Andrew Crust & Christopher Gaze, hosts
Nicholas Wright, Concertmaster and Leader
Otto Tausk, Music Director
Jane Coop, Piano Soloist and Leader
Vivaldi, The Four Seasons – Summer
Mozetich, Postcards from the Sky
Martinů, La Revue de Cuisine
Mozart, Mvt. III. Allegro Assai from Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 23 in A Major, K. 488 (arr. Jane Coop)
As summer approaches, we gather some musical performances as pleasing as a concert en plein air! We’ve laid out four courses for our musical picnic, beginning with Vivaldi’s evergreen concerto: Summer from the Four Seasons. We'll share some musical postcards by the Canadian Composer Marjan Mozetich. The kitchen utensils come out to play in Martinů’s absurdist ballet Revue de Cuisine. And for dessert we'll be joined by pianist Jane Coop with music from a much-loved concerto by Mozart.
Nicholas Wright, concertmaster/ leader
Ron and Ardelle Cliff Chair
Concertmaster of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Nicholas Wright is a native of England. His engagements as soloist, chamber and orchestral musician have taken him to most of the major concert halls in Europe, Asia and North America. He has performed concertos with orchestras worldwide including the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Royal Oman Symphony and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. His repertoire spans works from Handel to premieres by composers such as Kelly-Marie Murphy and Jocelyn Morlock, whose works he recently recorded for the Naxos label. He made his solo debut with the York Guildhall Orchestra playing the Dvořák Romance, which was recorded for BBC Radio 3. His concerts and recordings have also been featured on CBC Radio (Canada) and Radio 4 (Hong Kong). As an orchestral musician, Nicholas has worked with the world’s most renowned conductors including Bernard Haitink, Sir Simon Rattle, Valery Gergiev and Mstislav Rostropovich. He has performed extensively with the major chamber and symphony orchestras in London including the English Chamber and London Philharmonic orchestras, and has appeared as guest concertmaster with orchestras such as the Bournemouth Symphony, BBC Concert and Ulster Orchestras. In 2003, he was appointed as the youngest member of the London Symphony Orchestra where he held the first violin sub-principal position, and in addition collaborated with film composers John Williams and Alexandre Desplat.
Asa chamber musician Nicholas regularly takes part in series such as the Mainly Mozart Festival, Ribble Valley Festival, LSO and VSO chamber players and Vancouver’s Music on Main. He has performed in venues such as LSO St Luke’s and has collaborated with many renowned artists including Martin Roscoe and Simon Wright. Prior to his appointment as concertmaster of the VSO, he was first violinist of the critically acclaimed Vancouver based Koerner Quartet.
Nicholas received his training as a scholar at the Royal College of Music in London, studying with Itzhak Rashkovsky and Rodney Friend. In addition to winning prizes at the Royal College, Nicholas has been generously supported by grants from the Martin Musical Fund, the Craxton Memorial Fund and the Royal Overseas League. This has enabled him to study with many eminent musicians including Ruggiero Ricci and Gil Shaham. Nicholas enjoys teaching and has given many masterclasses internationally. He is on the faculty of the VSO School of Music. Nicholas plays on a violin by Stefan-Peter Greiner.
“wonderfully judged with seemingly effortless projection of tone…..It was a triumph.”
The York Press
Otto Tausk, conductor
Dutch conductor Otto Tausk is the Music Director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, now in his third season. He is also the newly announced Chief Conductor of recently formed Phion Orkest van Gelderland & Overijssel. Until spring 2018, Tausk was Music Director of the Opera Theatre and Tonhalle Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen. He appears as a guest with such orchestras as Concertgebouworkest, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, Philharmonie Südwestfalen, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre symphonique de Québec, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Mariinsky Orchestra, the orchestras of Perth, Tasmania, Auckland, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and BBC National Orchestra of Wales, with whom he made his BBC Proms debut in August 2018. He is a hugely respected musical personality in his native Holland, working with all its major orchestras and composers.
In the 2020/21 season, Tausk continues guesting relationships with orchestras such as Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Het Gelders Orkest, Norwegian Radio Orchestra and Turku Philharmonic Orchestra. In Vancouver, Tausk will lead an innovative reimagined season in response to COVID-19, showcasing the orchestra with a curated series of digital performances.
In the opera pit, he will conduct Michel van der Aa’s new opera ‘Upload’, with the world premiere at Dutch National Opera, plus further appearances with the other co-commissioning parties including Oper Köln. In St. Gallen, Tausk conducted the world premiere of ‘Annas Maske’, by Swiss composer David Philip Hefti, the Swiss premiere of George Benjamin’s ‘Written on Skin’, Korngold’s ‘Die Tote Stadt’ and other titles including ‘Don Giovanni’, ‘Die Entführung aus dem Serail’, ‘Eugene Onegin’, ‘West Side Story’, ‘Lohengrin’ and ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’.
