TSO MUSICAL MOMENT
This week’s Musical Moment features two-time Juno award-winner and Grammy nominee Joaquin Valdepenas, who joined the Toronto Symphony Orchestra more than 30 years ago as principal clarinet upon graduating from Yale University. Over his long, distinguished career playing here and abroad, music and painting have been his constants — the work that centres him. That’s why the short piece he plays in this Musical Moment, the first movement of Stravinsky’s “Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet,” struck him as apt. Valdepenas thinks of it as a gentle promenade through an art gallery or museum, with stops and starts as one passes through. Stravinsky himself noted that it should be played “always
piano (softly) and very peaceful.” The Musical Moment, produced by the TSO and the Star, features musicians recording themselves live at home, performing pieces no longer than three minutes. The new video will be posted each Thursday at thestar.com/musicalmoments.