Manitoba Chamber Orchestra
Karl Stobbe, Concertmaster
Westminster United Church
17 January 2006

Garry Walker, conductor
Daniel Bolshoy, guitar

 

Heitor VILLA-LOBOS (1887-1959)
Suite for strings

1. Timida (timid music)
2. Misteriosa (mysterious music)
3. Inquieta (restless music) (Air de ballet)

Manuel Maria PONCE (1882-1948)
Concierto del sur (concerto from the south)

1. Allegretto
2. Andante
3. Allegro moderato & festivo

Mr. Bolshoy

Intermission
Refreshments are available upstairs in the concert hall.

Astor PIAZZOLLA (1921-1992)
Sinfonietta for Chamber Orchestra

1. Dramatico, allegro marcato, in poco pesante
2. Sobrio. Andantino — Poco piu mosso — Tempo I
3. Jubiloso — Vivace

Aaron Jay KERNIS (b. 1960)
Concierto de Dance Hits

1. Double Echo
2. Slow Dance Ballad
3. Salsa Pasada

Mr. Bolshoy

This concert is co-presented by CBC Radio Two and is being recorded
for In Performance, Monday to Friday at 8 pm, Studio Sparks with host Eric Friesen,
Monday to Friday from 12 noon to 3 pm, Symphony Hall with host Katherine Duncan,
Sundays at 10 am, and On Stage with host Shelley Solmes, Sundays at 2 pm
on Radio Twoand 8 pm on Radio One.

Concert sponsor / Investors Group
Season sponsor / The Great-West Life Assurance Company
Print media sponsor / Winnipeg Free Press
Radio media sponsors / CBC Radio Two 98.3, CBC Radio One 990 and Golden West Radio
Electronic media sponsor / Shaw Cable

Garry Walker

Garry Walker holds positions of Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Music Director of the Liverpool Mozart Orchestra and Principal Conductor of Paragon Ensemble.

Born and educated in Edinburgh, Garry Walker took up the cello at the age of seven and became a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland. He was offered a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music but opted to take up a scholarship on the prestigious joint course at the Royal Northern College of Music and Manchester University. He graduated in 1995 with first class honours and now holds graduate and post-graduate diplomas from the RNCM as well as several prizes for chamber music and conducting.

The award of a Junior Fellowship in Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music in 1997 enabled him to conduct a wide repertoire from the baroque to contemporary, performing with many celebrated musicians. In November 1998 he conducted a highly acclaimed performance of Henze’s opera Pollicino which opened the ‘Henze at the RNCM’ Festival and conducted the RNCM Sinfonia at the Montepulciano Festival in Italy.

In May 1999 Garry Walker completed his Junior Fellowship in conducting, gaining the first distinction ever awarded by the RNCM for conducting. In July 1999 he won the sixth Leeds Conductor’s Competition.

October 1999 saw his notably successful London debut, replacing at very short notice an indisposed Daniele Gatti in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s opening concert of their season at the Barbican. He has since worked regularly with the orchestra.

In January 2000 he took part in a masterclass with Pierre Boulez and the London Symphony Orchestra as a result of which he was invited to take part in the Conducting Academy with Pierre Boulez at the Aix en Provence Festival in the summer of 2000.

In the UK Garry Walker has worked with leading orchestras including the Hallé, the London Sinfonietta, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and, most recently, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Chamber orchestras he has conducted include the Northern Sinfonia, Paragon Ensemble, Ensemble 10:10, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. In 2002 he made three appearances at the Edinburgh Festival conducting concerts with the Edinburgh Festival Ensemble, Paragon Ensemble and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and returned to the Festival in 2003 for concerts with Paragon Ensemble and a performance of Mahler’s Symphony no. 2 with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

In Germany he has conducted a tour with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie and a series of concerts with the Bochum Symphony Orchestra. He returned to Germany at the beginning of 2003 to make his debut with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.

Future engagements include concerts with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra.

An enthusiastic hill walker and climber, Garry Walker is often to be found scaling a Munro.

Daniel Bolshoy

Daniel Bolshoy is committed to bringing classical guitar to the attention of audiences everywhere. He is regularly praised for his friendly and informative spoken introductions, and progressive programming of solo and chamber music.

Mr. Bolshoy has performed for many prestigious festivals including the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, the Halifax Guitar Festival, the Indian River Music Festival and the Westben Arts Festival. He has toured under the auspices of Debut Atlantic and Musique Royale, and has performed for The Début Young Artists Concert Series in Montreal, Vancouver and the CBC/NAC Début series in Ottawa. Mr. Bolshoy’s recitals are frequently broadcast on CBC Radio, and he has also appeared in two documentary films for Bravo! TV’s The Classical Now as a soloist and as part of the Nesrallah/Bolshoy Duo.

Mr. Bolshoy is currently an associate instructor of classical guitar and a lecturer on guitar history and pedagogy at the School of Music at Indiana University. He studied with Garry Elliott and Stephen Rollins at Carleton University, and with Eli Kassner and Norbert Kraft at the University of Toronto. Mr. Bolshoy received a Master of Music degree from the University of Denver (magna cum laude) under the supervision of Ricardo Iznaola.