Tausk has recorded with the Concertgebouworkest (Luc Brewaeys, and an animated version of Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’), Tonhalle Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen (Korngold and Diepenbrock), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (Mendelssohn) and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (Gavin Bryars) amongst others. For the cpo label in 2011 Hans Pfitzner’s enchanting Orchesterlieder garnered international praise, not least the Classica France’s ‘Choc du mois’. His Prokofiev disc with Rosanne Philippens also received BBC Music Magazine Concerto Disc of the Month (2018).
Born in Utrecht, Otto Tausk initially studied violin and then conducting with Jonas Aleksa. Between 2004 and 2006, Tausk was assistant conductor to Valery Gergiev with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, a period of study that had a profound impact on him. In 2011 Tausk was presented with the ‘De Olifant’ prize by the City of Haarlem. He received this prestigious award for his contribution to the Arts in the Netherlands, in particular his extensive work with Holland Symfonia serving as Music Director 2007 to 2012. In reflecting on their work together in The Netherlands, Valery Gergiev paid particular tribute to Tausk on this occasion.
Jane Coop, piano soloist & leader
Pianist Jane Coop, one of Canada’s most prominent and distinguished artists, was born in Saint John, New Brunswick and grew up in Calgary, Alberta. For advanced studies her principal teachers were Anton Kuerti in Toronto and Leon Fleisher in Baltimore.
At the age of nineteen she won First Prize in the CBC’s national radio competition (the Young Performers Competition), and this, along with First Prize at the Washington International Competition, launched her career. In the early years she made recital debuts at Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Recital Hall (now called Weill Hall), and gave concerto performances with the Toronto Symphony, the Calgary Philharmonic the Victoria Symphony and the CBC Vancouver Orchestra. In 1976 she was invited to tour the New England States as soloist with Mario Bernardi and the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada in Mozart’s Concerto in D minor, K.466.
Subsequently she has played in over twenty countries, in such eminent halls as the Bolshoi Hall in St. Petersburg, the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall, Roy Thomson Hall, the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, the Beijing Concert Hall and the Salle Gaveau (Paris). In her own country she has given concerts from north to south: Whitehorse (Yukon) and Niagara Falls (ON), and from west to east: Tofino (BC) and St. John’s (Nfld) and many, many cities, towns and communities in between. She is in fact one of the few who has remained resident in Canada throughout her career.
Coop’s love of chamber music has led her to collaborate with artists from many parts of the world. Her longtime association with violinist Andrew Dawes, and her more recent partnership with cellist Antonio Lysy have given her the opportunity to delve into the sonata literature of Beethoven, a body of music to which she feels particularly drawn. Summer festivals in North America and Europe have provided venues for performances with the Manhattan, Miami, Audubon, Orford, Lafayette, Colorado, Seattle, Angeles and Pacifica String Quartets, as well as the Los Angeles Chamber Winds, York Winds, and such luminaries as Barry Tuckwell, Jamie Somerville, Martin Beaver, Jeanne Baxtrasser and Michelle Zukovsky. Coop is a cherished faculty artist at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, the oldest chamber festival in North America. There she collaborates in performances of much of the chamber music literature for piano and strings, and coaches brilliant young musicians from across the continent.
Her commitment to teaching is centred around her long time position at the University of British Columbia’s School of Music in Vancouver, where she was a senior professor and Head of the Piano Division. In 2003 she was designated Distinguished University Scholar by the university’s president, and in 2007 she received a Killam Teaching Award. In 1992 she was the founding Artistic Director of the Young Artists’ Experience – a summer chamber music program for students from the age of 14 to 18 which took place in Whistler, BC. Its mandate was to give the young people a wide exposure to art and life, thus offering in the daily schedule yoga, composition, poetry, philosophy and visual art as well as music.
Coop’s reputation has inspired international competition organizers to invite her to judge their events over the past fifteen years. She has served on the juries of the Kapell (Maryland), Dublin, Washington DC, Hilton Head, Honens, Gina Bachauer and the New York Piano Competitions. She has also been a jury member for the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards, the Glenn Gould Prize, the Hnatyshyn Foundation Developing Artists Grants and various Canada Council grant awards. Her sixteen recordings, three of which have been nominated for Juno awards, have garnered glowing reviews and have been heard on classical radio programs in many countries.
