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra has announced its 2017-2018 season, its first under its new Chief Conductor, Alexander Prior.

To read Mark Morris’ summary of the season and its highlights in the Edmonton Journal, click here.

 

Interesting repertoire includes:

Concertos:

Beethoven:         Violin Concerto                 Andrew Wan (violin)         Nov 8

Berg:                     Violin Concerto                 Robert Uchida                   Nov 24

Bruch:                   Violin Concerto No.1       Andrew Wan (violin)       Sept 1

Dvorak:                 Cello Concerto                  Daniel Hass (cello)           Mar 18

Elgar:                     Cello Concerto                  Andreas Brantelid (cello) Mar 23

Estacio:                 Trumpet Concerto           Robin Doyon                      Mar 18

Grieg:                    Piano Concerto                 Katherine Chi (piano)      Sept 16

Kabalevsky:        Violin Concerto                 Eric Buchmann (violin)   Jan 13

Korngold:            Violin Concerto                 Blake Pouliot (violin)       Feb 24

Mozart:                Concerto for Two Pianos                                               Oct 11
Sara Davis Buechner, Williams Eddins (pianos)

Prokofiev:           Piano Concerto No. 1      Ilya Yakushev                     April 28

Prokofiev:           Piano Concerto No. 3      Luca Buratto (piano)       Nov 5

Ravel:                    Piano Concerto in G        Angela Chang                   Jan 26

Saint-Saëns:       Cello Concerto No.1        Stéphane Tétrault            Sept 29

Symphonies:

Beethoven:          Symphony No.9                                                               Jun 1

Dvorak:                Symphony No.9 New World                                         Oct 28

Glazunov:            Symphony No.4 The Lyrical                                         Sept 29

Haydn:                  ‘Surprise’ Symphony                                                      Jan 13

Hindemith:          Mathis der Maler symphony                                       Nov 24

Rachmaninov:     Symphony No.1                                                              Mar 23

Vaughan Williams:    Symphony No.8                                                      Mar 10

Orchestral:

Adams:                 Harmonielehre                                                               Sept 16

Britten:                 Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes                   Mar 23

Janacek:               Taras Bulba                                                                    Sept 16

Liadov:                  The Enchanted Lake                                                    Jan 26

 

Details and brochure: edmontonsymphony.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Neda Yamach (Violin), Kathleen de Caen (cello), and Clayton Leung (viola)

Holy Trinity Anglican Church (10037 84 Ave)
Sunday, April 9, 2 p.m.
Admission by donation

Program:

Beethoven: String Trio in G major, Op. 9, No. 1
Penderecki: String Trio
Dohnànyi: Serenade in C major for String Trio, Op. 10

 

Chamber music is very much alive and well in Edmonton. We are fortunate to have both the Edmonton Chamber Music Society and the Edmonton Recital Society bringing in chamber musicians of international calibre. The Solstice chamber music festival celebrates its tenth anniversary this June. The Vaughan String Quartet has now established itself as Edmonton’s main string quartet, offering a full season of concerts each year.

What Edmonton has not had recently is a home-grown professional string trio – until now. For two members of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, violinist Neda Yamach and violist Clayton Leung, have joined together with cellist Kathleen de Caen to form the Trio de Moda, and they will give their inaugural concert this Sunday.

All three players are young, enthusiastic, and excited about the possibilities for a string trio in the city. Neda Yamach grew up in St. Alberta, and started playing the violin at 5. She studied in New York and at McGill, returned to Alberta in 2010 to play with the Alberta Baroque Orchestra and Kent Sangster’s Obsessions Octet, and joined the ESO in 2011.

Clayton Leung was born and raised in Vancouver – where he and his brothers all played string instruments – and also studied in the States, at the Cleveland Institute of Music, as well as at the University of Victoria. Originally a violinist, he switched to the viola, and after his studies joined the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra (he also plays the guitar and the ukulele). In 2013 he moved to Edmonton to join the ESO.

Kathleen de Caen grew up in Edmonton, and did her masters in Montréal, where she also studied the El Sistema project, a method of teaching children to play classical music instruments, especially disadvantaged children. When the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra started the YONA-Sistema project in the city, she returned to join the staff, and is the project’s cello teacher (both Leung and Yamach are ESO ambassadors for the project).

De Caen – whose father had himself played in a string trio – had originally met Leung at a Toronto music festival, and the three players became friends in Edmonton. “I had always wanted to work with Neda and Kathleen,” says Leung.

De Caen explained the genesis of the trio. “The three of us enjoyed playing together. We started slowly, and we worked towards giving a performance. Then we decided in the Fall we would like to form a permanent trio.”

“We all love chamber music,” says Yamach, “and we wanted to do more of it.”

They already have another couple of concerts in the works after this inaugural one, and their new web site should be up this week. Their program on Sunday will mix the familiar with the more adventurous. They’ll be playing Dohnànyi’s genial and lyrical Serenade, a regular staple for string trios, and Beethoven’s rather grand but energetic G major trio, Op. 9, No. 1.

They will also be playing Penderecki’s masterful little String Trio. It was completed in 1991, in a period when Penderecki was beginning to ingrate some of the more avant-garde techniques of his earliest works with the neo-Romantic style he had cultivated over the previous two decades. The String Trio, though, is harmonically largely tonal, and it’s a gritty work, managing to combine a dramatic thrust with more lyrical writing, providing plenty of opportunities to for solo playing among the trio, and with a fugue weaving through the end of its powerful 13 minutes.

“It’s a program,” says De Caen, “built around things we really wanted to play.”

The concert admission is by donation, and takes place at Holy Trinity Anglian Church this Sunday (April 9) at 2 p.m.

 

For Mark Morris’s Edmonton Journal preview of the Edmonton Opera production of Richard Strauss’ Elektra, click here.