CLASSICAL MUSIC OPTIONS ON TAP AT CONCERT HALLS
A look at four of the season’s most interesting events
September isn’t just the month for back to school; there’s also back to the concert hall. Vancouver’s classical fall is a short season, really just 10 or so weeks filling the days and evenings from now until early December. All of our major musical organizations have lots on tap, each commensurate with its particular share of the classical turf. But some things always stand out with extra lustre; here are four events of extraordinary interest.
IGOR LEVITT
When: Nov 4, 3 p.m.
Where: The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
Tickets and info: from $25, vanrecital.com
Every season pianists of extraordinary prowess come to town. The long-awaited return of Evgeny Kissin (Oct. 9) will please many piano aficionados. But the November performance by Igor Levitt is my most anticipated piano recital of the fall.
Levitt is controversial in his playing and in his politics; and anyone who claims to find contemporary contenders lacking in musical personality just hasn’t heard him. While his repertoire choices are a bit narrow by today’s standards, the depth of his interpretations thrills. Not that one always agrees with his thoughtful performances, but they always make one reconsider music in the best possible way.
His program is a wild one: arrangements by Liszt, Brahms, and Busoni of music by Wagner and Bach, with a bit of Schumann for good measure.
BACH COLLEGIUM JAPAN
When: Dec. 9, 3 p.m.
Where: Chan Shun Concert Hall Tickets and info: from $18, earlymusic.bc.ca
When music director Masaaki Suzuki founded the Bach Collegium in 1990, its original purpose was to introduce Japanese audiences to Western music of the baroque era and to authentic period performance practice. It has long since transcended that particular mission.
It has recorded all the Bach church cantatas on some 50-plus CDs, a project that won the 2014 ECHO Klassick Editorial Achievement of the Year Award and garnered international acclaim.
For its 2018 tour, the Collegium features British soprano Joanne Lunn in works by Francesco Conti and Handel, buttressed with instrumental music by Vivaldi, Telemann, Bach, and Marcello (the latter’s celebrated Oboe Concerto).
LEST WE FORGET: DVORAK’S STABAT MATER
When: Nov. 9 and 10, 8 p.m. Where: Orpheum Theatre Tickets and info: from $16.25, vancouversymphony.ca
Everything about the first year of conductor Otto Tausk’s tenure with the VSO will be under intense scrutiny: his programming, his conducting style, and his orchestral sound.
Tausk’s big November concert shows a willingness to conform to the Canadian practice of big choral works near Remembrance Day, a day with extra meaning this year, the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. Tausk’s choice of Dvorak’s Stabat Mater shows he’s thinking well beyond traditional big sings.
Dvorak is as popular a composer as they come, but we hear only a small sample of his works with any regularity. Since it’s unlikely that any of his operas will be given a professional airing here any time soon, his writing for singers and orchestra in the 1877 Stabat Mater promises to show a different side of his work to over-familiar chestnuts like the American Quartet, the Dumky Trio, or the New World Symphony.
TAKACS QUARTET
When: Dec. 2, 3 p.m.
Where: Vancouver Playhouse Tickets and info: From $15, friendsofchambermusic.ca
As has long been its practice, the 2018-19 Friends of Chamber Music season is a mix of new ensembles and old friends. The Takacs Quartet are very old friends indeed, having performed some 22 Friends concerts.
The Takacs Quartet performs with a sort of patrician confidence. And as an ensemble that is regularly in residence at that shrine of chamber music, London’s Wigmore Hall, the quartet defines truly international stature, albeit with a residual Hungarian accent.
The early December program is classic: a quartet by Haydn to start off, and vintage Brahms to end. Between the two, Shostakovich’s Fourth String Quartet, a work of extraordinary scope and intensity.
This is a particularly good fall for Shostakovich and the Friends: the Han Finckel Setzer Trio essay the Soviet master’s Piano Trio, Oct. 23. Both the Piano Trio and the Quartet are works of extraordinary scope and intensity, works that could only have been conceived in the era of Stalin but works which speak to everyone, everywhere, about conscience and values.