In December 2012, Jane Coop was appointed to the Order of Canada, our country’s highest honour for lifetime achievement. She was also appointed to the Order of British Columbia in May, 2019.
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
Founded in 1919, the Grammy and Juno-award winning Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is the third largest orchestra in Canada, the largest arts organization in Western Canada, and one of the few orchestras in the world to have its own music school.
Led by Music Director Otto Tausk since 2018, the VSO performs more than 150 concerts each year, throughout Vancouver and the province of British Columbia, reaching over 270,000 people annually. On tour the VSO has performed in the United States, China, Korea and across Canada.
The orchestra presents passionate, high-quality performances of classical, popular and culturally diverse music, creating meaningful engagement with audiences of all ages and backgrounds.
Recent guest artists include Daniil Trifonov, Dawn Upshaw, James Ehnes, Adrianne Pieczonka, Gidon Kremer, Renée Fleming, Yefim Bronfman, Itzhak Perlman, Bernadette Peters, Tan Dun, and more.
For the 2020-21 season the VSO has created the innovative streaming service TheConcertHall.ca, a virtual home for a virtual season, where more than forty performances will be released throughout the year.
Antonio Vivaldi
b. March 4, 1678 / Venice, Italy
d. July 28, 1741, Vienna Austria
It is hard to imagine, but there was a time, not so very long ago, that Antonio Vivaldi was viewed as just another obscure composer of the baroque-era. Today, there are more than 1000 recordings of his most famous work, the set of four violin concertos known as Le quattro stagione - The Four Seasons. The earliest released recording of The Four Seasons dates from a French radio broadcast in the mid 1930s. The Italian conductor Bernardino Molinari led a recording session for six double-sided 78 rpm discs, released in 1942. And shortly after WWII, the American violinist Louis Kaufman led the movement to the long-playing, 33 rpm records that would catapult Vivaldi to classical rock star status. In popular culture, there have been at least 100 different films and television shows that have used Vivaldi's Four Seasons in some way. Its success undoubtedly prompted the re-discovery of Vivaldi’s copious output of more than 500 concertos!
Vivaldi was inspired to create The Four Seasons by the landscape paintings of a fellow Venetian, the artist Marco Ricci. Using scenes of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter as his inspiration, he composed the set in the early 1720s, and they were published in 1725 as part of a collection titled Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The Test of Harmony and Invention). It was not unusual for composers of the Baroque era to imitate words in music – a reference to “rising” in a song might elicit a melody moving upwards for instance – but in The Four Seasons, Vivaldi took the practice to a new level. A series of sonnets provide a kind of storyline for each of the concertos, with a fairly clear description of Nymphs and Shepherd, Countryfolk, Bagpipers and Huntsmen interacting with wildlife and the force of nature. A summary of the sonnets appears below, as well as at the accompanying passages of the video performance. Today we feature the Concerto in G minor - Summer, as the opening of our You’ll be sure to hear the imitative call of the birds, the bark of a shepherd’s dog, the hunting party riding out, and the chattering of teeth from a winter wind!
Summer (Concerto in G minor, RV315)
I Allegro non molto
In a harsh season burned by the sun, man and flock languish, and the pine tree is scorched; the cuckoo unleashes its voice, and soon we hear the songs of the turtle-dove and the goldfinch.
Sweet Zephyr blows, but Boreas (the North wind) suddenly opens a dispute with his neighbour; and the shepherd laments his fate for he fears a fierce squall is coming.
II Adagio – Presto
His weary limbs are robbed of rest by his fear of fierce thunder and lightning and by the furious swarm of flies and blowflies.
III Presto
Alas, his fears are only too real: the sky fills with thunder and lightning, and hailstones hew off the heads of proud cornstalks.
Marjan Mozetich
b. Gorizia, Italy / January 7, 1948
Marjan Mozetich’s music has captured the heart of the public in a way that few other contemporary composers can match. Born in Gorizia, Italy, his family moved to Hamilton, Ontario, where he grew up from the age of four. Following studies at the University of Toronto, he spent time in Europe with the avant-garde Italian composer Luciano Berio. Around 1980, Mozetich made an abrupt change in his approach to composition and found his own voice with a style that has been variously labelled as postmodern, Romantic and minimalist. No matter how it is described, it has proven equally popular with musicians and programmers, as well as concert and radio audiences. As a radio producer myself, I was aware of the phenomenon of listeners sitting in their cars waiting for a piece to finish, to find out who wrote it– and often it was a piece by Marjan Mozetich.
