SESQUICENTENNIAL SOUNDS
Fans of classical music might consider a short drive to Whistler
July 1 marks the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation, and celebrations will abound from seato-sea-to-sea.
While there is no shortage of events to choose from in Vancouver, fans of classical music may well want to consider a short holiday weekend drive to Whistler, where the Vancouver Symphony combines Canada Day fare with events that are part of its increasingly important summer Orchestral Institute.
Even before the Canada Day weekend, classical music has already come up with a number of creative ways of marking the sesquicentennial.
The venerable Toronto Symphony came up with a grand scheme to do paired performances of new sesquicentennial “shorties,” to be launched by orchestras across the country.
VSO composer in residence Jocelyn Morlock produced her slightly ironic Hullabaloo, which has already had multiple performances.
Victoria Symphony composer in residence Jared Miller (whose career as an orchestral composer was more or less launched by his Olympic nugget 2010 Traffic Jam) whipped up Buzzer Beater, which is to be aired in the fall.
Bramwell Tovey’s sesquicentennial project proved something far more weighty; his song cycle Ancestral Voices was just premiered to near-universal acclaim, and it’s about to be encored as part of the VSO free program Saturday at Whistler’s Olympic Plaza. Ancestral Voices is the highlight of an all-Canadian first half of the concert, which ends with that outdoor favourite, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture (and no, it isn’t about our War of 1812, thank you very much).
There’s another VSO program Sunday at the same venue anchored by Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony, along with music by Vaughan Williams and Brahms.
The VSO’s 2017 Orchestral Institute at Whistler also winds up over the Canada Day weekend and there are even more performance options. The institute brings young musicians together to rehearse and study with a cadre of VSO mentors: A chamber-music matinee at the Audain Art Museum Friday at 1 p.m. kicks things off, with a Whistler grand finale the afternoon of Monday, the institute’s big capstone event, an orchestral program demonstrating the hard work by this year’s participants.
Last year the central work of the program was Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. The mountain weather didn’t entirely co-operate, but Maestro Bramwell Tovey told me that doing a big, super-challenging work like the Stravinsky made quite a point: the participants really thrived on a tough and exciting repertoire.
This summer, the focus work is by Gustav Mahler, a boundarystretching composer if ever there was one. And what Mahler: nothing less than his apocalyptic Sixth Symphony!
UBC Symphony Orchestra conductor Jonathan Girard, himself no stranger to throwing his students into the deep end of the orchestral repertoire, is at Whistler to help out as assistant conductor. Doing Mahler with younger performers is “a life-changing proposition,” enthuses Girard, who notes that Mahler did most of his composing in the mountains during his summers off from conducting. Certainly, there’s a rather nice symmetry to taking the Sixth Symphony to Whistler, an environment so similar to the one where it was envisioned.
The Whistler concert is Monday outdoors at Olympic Plaza. But there’s a new wrinkle this year. The players come down from the mountain Tuesday (isn’t that some other holiday?) to repeat the concert at the Chan Centre. Admission to that weatherproof venue will be $15.