Saturday, June 26, 2010
Giampiero Sobrino: Clarinettist AND Arm Wrestler Extraordinaire!
Friday, June 25, 2010
Ontario Arts Review: Sobrino aurally mesmerizing
By Danny Gaisin
Ontario Arts Review
The guest soloist- renowned clarinettist Giampiero Sobrino teased the audience with Debussy's diminutive first clarinet rhapsody. His physical style may from the ‘Sammy Kaye’ school; which can a little distracting, but his mastery of the instrument is non-pareil. When he performed Von Weber’s Concerto no. 2, the audience was aurally mesmerized. The andante-tempoed Romanza 2nd movement… popular with the new-format classical-lite stations; was performed so precisely and with such feeling that this attentive listener’s throat began to lump up. It speaks volumes about the Brott Festival and the NAO that they can attract such luminaries!
Unter-Konductor Geneviève Leclair took the podium for the sprightly & bright Rossini overture to his “Italian girl in Algiers”. This opera, a dramma magiocoso, tells the story of Isabella- a sort of ‘Wonder Woman’. Cross the Med; rescue your lover; free the slaves and head back home for dinner. Just like my wife! Leclair brought out every nuance of the piece and bestowed such a impacting aspect to her reading that I could smell the salt air. Were it not for Senore Sobrino, this would have been the evening’s apex! Her program notes were no slouch either. Granted they were written from a musicological viewpoint but certainly informative and erudite. Future audiences…READ; Memorize!
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Beethoven's Pastorale with Sobrino: some pics
The three Maestro(a)s: Boris Brott, Geneviève Leclair and Giampiero Sobrino, soloist
Boris, Geneviève, Giampiero and Samuel Tam
Robert Latimer-Cornell (look for him July 4 in Life & Letters of Chopin and Aug. 8 in Composers In Love) chats with BMF Production Manager Steve Newman
Festival friend Debra shows off her spectaular roasted red pepper platter (or what's left of it) at dinner following the concert. Buon appetito!
Friday, June 18, 2010
Brott’s 2010 NAO: One heck of a band
Brilliant 20 year old Djokic masters Elgar Cello Concerto
By Hugh Fraser
Special to brottmusic.com
Burlington -Edward Elgar was nothing if not a English Victorian gentleman. After all he arose Sir Edward as soon as the royal sword of Edward VII dubbed him on each shoulder. His Land of Hope and Glory shores up The Sceptred Isle's fading past and even more fading future as it is leather-lunged into the English mist at every Promenade Concert. And yet at least half his soul and its musical essence was German.
Mendlessohn, Schumann (particularly) but even Brahms and Wagner - enemies to each other but both colleagues as far as Elgar was concerned - were his musical brothers more than any Englishman.
What would happen to this consummate composer's heart and soul when Queen Victoria's grandchildren took their respective subjects by the scruff of their innocent necks and flung them at each others throats in a bloodbath so appalling it was completely unimaginable until it actually happened?
All you need to do is listen to Elgar's Cello Concerto to find out.
Begun in the summer of 1918 as the last drops of blood from the Great War were wrung out onto Flanders' fields it is bewildered, heartbroken agony recited in the language of music.
It was the major work and finale of the first concert of the Boris Brott Music Festival of 2010 and took place last Wednesday evening in St. Christopher's Anglican Church, Burlington.
Where the brilliant young cellist Denise Djokic - she is 20 years old for heaven's sake - found the maturity to so stunningly render this masterpiece, I'll never know. But she unwound the long downward spiraling laments with such tenderness and understanding and soared to the despairing heavens for answers that never came with such utter conviction that it was soon apparent that we were in the presence of someone who understood instinctively what every note of the music meant.
Is there hope in this music? No. There is bravery, even valor but the music is too truthful to give false hope and Djokic too masterful to mispeak. Is it beautiful? Yes. Sublimely so. The man who gave the cello one of its top 10 hits, the Nimrod Variation from the Enigma, can ravish us even as everything he believed in and lived for lies torn to bloody shreds on the battlefield.
Anxiety about technical questions simply faded away as irrelevant.