From 1991 through 2018, Mozetich taught at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. His works have received three JUNO award nominations, winning in 2010 for a recording of his work for string quartet “Lament in the Trampled Garden.” He has also been honoured twice with SOCAN’s Jan V Matacek Award in recognition how often his music is heard in performance.
Mozetich’s work “Postcards from the Sky” comprises a set of three short pieces for strings. They were commissioned through the assistance of the Canada Council, and premiered by the Thirteen Strings of Ottawa conducted by Paul Andreas Mahr in April, 1996. Since that time these evocative works have become the composer’s most popular compositions, frequently performed and broadcast extensively. They were first recorded on best selling CBC Records release by the CBC Vancouver Orchestra, and have since been re-released on the Centrediscs label of the Canadian Music Centre (CMCCD 21815).
Marjan Mozetich has shared the following thoughts about each of the three movements:
“Unfolding Sky is a gradual unfolding of the opening melodic theme and the rising bass arpeggio simultaneously being accompanied by a perpetual mobile pattern. The climax is akin to the burst of sunlight through the parting of clouds, or the gradual rising of the sun into its full morning glory.
Weeping Clouds musically entails a descending melodic line of a lamenting nature which is passed from one section of strings to another. Only at the very end does the line move upwards. The accompaniment consists of a constant seesawing of two notes giving an ethereal floating motion, and the descending pizzicato symbolising falling rain.
A Messenger is the revelation of a hauntingly simple melody gliding over a hypnotic accompaniment. The beauty of this enigmatic musical message briefly reflects on the infinite beyond our worldly concerns.”
www.mozetich.com
Matthew Baird, with notes from the composer
Bohuslav Martinů
b. December 8, 1890 / Polička, Bohemia
d. August 28, 1959 / Switzerland
Bohuslav Martinů lived in Paris during the so-called “Jazz Age” of the 1920’s and 30’s. His first major foray into combining jazz and dance with his classical style was La Revue de Cuisine in 1927. Translated as The Kitchen Revue, this one-act ballet chronicles a day in the life of kitchen utensils, based on a plot by Jarmila Kröschlová: The marriage of newlyweds Pot and Lid is threatened when the Whisk arrives on the scene, trying to seduce Pot. Dishcloth takes the opportunity to console Lid, but is challenged to a duel by Broom. However, Pot soon begins to pine for her husband, and embarks on a desperate search for him. In a fortuitous moment of deus ex machina, an enormous boot kicks Lid from the wings and onto the stage and Pot and Lid are happily reunited.
Martinů adapted his lighthearted, absurdist ballet to a four-movement chamber suite, featuring the bluesy colours of the clarinet, trumpet, and piano along with bassoon, violin, and cello. It begins with a Prologue, setting the scene with a march, followed by a dramatic tango. The wild third movement, “Charleston,” is based on a popular dance style from the 1920s and depicts Dishcloth and Broom’s duel. The suite concludes with a Finale.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
b. January 27, 1756 / Salzburg, Austria
d. December 5, 1791 / Vienna Austria
Over the course of his incredibly productive yet tragically truncated life, Mozart composed 27 concertos for piano and orchestra (including a couple of examples for multiple pianos). The majority were written after Mozart settled in Vienna, from 1782 onwards, and contributed greatly to his success as both a piano soloist and as a composer. The Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488 is a particularly attractive example, one that Mozart retained for himself as a valuable musical calling card. In his words, it was among the “compositions that I keep for myself or for a small circle of music lovers and connoisseurs (who promise not to let them out of their hands).” While other concertos are extroverted and flashy, there are few that are as graceful, understated and, quite simply, beautiful.
The piece was the second of three piano concertos that Mozart wrote in late 1785 and early 1786, which he presented in a series of subscription concerts in Vienna. At the same time, Mozart was also creating his comic opera The Marriage of Figaro. Some of the high spirits and good humour of the opera buffa tradition are present in the finale of the concerto. But the absence of oboes, trumpets, and drums signals a warmth and intimacy to overall mood. In Mozart’s original score the pianist is supported by the strings, plus flute, two clarinets, two horns, and bassoon. In the present setting, (adapted by soloist Jane Coop), the forces are reduced to string quintet, plus flute, clarinet, bassoon and horn. The result bares favourable comparison with Mozart’s earlier Quintet for Piano and Winds, K. 452, as well as the subsequent Clarinet Quintet, K. 581, and the Clarinet Concerto K.622, completed in the final months of his life. They each share an emotional depth and air of pathos that is referred to in German as Emfindsamkeit – a sentimental or hypersensitive style that tugs at the heartstrings.
