From the Spec: Kayaleh Makes Her Brott Debut

Kayaleh to make Brott debut

Laurence Kayaleh 2.jpg Laurence Kayaleh will be making her Brott Festival debut this Saturday in Burlington.

Michael Slobodian/Special to The Hamilton Spectator

Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Laurence Kayaleh was born with a violin in her hand.

After all, she is the daughter of Habib Kayaleh, the noted violin pedagogue who’s been running his elite Kayaleh Violin Academy in Crans-près-Céligny, near Geneva, Switzerland, since 1989, and with his pianist wife, Ingrid Hoogendorp, their Ecole supérieure de musique since 1973.

“He taught me everything,” said Kayaleh of her father over the phone from her Montréal pad.

Though her dad was her primary teacher, she also took master classes and played for the crème de la crème: Nathan Milstein, Igor Oistrakh, and Yehudi Menuhin among others. Not a bad upbringing.

Career wise, she’s played around the globe, giving concerts in her native Switzerland, Europe, the U.S., Latin America, the Far East, Russia, and Canada.

Kayaleh first came to Canada in 1999 to solo with the Montréal Symphony Orchestra under then-conductor Charles Dutoit. She’d been looking for a pied-à-terre in North America, and Montréal, with its Old World charm and French language, not to mention relative proximity to the U.S. (well, it’s closer to the Big Apple than Geneva is), fit her bill.

A Canadian citizen for four years now, she’s been on the faculty at the Université de Montréal for the past two years, counting a dozen students in her studio.

This Saturday, Kayaleh makes her Brott Festival début performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the National Academy Orchestra in St. Christopher’s Church, Burlington.

Scores of people have written cadenzas for this concerto’s three movements. However, none of them have the surname Beethoven. It seems that Beethoven either couldn’t have been bothered to write out the cadenzas, or more likely, simply left that to the improvisational skills of the soloist. So, at the concerto’s première in 1806, that challenge fell to Franz Clement, a violin virtuoso and sometime composer whose own violin concerto may well have been an influence on Beethoven’s essay.

Over the years, composers from Camille Saint-Saëns to Ferruccio Busoni to Alfred Schnittke have had a go at putting the cadenzas to paper. And then there are the cadenzas by violinists such as Joseph Joachim, Henryk Wieniawski, Eugène Ysaÿe, Carl Flesch, Joseph Silverstein, and most recently, Rachel Barton Pine.

As for Kayaleh, she’ll be doing Fritz Kreisler’s cadenzas, something she’s done whenever and wherever she’s performed the concerto.

“I think it’s the most concise cadenza,” stated Kayaleh. “It’s beautifully written, but at the same time it’s not long.”

For the past 18 years, Kayaleh’s hands have held a 1742 Petrus Guarnerius. She owns the violin, after it was purchased for her by a now deceased Swiss maecenae. Kayaleh fondly recalls the day she tried out this Venetian violin in Geneva’s Tonhalle.

“I saw the beauty of this instrument. I cannot describe it. It was something absolutely overwhelming,” said Kayaleh. “I took it in my hands and started to play a few notes. I knew that this was my violin.”

“This instrument is really part of me. It is a continuation of my body, of my soul,” said Kayaleh. “At the same time, it’s a tool I’m working with. It’s living with me actually all the time, my big love.”

The bill also includes Mendelssohn’s ‘Italian’ Symphony, Mercure’s Kaléidoscope, and Beethoven’s Creatures of Prometheus Overture.

Leonard Turnevicius writes on classical music for The Spectator

leonardturnevicius@gmail.com

Beethoven’s Violin Concerto

With: Laurence Kayaleh, Martin MacDonald and the National Academy Orchestra

When: Saturday, June 25 at 7:30 p.m.

Where: St. Christopher’s Anglican Church, 662 Guelph Line, Burlington

Cost: $32, senior $27, student $10 (plus HST); add $5 for a reserved section seat

Call: 905-525-7664

Coming up

The TD Toronto Jazz Festival celebrates its silver jubilee with performances across the city until July 3. Of note to classical fans is Jessye Norman’s concert in Koerner Hall, 273 Bloor St. W. on Tuesday, June 28 at 8 p.m.

Sommerville Conducts Beethoven's Seventh Symphony: An excerpt

Brott, of course, it's summer

 More than just warm weather has arrived in the city.

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.