Fresh take on symphony’s New Music Festival as it revisits the recent past
From time to time, music organizations decide to make important announcements with a certain extra amount of fanfare.
The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra took that high-profile strategy recently with a combined concert, announcement and reception to publicize plans for its 2020 New Music Festival.
Originally the festival was music director emeritus Bramwell Tovey’s brainchild, an event loosely patterned on the new music festival he co-founded in Winnipeg.
Over the seasons, the annual event has morphed into something recognizably more reflective of Vancouver — a metamorphosis which will be given extra impetus by the tastes and connections of music director Otto Tausk.
Tausk was on hand Wednesday to be the public face of the upcoming festival, part of a panel of presenters that included representatives of the VSO’s administration and players. There was a performance by composer and VSO trumpet player Marcus Goddard, as well as a nice chance to meet and mingle.
But the point of the exercise was in revealing what to expect for this year’s festival: six events in four different venues that take advantage of the dark, dull, post-holiday time of the year to offer something exciting and extraordinary.
Part of the festival has always been new and/or commissioned works by Canadian composers. In January, there will be a fair bit of music by Nicole Lizée, a reimagining of a Messiaen classic by Jennifer Butler, and a work by Katerina Gimon. And, of course, the core of the festival’s performers are drawn from local new music exponents.
Earlier festivals splendidly showcased the ever-increasing collection of Canadians writing in a plethora of new music idioms.
The creative thrust of the 2020 festival will be solidly international. For example, there will be music by one of the current big names of the U.S. scene, Missy Mazzoli (Still Life with Avalanche, Jan. 14) and
a solo violin piece by Hungarian master György Kurtág (part of a program given by Viviane Hagner, Jan. 13).
A welcome innovation is the inclusion of some very young local performers in the mix: members of the VSO school’s Sinfonietta Ensemble will work with Hagner and Finnish clarinetist Kari Kriikku, and the Vancouver Youth Choir is involved in a multi-composer mash-up with new music ensemble Standing Wave, stalwarts of the festival since its inception. Building on a relatively new VSO tradition, there will be a music at the movies night with a screening of the much-praised 2008 Israeli animated “documentary” Waltz with Bashir, with a score by Max Richter.
But what really stands out in the 2020 program is the chance to hear major works by four celebrated figures of our age: Max Richter, Thomas Adès, Unsuk Chin and Kaija Saariaho.
Tausk wryly noted that the “premiere” performance of a new composition is all too often a “dernière” performance as well.
Here the idea will be to drill down and showcase truly significant pieces from the recent past with the “(re)-creations” theme.
Richter’s popular rethink of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons will wind up the festival. Adès will be represented by a suite from his “scandalous” opera Powder Her Face. (Recital goers may recall Adès’s own performance of a piano piece, derived from the same sources, as part of his astonishing solo recital at the Chan a few years back.)
The festival will launch with Saariaho’s Clarinet Concerto, D’om le vrai sens, featuring Kriikku, who gave the first performance in 2010; Chin’s Violin Concerto will be revived by Hagner, who launched the piece back in 2001.