‘Good energy’ to Symphony on the Bay’s end of season concert
Light classics and familiar bonbons, that’s what Symphony on the Bay’s season closing concert is made of.
“It was balancing out enough classical with non-Classical so that it (the concert) still has a good energy to it,” said SotB music director Claudio Vena to The Spec from his Toronto home.
So, this Sunday afternoon’s season closing concert will open with one of Franz von Suppé’s best known compositions, “Light Cavalry Overture,” a staple of pops concerts the world over.
After that perky opener, the SotB will dial it down with Edward Elgar’s “Chanson de nuit,” which began life as a piece for violin and piano prior to the composer having his orchestral version published in 1899 and premièred two years later.
The first of the SotB’s three musical guests will be Catherine Wilson, the Toronto-based classical crossover pianist and artistic director of Ensemble Vivant, which originally began as Trio Vivant, a piano trio with classical, ragtime and Tin Pan Alley leanings.
“I’ve always had a great deal respect for her as a performer and the longevity she’s managed to maintain in the crazy business of a classical chamber piano trio, essentially,” said Vena who has long known Wilson and produced four of EV’s CDs over the past decade.
The first of five offerings from Wilson accompanied by SotB will be J.S. Bach’s “Concerto in F Minor,” the second movement of which was originally composed as the sinfonia for the Epiphany cantata, here in English, “I Stand with One Foot in the Grave.” Don’t be put off by the morbid title. That adapted movement is a beautiful baroque gem.
Wilson and company will let the good times roll with “Rialto Ripples,” George Gershwin’s 1917 novelty rag. She recorded it for her 1987 piano duo CD “Rags to Riches” with late Canadian ragtime virtuoso, John Arpin. Not only did Vena borrow that CD’s title for this concert, but he also orchestrated the Gershwin, basing his version on an arrangement that Hamiltonborn, Toronto-based Rick Wilkins had done for Wilson’s EV.
And speaking of Wilkins, his arrangement of Wilson’s Cabbagetown-inspired original, “Sackville Street Ballad,” will precede Vena’s orchestration of “Bernardo’s Tango,” Phil Dwyer’s tip of the fedora to Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci of “Last Tango in Paris” fame.
The first half will end with Wilkins’s arrangement of “Andalucia” by Ernesto Lecuona, who captured Spain’s sun-dappled
essence better than most.
The SotB’s second musical guest this afternoon will be their Young Artists’ Competition junior category winner, 13year-old Erin Merkely, who’ll take the spotlight in the first movement of Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Violin Concerto in G.”
Johann Strauss Jr.’s regal “Emperor Waltzes” will be dedicated to the memory of Austrian-born Agnes Frebold-Schroder, a cellist with SotB (originally Symphony Hamilton) since 1973, who passed away on May 3.
Following that tribute, the SotB’s YAC senior category winner, mezzo Lyndsay Promane (yup, daughter of jazzer Terry Promane) will take the spotlight in “Que fais-tu, blanche tourterelle” from Gounod’s opera, “Roméo et Juliette.”
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Friday, May 11 at 8 p.m. in St. John’s Anglican, 272 Wilson St. E., Ancaster, Sinfonia Ancaster performs works by Grieg, Nielsen and Sibelius. Tickets: $15.
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Saturday at 7:30 p.m., in St. Christopher’s Anglican, 662 Guelph Line, Burlington, Gary Fisher’s Burlington Civic Chorale perform Bach’s Cantata no. 150 and Rutter’s “Requiem” with organist-pianist Jennifer Goodine, soprano Julie Ludwig, and a chamber ensemble.
Tickets at door $25, advance $20. Call 905-577-2425.