Notes: Matthew Baird
Andrew Crust & Christopher Gaze, hosts
Nicholas Wright, Concertmaster and Leader
Otto Tausk, Music Director
Jane Coop, Piano Soloist and Leader
Vivaldi, The Four Seasons – Summer
Mozetich, Postcards from the Sky
Martinů, La Revue de Cuisine
Mozart, Mvt. III. Allegro Assai from Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 23 in A Major, K. 488 (arr. Jane Coop)
As summer approaches, we gather some musical performances as pleasing as a concert en plein air! We’ve laid out four courses for our musical picnic, beginning with Vivaldi’s evergreen concerto: Summer from the Four Seasons. We'll share some musical postcards by the Canadian Composer Marjan Mozetich. The kitchen utensils come out to play in Martinů’s absurdist ballet Revue de Cuisine. And for dessert we'll be joined by pianist Jane Coop with music from a much-loved concerto by Mozart.
Nicholas Wright, concertmaster/ leader
Ron and Ardelle Cliff Chair
Concertmaster of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Nicholas Wright is a native of England. His engagements as soloist, chamber and orchestral musician have taken him to most of the major concert halls in Europe, Asia and North America. He has performed concertos with orchestras worldwide including the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Royal Oman Symphony and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. His repertoire spans works from Handel to premieres by composers such as Kelly-Marie Murphy and Jocelyn Morlock, whose works he recently recorded for the Naxos label. He made his solo debut with the York Guildhall Orchestra playing the Dvořák Romance, which was recorded for BBC Radio 3. His concerts and recordings have also been featured on CBC Radio (Canada) and Radio 4 (Hong Kong). As an orchestral musician, Nicholas has worked with the world’s most renowned conductors including Bernard Haitink, Sir Simon Rattle, Valery Gergiev and Mstislav Rostropovich. He has performed extensively with the major chamber and symphony orchestras in London including the English Chamber and London Philharmonic orchestras, and has appeared as guest concertmaster with orchestras such as the Bournemouth Symphony, BBC Concert and Ulster Orchestras. In 2003, he was appointed as the youngest member of the London Symphony Orchestra where he held the first violin sub-principal position, and in addition collaborated with film composers John Williams and Alexandre Desplat.
Asa chamber musician Nicholas regularly takes part in series such as the Mainly Mozart Festival, Ribble Valley Festival, LSO and VSO chamber players and Vancouver’s Music on Main. He has performed in venues such as LSO St Luke’s and has collaborated with many renowned artists including Martin Roscoe and Simon Wright. Prior to his appointment as concertmaster of the VSO, he was first violinist of the critically acclaimed Vancouver based Koerner Quartet.
Nicholas received his training as a scholar at the Royal College of Music in London, studying with Itzhak Rashkovsky and Rodney Friend. In addition to winning prizes at the Royal College, Nicholas has been generously supported by grants from the Martin Musical Fund, the Craxton Memorial Fund and the Royal Overseas League. This has enabled him to study with many eminent musicians including Ruggiero Ricci and Gil Shaham. Nicholas enjoys teaching and has given many masterclasses internationally. He is on the faculty of the VSO School of Music. Nicholas plays on a violin by Stefan-Peter Greiner.
“wonderfully judged with seemingly effortless projection of tone…..It was a triumph.”
The York Press
Otto Tausk, conductor
Dutch conductor Otto Tausk is the Music Director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, now in his third season. He is also the newly announced Chief Conductor of recently formed Phion Orkest van Gelderland & Overijssel. Until spring 2018, Tausk was Music Director of the Opera Theatre and Tonhalle Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen. He appears as a guest with such orchestras as Concertgebouworkest, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, Philharmonie Südwestfalen, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre symphonique de Québec, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Mariinsky Orchestra, the orchestras of Perth, Tasmania, Auckland, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and BBC National Orchestra of Wales, with whom he made his BBC Proms debut in August 2018. He is a hugely respected musical personality in his native Holland, working with all its major orchestras and composers.
In the 2020/21 season, Tausk continues guesting relationships with orchestras such as Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Het Gelders Orkest, Norwegian Radio Orchestra and Turku Philharmonic Orchestra. In Vancouver, Tausk will lead an innovative reimagined season in response to COVID-19, showcasing the orchestra with a curated series of digital performances.
In the opera pit, he will conduct Michel van der Aa’s new opera ‘Upload’, with the world premiere at Dutch National Opera, plus further appearances with the other co-commissioning parties including Oper Köln. In St. Gallen, Tausk conducted the world premiere of ‘Annas Maske’, by Swiss composer David Philip Hefti, the Swiss premiere of George Benjamin’s ‘Written on Skin’, Korngold’s ‘Die Tote Stadt’ and other titles including ‘Don Giovanni’, ‘Die Entführung aus dem Serail’, ‘Eugene Onegin’, ‘West Side Story’, ‘Lohengrin’ and ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’.