Djokic was flawless as the music poured out of her and as Brott wrapped this truly magnificent edition of his National Academy Orchestra about her seemingly fragile shoulders.
The piece that should, by concert convention, have ended the evening, Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 in C major ended the first half instead.
Brott was quite right to flout convention and flip the order as it would have made a jarring follower to the Elgar.
Being Beethoven's First Symphony, it naturally shows the most influence of his teacher Old Pappa Haydn. And even though it floats at times with the elegant grace of a courtly dance, you know from the first 12 bars Beethoven is never going to just ram out symphonies like Haydn, who scattered 108 of the things about the place.
Even in this maiden voyage it is plain it just isn't that easy for Beethoven, who crawled, clawed and struggled his way to just nine. Music for him had to be more than just music. It had to mean more, be more, signify more
What this performance really proved was that this year's National Academy Orchestra is one heck of a band. Forget clean, crisp, clear and capable, that's just the beginning, although it was enough to take the breath away at times. They are - in an astonishingly short time - just two rehearsals - becoming a very musical instrument and Brott is revelling in it.
Revelling in his brilliant young musicians, revelling in the gorgeous music and revelling in his own mastery of the whole situation. It is lovely to see and beautiful to listen to. And it is, (this must be kept between us as our little secret lest it spoil the dignity and decorum of the "classical concert") so much darned FUN.
The clean, crisp, clear and capable also just scratches the surface with apprentice conductor Samuel Tak-Ho Tam. He set the mature, dark, profoundly passionate mature Beethoven amongst us with the concert's opening work the Leonore Overture No. 3 with complete understanding and profound musicality. In fact, I think everyone on stage that night knew what every note of the music meant. How often does that happen?
By Hugh Fraser
Special to brottmusic.com
Burlington -Edward Elgar was nothing if not a English Victorian gentleman. After all he arose Sir Edward as soon as the royal sword of Edward VII dubbed him on each shoulder. His Land of Hope and Glory shores up The Sceptred Isle's fading past and even more fading future as it is leather-lunged into the English mist at every Promenade Concert. And yet at least half his soul and its musical essence was German.
Mendlessohn, Schumann (particularly) but even Brahms and Wagner - enemies to each other but both colleagues as far as Elgar was concerned - were his musical brothers more than any Englishman.
What would happen to this consummate composer's heart and soul when Queen Victoria's grandchildren took their respective subjects by the scruff of their innocent necks and flung them at each others throats in a bloodbath so appalling it was completely unimaginable until it actually happened?
All you need to do is listen to Elgar's Cello Concerto to find out.
Begun in the summer of 1918 as the last drops of blood from the Great War were wrung out onto Flanders' fields it is bewildered, heartbroken agony recited in the language of music.
It was the major work and finale of the first concert of the Boris Brott Music Festival of 2010 and took place last Wednesday evening in St. Christopher's Anglican Church, Burlington.
Where the brilliant young cellist Denise Djokic - she is 20 years old for heaven's sake - found the maturity to so stunningly render this masterpiece, I'll never know. But she unwound the long downward spiraling laments with such tenderness and understanding and soared to the despairing heavens for answers that never came with such utter conviction that it was soon apparent that we were in the presence of someone who understood instinctively what every note of the music meant.
Is there hope in this music? No. There is bravery, even valor but the music is too truthful to give false hope and Djokic too masterful to mispeak. Is it beautiful? Yes. Sublimely so. The man who gave the cello one of its top 10 hits, the Nimrod Variation from the Enigma, can ravish us even as everything he believed in and lived for lies torn to bloody shreds on the battlefield.
Anxiety about technical questions simply faded away as irrelevant.
Djokic was flawless as the music poured out of her and as Brott wrapped this truly magnificent edition of his National Academy Orchestra about her seemingly fragile shoulders.
The piece that should, by concert convention, have ended the evening, Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 in C major ended the first half instead.
Brott was quite right to flout convention and flip the order as it would have made a jarring follower to the Elgar.
