Orchestra to celebrate its musicians

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This article was published 06/03/2019 (2713 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba Chamber Orchestra (MCO) celebrates its own when it presents its next cheekily titled concert, Tour de Force, on Tuesday, March 19, before taking the show on the road with two performances in Halifax and Fredericton, N.B., on March 22 and 23, respectively.

The program, led by Anne Manson, features two world premières as the latest instalment in the orchestra’s ongoing New Concerto Project, which has also included works by Winnipeg’s David Raphael Scott and Heidi Ouellette, as well as American composer Philip Glass’s third piano concerto presented last year.

First up is Juno Award-winning composer Vivian Fung’s Concerto for Two Violins and String Orchestra, showcasing MCO concertmaster Karl Stobbe and Okanagan Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Rachel Kristenson, who frequently moonlights as principal second violin with the MCO.

The duo will perform the Edmonton-born composer’s one-movement, 15-minute work inspired by the tightly interlocked rhythms of Balinese gamelan music. Fung, whose work is often infused with strong multicultural influences, is a former member and composer for critically acclaimed New York City-based group Gamelan Dharma Swara. She has competed with the traditional Indonesian percussion ensemble at the Bali Arts Festival in what she describes as a “battle of the gamelans.”

Other global travels for her art have taken her to Vietnam and Spain, as well as Cambodia, where, with her husband and three-year-old toddler, she conducted research for a new opera last month.

“There’s a concept in gamelan music where two instruments play complementary rhythms or melodies that form two halves of a whole,” Fung says over the telephone from California, where she teaches at Santa Clara University.

“But my new work also has a huge chorale at the end that pays homage to baroque music, including the violin concerti that were born in that era, with Bach being a prime example of that,” she says of her East-meets-West composition, which also marks her first double concerto.

The second première is Canadian film and dance composer Kevin Lau’s Writ in Water, inspired by the epitaph on English poet John Keats’s gravestone, reading: “Here Lies One whose Name was writ in Water.”

“To me, these words express despair, defiance, resignation and a strange kind of affirmation all at once,” the Toronto-based Lau reveals in his eloquent program notes. “Writ in Water’s music embodies these conflicting states of mind. Moments of tranquil lyricism collide with moments of anxiety and pain. Certain phrases appear once, only to fade, unresolved, like words written in water. Much of the music passes in a dream-like manner, attempting (and often failing) to find firm ground.”

The program also includes Mozart’s Symphony No. 29 in A Major, K. 201/186a as well as Haydn’s Symphony No. 45 in F-sharp Minor, a.k.a. the “Farewell” — with the denouement of Lau’s piece inspired by Papa’s famous finale, in which players gradually exit the stage one by one as a not-so-subtle reminder to the good-natured Austrian composer’s patron, Prince Esterházy, that summer vacation for the musicians was long overdue when he first penned the four-movement work in 1772.

The concert takes place at Westminster United Church on Tuesday, March 19, at 7:30 p.m. with a shorter matinee program presented at 1 p.m. For tickets or more information, visit themco.ca.

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A little further afield, albeit still celebrating local talent, I heard Winnipeg-based soprano Tracy Dahl reprise her role as Despina in the Canadian Opera Company’s recent production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, directed by Canadian filmmaker/writer Atom Egoyan. Now in her fourth decade performing in all the world’s great opera houses, from the Metropolitan to La Scala, Dahl’s artistry burns brighter than ever.

Beyond her sparkling coloratura, Dahl is also renowned for her impeccable comic timing — Carol Burnett being a long-revered heroine — with her character in the Wunderkind’s opera buffa morphing from the dutiful maid to wacky, magnet-wielding “doctor,” electrifying the Toronto crowd while eliciting open guffaws. Any opera company is lucky to have this Canadian treasure grace their stage; the fact that she is also a proud Winnipegger makes us proud in turn. Brava!

holly.harris@shaw.ca