SOMMERVILLE’S BACK
He’s coming ba-ack.
Yup, former HPO music director Jamie Sommerville returns to the podium in FirstOntario Concert Hall on Thursday — yes, you read that correctly — Thursday, April 19, at 7:30 p.m.
So, what’s Sommerville been up to since leaving the HPO in 2014?
Podium-wise, he’s guest-conducted in Vancouver, Edmonton, Columbus, and with the Canadian National Brass Project with whom he’ll record in Montréal and perform in Toronto and Lanaudière this summer.
Playing-wise, he’s still principal horn with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The weekend before he returns to lead the HPO, Sommerville will play with the BSO in Carnegie Hall. Then on Monday, April 16, he’ll be running in the Boston Marathon which will either see him in tiptop shape or completely out of breath when he begins rehearsals with the HPO in Hamilton the following day. The day after his HPO concert, he’s back in Boston, rehearsing with some of his BSO cohorts for a chamber music concert that Sunday in Beantown. Oh, if you’re thinking that the HPO concert isn’t being held on the usual Saturday night because of Sommerville’s BSO commitments next weekend, Sommerville, in an email to The Spectator, wrote that, “the schedule had to do with the availability at Hamilton Place (FirstOntario Concert Hall).”
Next Thursday’s bill, which Sommerville says “came more or less intact” from music director Gemma New and the HPO artistic advisory committee, includes works by two Hungarians, Gyorgy Ligeti and Bela Bartok, as well as one Czech, Antonin Dvorak.
As for Ligeti, you may have heard his music without realizing it. Stanley Kubrick incorporated four of Ligeti’s compositions in the soundtrack of his 1968 sci-fi epic, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Twelve years later, Kubrick drew again on Ligeti’s music for “The Shining,” only this time with the composer’s authorization.
Sommerville will lead the HPO in Ligeti’s “Concert Romanesc” (Romanian Concerto), composed in 1951 and published in a revised
version in 1996.
“I’ve known this piece for many years,” wrote Sommerville, who incidentally gave the Canadian première of Ligeti’s “Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano” some 25 years ago. “The ‘Romanian Concerto’ is a very early work of Ligeti’s. He was a bit dismissive of it as his style moved on to wilder pastures, but it retains a wonderfully entertaining and energetic folk-derived character that I think is really captivating and exciting.”
As such, Ligeti’s “Concert Romanesc” is in a line of “symphonic-folk” works that includes Enescu’s 1901 “Romanian Rhapsody nos. 1 and 2” and Bartok’s 1917 orchestral arrangement of his “Romanian Folk Dances.”
And speaking of Bartok, his “Third Piano Concerto,” the last 17 bars of which were completed by Tibor Serly after the composer’s death in 1945, will feature American pianist, and 2011 Presidential Scholar in the Arts, Conrad Tao in his HPO debut.
“It (the ‘Third Piano Concerto’) is in a style which Bartok came to at the end of his life, more accessible and listener-friendly than some of his middle period music,” wrote Sommerville.
After intermission, it’s Dvorak’s 1893 “Symphony no. 9 — From the New World,” which Sommerville did with the HPO in September 2011.
So, some seven years on, what’s new in Sommerville’s take on “From the New World”?
“Well ... I guess that will be up to our subscribers to determine!” wrote Sommerville. “I do have some new ideas about the piece, though. I have been studying the rehearsals and recordings of (among others) Rafael Kubelik, the great Czech conductor, whose father knew Dvorak quite well, and received some wisdom about the character of the piece.”
Thanks to a brainwave from Gemma New, the new twist in the HPO’s “From the New World” is that Hamilton soul singer Charmaine Robinson, a.k.a. Queen Cee, will be heard a cappella in between movements in “Go Down, Moses” and “Goin’ Home.” Based on the haunting English horn melody in the symphony’s second movement, “Goin’ Home” was written as a spiritual in 1922 by William Arms Fisher who had studied with Dvorak in New York in the early 1890s, and later taught in Boston.
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Saturday, April 14, at 7:30 p.m. in Hamilton Mennonite Church, 143 Lower Horning Rd., Shiori Kobayashi’s Live Chamber Music Series features mezzo Karen Gross, Phillip Corke on guitar and Irish bouzouki, violinist Andrea Battista, plus Trio Sorbetto — Cristina Sewerin, oboe, Elizabeth Day, clarinet, Larkin Hinder, bassoon — in works ranging from the 17th century to light jazz. Tickets: $20, senior/ student $15. Call 905-628-4980