Being Beethoven's First Symphony, it naturally shows the most influence of his teacher Old Pappa Haydn. And even though it floats at times with the elegant grace of a courtly dance, you know from the first 12 bars Beethoven is never going to just ram out symphonies like Haydn, who scattered 108 of the things about the place.
Even in this maiden voyage it is plain it just isn't that easy for Beethoven, who crawled, clawed and struggled his way to just nine. Music for him had to be more than just music. It had to mean more, be more, signify more
What this performance really proved was that this year's National Academy Orchestra is one heck of a band. Forget clean, crisp, clear and capable, that's just the beginning, although it was enough to take the breath away at times. They are - in an astonishingly short time - just two rehearsals - becoming a very musical instrument and Brott is revelling in it.
Revelling in his brilliant young musicians, revelling in the gorgeous music and revelling in his own mastery of the whole situation. It is lovely to see and beautiful to listen to. And it is, (this must be kept between us as our little secret lest it spoil the dignity and decorum of the "classical concert") so much darned FUN.
The clean, crisp, clear and capable also just scratches the surface with apprentice conductor Samuel Tak-Ho Tam. He set the mature, dark, profoundly passionate mature Beethoven amongst us with the concert's opening work the Leonore Overture No. 3 with complete understanding and profound musicality. In fact, I think everyone on stage that night knew what every note of the music meant. How often does that happen?
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Denise Djokic Plays Elgar: Preliminary pics
Boris Brott & Denise Djokic backstage at St. Christopher's June 16
Denise played the Elgar Concerto beautiffuly and the audience adored her
Denninger's delicious nibblies were the highlight of the intermission!
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Leonard Turnevicius: Life and death and music
June 10, 2010
Life and death and music
by Leonard Turnevicius
Special to the Hamilton Spectator
Who: Denise Djokic
What: Elgar Cello Concerto
With: Boris Brott and the National Academy Orchestra
When: Wednesday, June 16 at 7:30 p.m.
Where: St. Christopher's Anglican, 662 Guelph Line, Burlington
Cost: $30, senior $25, student $10
Call: 905-525-7664, ext. 16
FINIS R.I.P.
That's the kind of thing you'd expect to find on a tombstone in some ghost town graveyard.
But that's what Sir Edward Elgar jotted down against the opus number of his Cello Concerto on a works list he made toward the end of his life.
Composed in 1919, the Cello Concerto was Elgar's opus 85. Then 62 years old, Elgar would go on to live for another 14 years during which, however, he published little of real consequence. Some orchestral transcriptions of Bach, Handel and Chopin, a few choral works. Some theatre and brass band music, an aborted Third Symphony. With the Cello Concerto, Elgar knew full well that he'd reached the crest in his creative road.
Can something from that long and creative road be found in the Cello Concerto? At its premiere, Ernest Newman, music critic for London's The Observer perceptively wrote of the concerto as "the realization in tone of a fine spirit's lifelong wistful brooding upon the loveliness of earth."
The work opens brashly with the solo cello voicing a recitative that uncoils ever so softly into a gentle, unobtrusive tune taken up by the viola section. It's a harbinger of things to come in the concerto, and taken metaphorically, also in life.
"A man's attitude to Life" is how Elgar once described the concerto. But don't get the idea that this work is a downer. Nor does it spin its wheels in a rut. The opening movement is latched onto a second movement that frequently changes gears from slow to fast, and contains nervous musical material that distantly echoes his Introduction and Allegro from 1905. A brief, 60 bar Adagio serves as a lament prior to the final movement, which juxtaposes the robust with the contemplative, before ending rather abruptly.
On Wednesday, June 16, at 7:30 p.m. in St. Christopher's Anglican Church in Burlington, the Brott Music Festival opens its 2010 summer season with the Elgar Cello Concerto, Denise Djokic as soloist, accompanied by Boris Brott and his 45-member National Academy Orchestra. The Halifax- born, Boston-based Djokic will perform on her 1901 Romeo Antoniazzi cello.
Though unaware of Elgar's FINIS R.I.P. notation, Djokic is nonetheless well acquainted with the concerto's mood swings and inner workings, having taken its pulse numerous times since her teens.