Tausk has recorded with the Concertgebouworkest (Luc Brewaeys, and an animated version of Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’), Tonhalle Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen (Korngold and Diepenbrock), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (Mendelssohn) and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (Gavin Bryars) amongst others. For the cpo label in 2011 Hans Pfitzner’s enchanting Orchesterlieder garnered international praise, not least the Classica France’s ‘Choc du mois’. His Prokofiev disc with Rosanne Philippens also received BBC Music Magazine Concerto Disc of the Month (2018).
Born in Utrecht, Otto Tausk initially studied violin and then conducting with Jonas Aleksa. Between 2004 and 2006, Tausk was assistant conductor to Valery Gergiev with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, a period of study that had a profound impact on him. In 2011 Tausk was presented with the ‘De Olifant’ prize by the City of Haarlem. He received this prestigious award for his contribution to the Arts in the Netherlands, in particular his extensive work with Holland Symfonia serving as Music Director 2007 to 2012. In reflecting on their work together in The Netherlands, Valery Gergiev paid particular tribute to Tausk on this occasion.
Jane Coop, piano soloist & leader
Pianist Jane Coop, one of Canada’s most prominent and distinguished artists, was born in Saint John, New Brunswick and grew up in Calgary, Alberta. For advanced studies her principal teachers were Anton Kuerti in Toronto and Leon Fleisher in Baltimore.
At the age of nineteen she won First Prize in the CBC’s national radio competition (the Young Performers Competition), and this, along with First Prize at the Washington International Competition, launched her career. In the early years she made recital debuts at Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Recital Hall (now called Weill Hall), and gave concerto performances with the Toronto Symphony, the Calgary Philharmonic the Victoria Symphony and the CBC Vancouver Orchestra. In 1976 she was invited to tour the New England States as soloist with Mario Bernardi and the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada in Mozart’s Concerto in D minor, K.466.
Subsequently she has played in over twenty countries, in such eminent halls as the Bolshoi Hall in St. Petersburg, the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall, Roy Thomson Hall, the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, the Beijing Concert Hall and the Salle Gaveau (Paris). In her own country she has given concerts from north to south: Whitehorse (Yukon) and Niagara Falls (ON), and from west to east: Tofino (BC) and St. John’s (Nfld) and many, many cities, towns and communities in between. She is in fact one of the few who has remained resident in Canada throughout her career.
Coop’s love of chamber music has led her to collaborate with artists from many parts of the world. Her longtime association with violinist Andrew Dawes, and her more recent partnership with cellist Antonio Lysy have given her the opportunity to delve into the sonata literature of Beethoven, a body of music to which she feels particularly drawn. Summer festivals in North America and Europe have provided venues for performances with the Manhattan, Miami, Audubon, Orford, Lafayette, Colorado, Seattle, Angeles and Pacifica String Quartets, as well as the Los Angeles Chamber Winds, York Winds, and such luminaries as Barry Tuckwell, Jamie Somerville, Martin Beaver, Jeanne Baxtrasser and Michelle Zukovsky. Coop is a cherished faculty artist at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, the oldest chamber festival in North America. There she collaborates in performances of much of the chamber music literature for piano and strings, and coaches brilliant young musicians from across the continent.
Her commitment to teaching is centred around her long time position at the University of British Columbia’s School of Music in Vancouver, where she was a senior professor and Head of the Piano Division. In 2003 she was designated Distinguished University Scholar by the university’s president, and in 2007 she received a Killam Teaching Award. In 1992 she was the founding Artistic Director of the Young Artists’ Experience – a summer chamber music program for students from the age of 14 to 18 which took place in Whistler, BC. Its mandate was to give the young people a wide exposure to art and life, thus offering in the daily schedule yoga, composition, poetry, philosophy and visual art as well as music.
Coop’s reputation has inspired international competition organizers to invite her to judge their events over the past fifteen years. She has served on the juries of the Kapell (Maryland), Dublin, Washington DC, Hilton Head, Honens, Gina Bachauer and the New York Piano Competitions. She has also been a jury member for the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards, the Glenn Gould Prize, the Hnatyshyn Foundation Developing Artists Grants and various Canada Council grant awards. Her sixteen recordings, three of which have been nominated for Juno awards, have garnered glowing reviews and have been heard on classical radio programs in many countries.