This season, Mr. Bolshoy will perform solo recital tours of central and western Canada, at the Glenn Gould Studio with the Borealis String Quartet, and at the National Art Gallery with members of the National Arts Centre Orchestra. The Nesrallah/Bolshoy Duo will perform in Vancouver, Calgary, Haliburton, Courtenay and Merritt (BC), and for Virtuosi Concerts in Winnipeg. Mr. Bolshoy recently made his concerto debut performing Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with the Toronto Philharmonia, and has been invited to reprise the work with orchestras in New Mexico and Canada.

Mr. Bolshoy has won international top prizes including the Canadian Music Competition, the Ben Steinberg Music Competition, the Music Teachers’ National Association Collegiate Artist Competition, The Portland International Guitar Competition, The Douglas Sholin Memorial Competition, and the Stevens Competition in Arizona, where he was awarded a concert guitar, custom built for him by the American luthier, Eric Sahlin.

Daniel Bolshoy has released two CD recordings: Resonance, a collection of solo works (Boldan Music), and España (CMS Classics) with mezzo-soprano Julie Nesrallah.

Suite for strings
Heitor Villa-Lobos

Villa-Lobos, known as the musical voice of Brazil, was blessed with seemingly inexhaustible invention. The outcome was a profusion of more than 2,000 works including 12 symphonies and five piano concertos and several operas as well as numerous orchestral suites, etc.

The Suite for strings, a work of 1912-13, is laid out for double quintet and was first performed (1915) under the title of ‘Characteristic Suite.’ An early work, it is somewhat luxuriant, attractive but not especially ‘Brazilian’ melodically.

The opening Timida movement is obsessed with a brief harmonic formula, striking on its first appearance but wearing a bit thin as the repetition of the formula mounts up. The ensuing Mysteriosa pays a discreet tribute to Richard Strauss, while the Air de ballet is an engaging waltz that shows that Villa-Lobos was a master of the light touch.

Concierto del Sur
(Concerto from the South)
Manuel Maria Ponce

Manuel Ponce met the great Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia in 1923. He responded quickly to Segovia’s request for compositions by providing a series of works which have eventually become part of the standard guitar repertoire, e.g., the composer’s Sonate mexicana.

In many ways he reached out to his own people at a popular level, including in his output many sentimental songs like Estrellita (1912), which became the best loved and the most widely sung art song in South America.

Although Ponce studied the mestigo folk music of Mexico, his style remained essentially romantic; his nationalism was nearly always constrained within the bounds of Romantic art. After 1925, having studied in Paris with Paul Dukas, he embraced impressionistic and neo-classical styles and concepts.

Ponce’s late style, in which the Concierto del Sur is written, combines light neo-classicism with popular Mexican ethos derived in the main from popular melody and rhythm.

Most of Ponce’s large output for guitar is dedicated to Segovia. The Concierto del Sur was premiered by Segovia in Montevideo in October 1942. Segovia apparently took to the work immediately, admiring the piquancy of Ponce’s harmonies. The delicate scoring (no brass) ensures a brilliance of texture. Similarly, the Latin melodic contribution of the orchestra is kept simple while the soloist enjoys a delicate tracery of an attractive idiomatic kind.

Sinfonietta for Chamber Orchestra
Astor Piazzolla

Since Piazzolla’s death in 1992 the popularity of his music has increased exponentially, and his works continue to appear on disc in different arrangements for a variety of instrumental forces.

This recognition of the special talent of one of the finest composers to have emerged from Latin America is well deserved, for Piazzolla’s “melodic and harmonic gifts have an expressive potency all their own.” Piazzolla is credited with the reinvention of the tango, the century-old dance form belonging to Spanish-speaking America in general and to his native Argentina in particular.

From the start of his career, Piazzolla’s development straddled both art-music and popular dance cultures. He studied composition with Alberto Ginastera, who introduced him to the music of Stravinsky and Bartók. He then won a French government scholarship and went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, taking with him a whole portfolio of worthy orchestral pieces including the ‘Sinfonietta.’

It was Boulanger who recognized that Piazzolla’s real gifts were elsewhere and ultimately suggested that he return home to discover what the tango could offer.

Concierto de Dance Hits (1999)
for guitar & string orchestra
Aaron Jay Kernis

Aaron Jay Kernis, one of the youngest composers ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, has become among the most esteemed musical figures of his generation. Each work of Kernis bears the unmistakable stamp of a vivid imagination and a distinctive voice forged out of the wide-ranging musical languages of the 1980s and 1990s.

His music is full of a rich poetic imagery, exuberance and a distinctive musical wit. Kernis’s music figures prominently on orchestral, chamber and recital programs in the USA and overseas.

His Concierto de Dance Hits is based in part on his earlier 100 Greatest Dance Hits and is very intriguing with tricky Latin-tinged syncopations in the outer movements framing a slow ballad of great beauty.

The Concierto has been described as “a sprightly and often beautiful chamber concerto for guitar and orchestra.”

 

 

Anne Manson / Music Director and Conductor

MCO's 2010/11 season is sponsored by The Great-West Life Assurance Company.
Support has been received from Media sponsors The Winnipeg Free Press, CBC Radio One 990,
CBC Radio 2 98.3, Espace musique 89,9 and Golden West Radio. Heartstrings gala sponsor:
Mann Financial Assurance Limited. Sponsor of open dress rehearsals: Canadian Bridge Federation.
Arts Accessibility Program: Sun Life Financial.

© 2010 Manitoba Chamber Orchestra