"I feel like it comes full circle from a very sort of lamenting, very kind of sombre first movement to a very kind of joyful, hopeful second movement, then almost yearning, reminiscing third movement, very romantic, and then almost fatalistic last movement, " said Djokic over the phone from Halifax. "It's sort of a very dark ending, but there are moments of light that show themselves now and then. I guess you could say it's sort of like a lifetime, this piece, going over the course of a lifetime, or maybe somebody's experience."
Elgar's Cello Concerto will be experienced along with Beethoven's Leonore Overture no. 3 and Symphony no. 1 in C Major, which complete the bill. Tickets are $30, senior $25, student $10. Call 905-525-7664, ext. 16.
****
Sunday at 3 p.m., Symphony Hamilton-Symphony on the Bay performs in St. Matthew's Anglican, 126 Plains Rd. E., Burlington. Sabatino Vacca and Arpad Josephson are the soloists in Mendelssohn's Concerto for Violin, Piano and Strings, while special guest Valerie Tryon performs Chopin's Andante spianato et Grand polonaise. Also works by Caplet and Mozart. Advance tickets: $25, student/senior $12, child $5. At the door: $28, senior/student $15, child $5. Call 905-526-6690.
Sunday at 7:30 p.m., Jack Mendelsohn's chamberWORKS! holds its Grand Finale concert in the Lincoln Alexander Centre, 150 King St. E., with works by Mozart, Prokofiev and Farrenc. Tickets are $30, $25, senior $25, $20, student $10. Call 905-308-3446.
Leonard Turnevicius writes on classical music for The Spectator
Life and death and music
by Leonard Turnevicius
Special to the Hamilton Spectator
Who: Denise Djokic
What: Elgar Cello Concerto
With: Boris Brott and the National Academy Orchestra
When: Wednesday, June 16 at 7:30 p.m.
Where: St. Christopher's Anglican, 662 Guelph Line, Burlington
Cost: $30, senior $25, student $10
Call: 905-525-7664, ext. 16
FINIS R.I.P.
That's the kind of thing you'd expect to find on a tombstone in some ghost town graveyard.
But that's what Sir Edward Elgar jotted down against the opus number of his Cello Concerto on a works list he made toward the end of his life.
Composed in 1919, the Cello Concerto was Elgar's opus 85. Then 62 years old, Elgar would go on to live for another 14 years during which, however, he published little of real consequence. Some orchestral transcriptions of Bach, Handel and Chopin, a few choral works. Some theatre and brass band music, an aborted Third Symphony. With the Cello Concerto, Elgar knew full well that he'd reached the crest in his creative road.
Can something from that long and creative road be found in the Cello Concerto? At its premiere, Ernest Newman, music critic for London's The Observer perceptively wrote of the concerto as "the realization in tone of a fine spirit's lifelong wistful brooding upon the loveliness of earth."
The work opens brashly with the solo cello voicing a recitative that uncoils ever so softly into a gentle, unobtrusive tune taken up by the viola section. It's a harbinger of things to come in the concerto, and taken metaphorically, also in life.
"A man's attitude to Life" is how Elgar once described the concerto. But don't get the idea that this work is a downer. Nor does it spin its wheels in a rut. The opening movement is latched onto a second movement that frequently changes gears from slow to fast, and contains nervous musical material that distantly echoes his Introduction and Allegro from 1905. A brief, 60 bar Adagio serves as a lament prior to the final movement, which juxtaposes the robust with the contemplative, before ending rather abruptly.
On Wednesday, June 16, at 7:30 p.m. in St. Christopher's Anglican Church in Burlington, the Brott Music Festival opens its 2010 summer season with the Elgar Cello Concerto, Denise Djokic as soloist, accompanied by Boris Brott and his 45-member National Academy Orchestra. The Halifax- born, Boston-based Djokic will perform on her 1901 Romeo Antoniazzi cello.
Though unaware of Elgar's FINIS R.I.P. notation, Djokic is nonetheless well acquainted with the concerto's mood swings and inner workings, having taken its pulse numerous times since her teens.