In December 2012, Jane Coop was appointed to the Order of Canada, our country’s highest honour for lifetime achievement. She was also appointed to the Order of British Columbia in May, 2019.
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
Founded in 1919, the Grammy and Juno-award winning Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is the third largest orchestra in Canada, the largest arts organization in Western Canada, and one of the few orchestras in the world to have its own music school.
Led by Music Director Otto Tausk since 2018, the VSO performs more than 150 concerts each year, throughout Vancouver and the province of British Columbia, reaching over 270,000 people annually. On tour the VSO has performed in the United States, China, Korea and across Canada.
The orchestra presents passionate, high-quality performances of classical, popular and culturally diverse music, creating meaningful engagement with audiences of all ages and backgrounds.
Recent guest artists include Daniil Trifonov, Dawn Upshaw, James Ehnes, Adrianne Pieczonka, Gidon Kremer, Renée Fleming, Yefim Bronfman, Itzhak Perlman, Bernadette Peters, Tan Dun, and more.
For the 2020-21 season the VSO has created the innovative streaming service TheConcertHall.ca, a virtual home for a virtual season, where more than forty performances will be released throughout the year.
Antonio Vivaldi
b. March 4, 1678 / Venice, Italy
d. July 28, 1741, Vienna Austria
It is hard to imagine, but there was a time, not so very long ago, that Antonio Vivaldi was viewed as just another obscure composer of the baroque-era. Today, there are more than 1000 recordings of his most famous work, the set of four violin concertos known as Le quattro stagione - The Four Seasons. The earliest released recording of The Four Seasons dates from a French radio broadcast in the mid 1930s. The Italian conductor Bernardino Molinari led a recording session for six double-sided 78 rpm discs, released in 1942. And shortly after WWII, the American violinist Louis Kaufman led the movement to the long-playing, 33 rpm records that would catapult Vivaldi to classical rock star status. In popular culture, there have been at least 100 different films and television shows that have used Vivaldi's Four Seasons in some way. Its success undoubtedly prompted the re-discovery of Vivaldi’s copious output of more than 500 concertos!
Vivaldi was inspired to create The Four Seasons by the landscape paintings of a fellow Venetian, the artist Marco Ricci. Using scenes of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter as his inspiration, he composed the set in the early 1720s, and they were published in 1725 as part of a collection titled Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The Test of Harmony and Invention). It was not unusual for composers of the Baroque era to imitate words in music – a reference to “rising” in a song might elicit a melody moving upwards for instance – but in The Four Seasons, Vivaldi took the practice to a new level. A series of sonnets provide a kind of storyline for each of the concertos, with a fairly clear description of Nymphs and Shepherd, Countryfolk, Bagpipers and Huntsmen interacting with wildlife and the force of nature. A summary of the sonnets appears below, as well as at the accompanying passages of the video performance. Today we feature the Concerto in G minor - Summer, as the opening of our You’ll be sure to hear the imitative call of the birds, the bark of a shepherd’s dog, the hunting party riding out, and the chattering of teeth from a winter wind!
Summer (Concerto in G minor, RV315)
I Allegro non molto
In a harsh season burned by the sun, man and flock languish, and the pine tree is scorched; the cuckoo unleashes its voice, and soon we hear the songs of the turtle-dove and the goldfinch.
Sweet Zephyr blows, but Boreas (the North wind) suddenly opens a dispute with his neighbour; and the shepherd laments his fate for he fears a fierce squall is coming.
II Adagio – Presto
His weary limbs are robbed of rest by his fear of fierce thunder and lightning and by the furious swarm of flies and blowflies.
III Presto
Alas, his fears are only too real: the sky fills with thunder and lightning, and hailstones hew off the heads of proud cornstalks.
Marjan Mozetich
b. Gorizia, Italy / January 7, 1948
Marjan Mozetich’s music has captured the heart of the public in a way that few other contemporary composers can match. Born in Gorizia, Italy, his family moved to Hamilton, Ontario, where he grew up from the age of four. Following studies at the University of Toronto, he spent time in Europe with the avant-garde Italian composer Luciano Berio. Around 1980, Mozetich made an abrupt change in his approach to composition and found his own voice with a style that has been variously labelled as postmodern, Romantic and minimalist. No matter how it is described, it has proven equally popular with musicians and programmers, as well as concert and radio audiences. As a radio producer myself, I was aware of the phenomenon of listeners sitting in their cars waiting for a piece to finish, to find out who wrote it– and often it was a piece by Marjan Mozetich.
