So, too, has a batch of 20-somethings from across Canada with their instruments.
Yes, these are the musician-apprentices of Boris Brott's National Academy Orchestra. And for the next three months they'll be providing the area with the sounds of summer.
This Saturday at St. Christopher's Anglican Church, Burlington, Brott kicks off the 24th edition of his Summer Music Festival with the first of four concerts designed as a salute to Beethoven. On the program, “da-da-da-daaah,” Beethoven's Fifth.
The remaining three concerts will see a string of guest conductors mount the podium as Brott heads off to the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, Italy, for rehearsals of Puccini's Madama Butterfly with five performances scheduled for the beginning of July.
So, on June 18, Jamie Sommerville, the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra's music director, conducts the NAO in Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. On June 25, Martin MacDonald, resident conductor at Symphony Nova Scotia, accompanies Laurence Kayaleh in Beethoven's Violin Concerto. The Beethoven minifest closes on June 30 with pianist Valerie Tryon in the Emperor Concerto (she played this work with the NAO in 2007) accompanied by conductor Alain Trudel.
But audiences do not live by Beethoven alone. This Saturday's bill will feature Italian clarinetist Giampiero Sobrino in Carl Maria von Weber's First Concerto.
Von Weber, you're saying with furrowed brow?
Now here's a composer, who, in spite of the popularity of his opera Der Freischuetz (The Marksman) in German-speaking lands, is rarely heard in these parts. For modern-day concert programmers and audiences, von Weber seems to have been caught, or rather placed in some kind of vortex between Mozart (he was actually a cousin of Mozart's wife, Constanze) and Beethoven.
Well, no such vortex exists for licorice stick lovers. Any clarinetist worth his or her weight in Arundo donax will have the two von Weber Concertos and the Concertino firmly tucked in a back pocket. Ditto for Sobrino's other piece, the Adagio for Clarinet and Strings by Heinrich Baermann, incidentally for whom von Weber composed most of his clarinet works.
Continuing with the “non in Beethoven solo vivet” theme, next week Sommerville will also be bringing along his axe to solo in Richard Strauss's First Horn Concerto under the baton of current NAO apprentice conductor Philippe Ménard. Similarly, MacDonald and Trudel will offer readings of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony and Brahms's Second Symphony, respectively.
Later on, the festival will see the return of pianists Jan Lisiecki (July 14), and Sara Davis Buechner (July 27) plus violinists Susanne Hou (July 23) and Lara St. John (August 11). To help wrap up the Royal Canadian College of Organists' six day Hamilton Organ Festival, the Brottfest will have organist Ken Cowan pull out all the stops in Saint-Saëns's Third Symphony among other works (July 21).
This summer's festival, according to Brott, “is leaning toward vocal music,” and not just because the final concert (August 18) features Orff's Carmina Burana. Ermanno Mauro headlines the Opera Ovations concert (July 7).
Bizet's Carmen (August 6), with Lauren Segal as the smouldering gypsy, receives a semi-staging directed by Giandomenico Vaccari of the Teatro Petruzzelli. Vaccari will also chat (Aug. 5) about his role in rebuilding the Petruzzelli after it was destroyed by an arsonist. Sì, one more Italian opera house that went up in flames. Misterioso, no?
No doubt the summer will be really heating up, so stayed tuned to these pages for most of the lowdown on the festival.
Leonard Turnevicius writes on classical music for The Spectator.
What: Brott Summer Music Festival
With: Giampiero Sobrino and the National Academy Orchestra
When: Saturday, June 11 at 7:30 p.m.
Where: St. Christopher's Anglican Church, 662 Guelph Line, Burlington
Cost: $32, seniors $27, students $10 (plus HST); or all four Burlington concerts at 15 per cent discount; additional $5 for a reserved section seat
Call: 905-525-7664
Sunday at 3 p.m., vocalist Tiffany Ormerud, trumpeter Mike Malone, saxophonist Jim Gay, pianist Rick Gillespie, guitarist Dan Willer, bassist Jon Stemmler, and drummer Adam Fielding jam on jazz classics by Porter, Ellington, and others at Church of the Ascension, 64 Forest Ave. Tickets $20, students/seniors $15. Call 905-527-3505.
At 7:30 p.m., Jack Mendelsohn's chamberWORKS! ensemble plays the Lincoln Alexander Centre, 150 King St. E., one last time before moving to The Studio at Hamilton Place next season. On the bill, Schubert's Trio op. 99 with Mendelsohn on cello, Bernadene Blaha on piano, and Mark Skazinetsky on violin, plus Dohnanyi's Sextet with the above lineup augmented by Chris Gongos on French horn, Stephen Pierre on clarinet, and Chau Luk on viola. Tickets: $33, $29, seniors $27.50, $23.50, students $12, $10. Call 289-260-9165.