"I feel like it comes full circle from a very sort of lamenting, very kind of sombre first movement to a very kind of joyful, hopeful second movement, then almost yearning, reminiscing third movement, very romantic, and then almost fatalistic last movement, " said Djokic over the phone from Halifax. "It's sort of a very dark ending, but there are moments of light that show themselves now and then. I guess you could say it's sort of like a lifetime, this piece, going over the course of a lifetime, or maybe somebody's experience."
Elgar's Cello Concerto will be experienced along with Beethoven's Leonore Overture no. 3 and Symphony no. 1 in C Major, which complete the bill. Tickets are $30, senior $25, student $10. Call 905-525-7664, ext. 16.
****
Sunday at 3 p.m., Symphony Hamilton-Symphony on the Bay performs in St. Matthew's Anglican, 126 Plains Rd. E., Burlington. Sabatino Vacca and Arpad Josephson are the soloists in Mendelssohn's Concerto for Violin, Piano and Strings, while special guest Valerie Tryon performs Chopin's Andante spianato et Grand polonaise. Also works by Caplet and Mozart. Advance tickets: $25, student/senior $12, child $5. At the door: $28, senior/student $15, child $5. Call 905-526-6690.
Sunday at 7:30 p.m., Jack Mendelsohn's chamberWORKS! holds its Grand Finale concert in the Lincoln Alexander Centre, 150 King St. E., with works by Mozart, Prokofiev and Farrenc. Tickets are $30, $25, senior $25, $20, student $10. Call 905-308-3446.
Leonard Turnevicius writes on classical music for The Spectator
Monday, June 7, 2010
2010 Brott Music Festival & Artword Artbar Café presents
FREE CONCERT! This Wed. June 9!
Wednesday June 9 at 7:30 pm -- Get a sneak peak at the 2010 edition of Boris Brott’s National Academy Orchestra. As part of Artword Artbar’s Classical Cafe series — four special chamber concerts with players from this season’s National Academy Orchestra chamber groups.
This performance takes place at the intimate and beautifully refurbished Artword Artbar, 15 Colbourne Street in Hamilton (corner of James St. N.), for more information visit www.artword.net. There is a light menu, coffee, tea and a licensed bar available.
L- Caroline Peach (NAO Bass '10)
Each concert will be a mix two or three of the National Academy Orchestra chamber groups. NAO Orchestra Manager Megan Jones says, “We have six groups in total, one oboe quintet, a piano quartet, a string quartet, a wood wind quintet, a brass quintet and a trio. We will also be adding a flute quintet and a really cool percussion and flute piece somewhere along the way.”
For more information, please don’t hesitate to call our Festival offices at 905.525.7664.
FREE CONCERT! This Wed. June 9!
Wednesday June 9 at 7:30 pm -- Get a sneak peak at the 2010 edition of Boris Brott’s National Academy Orchestra. As part of Artword Artbar’s Classical Cafe series — four special chamber concerts with players from this season’s National Academy Orchestra chamber groups.
This performance takes place at the intimate and beautifully refurbished Artword Artbar, 15 Colbourne Street in Hamilton (corner of James St. N.), for more information visit www.artword.net. There is a light menu, coffee, tea and a licensed bar available.
L- Caroline Peach (NAO Bass '10)
Each concert will be a mix two or three of the National Academy Orchestra chamber groups. NAO Orchestra Manager Megan Jones says, “We have six groups in total, one oboe quintet, a piano quartet, a string quartet, a wood wind quintet, a brass quintet and a trio. We will also be adding a flute quintet and a really cool percussion and flute piece somewhere along the way.”
For more information, please don’t hesitate to call our Festival offices at 905.525.7664.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
2010 Brott Music Festival Chamber Series Kicks Off
Here's a rousing performance from last Sunday May 30's debut of the 2010 National Academy Orchestra Chamber Players at the ArtWord ArtBar cafe on Colborne St. in Hamilton (off James St. North) Catch the NAO Chamber Players again on Wednesday June 2 at 8 pm and Sunday June 6 at 2 pm. Tickets are $10 and proceeds go the orchestra.
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