From 1991 through 2018, Mozetich taught at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. His works have received three JUNO award nominations, winning in 2010 for a recording of his work for string quartet “Lament in the Trampled Garden.” He has also been honoured twice with SOCAN’s Jan V Matacek Award in recognition how often his music is heard in performance.
Mozetich’s work “Postcards from the Sky” comprises a set of three short pieces for strings. They were commissioned through the assistance of the Canada Council, and premiered by the Thirteen Strings of Ottawa conducted by Paul Andreas Mahr in April, 1996. Since that time these evocative works have become the composer’s most popular compositions, frequently performed and broadcast extensively. They were first recorded on best selling CBC Records release by the CBC Vancouver Orchestra, and have since been re-released on the Centrediscs label of the Canadian Music Centre (CMCCD 21815).
Marjan Mozetich has shared the following thoughts about each of the three movements:
“Unfolding Sky is a gradual unfolding of the opening melodic theme and the rising bass arpeggio simultaneously being accompanied by a perpetual mobile pattern. The climax is akin to the burst of sunlight through the parting of clouds, or the gradual rising of the sun into its full morning glory.
Weeping Clouds musically entails a descending melodic line of a lamenting nature which is passed from one section of strings to another. Only at the very end does the line move upwards. The accompaniment consists of a constant seesawing of two notes giving an ethereal floating motion, and the descending pizzicato symbolising falling rain.
A Messenger is the revelation of a hauntingly simple melody gliding over a hypnotic accompaniment. The beauty of this enigmatic musical message briefly reflects on the infinite beyond our worldly concerns.”
www.mozetich.com
Matthew Baird, with notes from the composer
Bohuslav Martinů
b. December 8, 1890 / Polička, Bohemia
d. August 28, 1959 / Switzerland
Bohuslav Martinů lived in Paris during the so-called “Jazz Age” of the 1920’s and 30’s. His first major foray into combining jazz and dance with his classical style was La Revue de Cuisine in 1927. Translated as The Kitchen Revue, this one-act ballet chronicles a day in the life of kitchen utensils, based on a plot by Jarmila Kröschlová: The marriage of newlyweds Pot and Lid is threatened when the Whisk arrives on the scene, trying to seduce Pot. Dishcloth takes the opportunity to console Lid, but is challenged to a duel by Broom. However, Pot soon begins to pine for her husband, and embarks on a desperate search for him. In a fortuitous moment of deus ex machina, an enormous boot kicks Lid from the wings and onto the stage and Pot and Lid are happily reunited.
Martinů adapted his lighthearted, absurdist ballet to a four-movement chamber suite, featuring the bluesy colours of the clarinet, trumpet, and piano along with bassoon, violin, and cello. It begins with a Prologue, setting the scene with a march, followed by a dramatic tango. The wild third movement, “Charleston,” is based on a popular dance style from the 1920s and depicts Dishcloth and Broom’s duel. The suite concludes with a Finale.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
b. January 27, 1756 / Salzburg, Austria
d. December 5, 1791 / Vienna Austria
Over the course of his incredibly productive yet tragically truncated life, Mozart composed 27 concertos for piano and orchestra (including a couple of examples for multiple pianos). The majority were written after Mozart settled in Vienna, from 1782 onwards, and contributed greatly to his success as both a piano soloist and as a composer. The Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488 is a particularly attractive example, one that Mozart retained for himself as a valuable musical calling card. In his words, it was among the “compositions that I keep for myself or for a small circle of music lovers and connoisseurs (who promise not to let them out of their hands).” While other concertos are extroverted and flashy, there are few that are as graceful, understated and, quite simply, beautiful.
The piece was the second of three piano concertos that Mozart wrote in late 1785 and early 1786, which he presented in a series of subscription concerts in Vienna. At the same time, Mozart was also creating his comic opera The Marriage of Figaro. Some of the high spirits and good humour of the opera buffa tradition are present in the finale of the concerto. But the absence of oboes, trumpets, and drums signals a warmth and intimacy to overall mood. In Mozart’s original score the pianist is supported by the strings, plus flute, two clarinets, two horns, and bassoon. In the present setting, (adapted by soloist Jane Coop), the forces are reduced to string quintet, plus flute, clarinet, bassoon and horn. The result bares favourable comparison with Mozart’s earlier Quintet for Piano and Winds, K. 452, as well as the subsequent Clarinet Quintet, K. 581, and the Clarinet Concerto K.622, completed in the final months of his life. They each share an emotional depth and air of pathos that is referred to in German as Emfindsamkeit – a sentimental or hypersensitive style that tugs at the heartstrings.
Notes: Matthew Baird
