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

Scott Yoo, conductor
Liu Fang, pipa; Valdine Anderson, soprano
Karl Stobbe, violin; Yuri Hooker, cello
Fubuki Daiko

 

Donald SUR (1935-1999)
Berceuse, for violin and piano (arr. for strings)

Mr. Stobbe

CHAN Ka Nin (b. 1949)
Soulmate, for cello & strings

Mr. Hooker

TAN Dun (b. 1957)
Concerto for pipa and strings (1999)

1. Andante molto
2. Allegro
3. Adagio
4. Allegro vivace

Miss Liu Fang

Intermission
Refreshments are available upstairs in the concert hall.

Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART (1756-1791)
Violin concerto, no. 5, in a (k219)
— Rondeau (Tempo di menuetto)

Mr. Yoo

Alexander GLAZUNOV (1865-1936)
Suite, in c major, op. 35, for strings
— Movement Orientale

Earl KIM (1920-1998)
Illuminations, for soprano, strings and harp
— orch. by Anthony Brandt

Miss Anderson

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 Two and 8 pm on Radio One.

Concert sponsor / BMO Bank of Montreal
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

 

Scott Yoo

Scott Yoo is the Music Director of the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble he founded in 1994. He has conducted the orchestra in its subscription series in Boston and Troy, NY, and on tour. In 2004, he was appointed Music Director and Principal Conductor of the 35-year old San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, which presents over 30 orchestral, choral and chamber music concerts and events each year on California’s Central Coast.

This season, Mr. Yoo makes his first appearances with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Colorado, Nashville, Omaha and Phoenix Symphonies, the New World Symphony, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and the Estonian National Orchestra. This summer, he made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony. Previously, Mr. Yoo has conducted the Dallas, Utah, Oregon, Honolulu, Alabama, Toledo and Kansas City Symphonies. He has also served as Associate Conductor of the Dallas Symphony and Cover Conductor for the Boston Symphony. He has served as the Conductor of the Colorado College Summer Music Festival since 2002.

An exponent of new music, Mr. Yoo has introduced a newly-commissioned work on each of Metamorphosen’s subscription concerts. In the last nine seasons, Mr. Yoo and the orchestra have premiered 47 works by 22 composers. CD releases with Metamorphosen include a disc of vocal works of Earl Kim with sopranos Benita Valente and Karol Bennett for New World Records, named a 2001 ‘Critics Choice’ by the New York Times. Scott Yoo and Metamorphosen also recorded three discs for Archetype Records, including the Serenades of Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and Grieg; the Eighth and Eleventh Sinfonias of Mendelssohn; and premiere recordings of John Harbison’s chamber orchestra works with soprano Dawn Upshaw, nominated for a 1999 National Public Radio Performance Today Award. In May 2004, Mr. Yoo recorded the complete orchestral works of Earl Kim with the National Orchestra of Ireland for Naxos.

As Music Director of the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, Mr. Yoo is a frequent chamber music performer with San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival musicians and guest artists. He has also made guest appearances with chamber music festivals throughout the United States, including both the Boston and Lincoln Center chamber music societies, the Las Vegas and New Hampshire music festivals and Strings in the Mountains. As a violinist, he recently recorded Patrick Zimmerli’s Piano trios 1 and 2 with cellist Michael Mermagen and pianist John Novacek for Arabesque Records.

Mr. Yoo began his musical studies at the age of three and performed the Mendelssohn Violin concerto with the Boston Symphony at age twelve. After winning first prize in the 1988 Josef Gingold International Violin Competition, he won the 1989 Young Concert Artists International Auditions. He has studied violin with Roman Totenberg, Albert Markov, Paul Kantor and Dorothy DeLay, and conducting with Michael Gilbert and Michael Tilson-Thomas. In 1993 Mr. Yoo graduated with honours and a B.A. in Physics from Harvard University.

We are pleased to welcome Scott to the podium for the second consecutive season!

Liu Fang

Montreal resident Liu Fang has achieved an international reputation for her masterful and deeply spiritual pipa playing. Born in 1974 in China, she began studying the pipa, a four-stringed instrument that dates from the 2nd century, at the age of six and gave her first public performance as a pipa soloist when she was nine. In 1985, she played for Queen Elizabeth during Her Majesty’s visit to China. Liu Fang graduated from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, where she also studied the guzheng, a Chinese zither. Since moving to Canada in 1996, Liu Fang has built a remarkable artistic profile, captivating audiences and critics alike with the richness and grace of her playing as well as her wide-ranging repertoire.

In the course of numerous solo recitals, concerto performances and concerts at festivals throughout Canada, the US, Europe and South America, Liu Fang has premiered new compositions by several celebrated Canadian composers; recently she appeared in the spectacular world premier of R. Murray Schafer’s musical drama The Palace of the Cinnabar Phoenix, playing outstanding solos on both the pipa and the guzheng. She has also collaborated with traditional master musicians from India, Japan, Syria and Vietnam and recently performed with the renowned Nouvelle Ensemble Moderne and SMCQ in Montreal, the Alcan string quartet in Quebec, and the Quartetto Paul Klee Venezia in Italy.

Liu Fang has made many national and international radio recordings and television appearances, given performances recorded for films, and released five CDs. She was invited as one of the featured artists by BBC World Service for a concert in 2003 dedicated to World AIDS Day.

In the Canada Council’s words, on awarding her the Future Generations Millennium Prize: “Liu Fang’s mastery of the pipa and the guzheng has established her international reputation as a highly talented young interpreter of traditional Chinese music. She … combine(s) her knowledge and practice of eastern traditions with western classical music, contemporary music and improvisation … creating new musical forms….”

Valdine Anderson

Winnipeg-born soprano Valdine Anderson is renowned throughout the world for the wide range of her operatic and concert repertoire from the baroque to the contemporary. In 1995, she made her English National Opera debut in Gavin Bryars’s Dr. Ox’s Experiment and in 2000 she appeared in concert performances of Elliott Carter’s opera What Next? At the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, and Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. Her regular concert appearances in the UK have included a performance of Pli selon Pli by Pierre Boulez with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the Edinburgh Festival in 1999 and Mahler’s Symphony no. 4 with the same orchestra, which has now been released on CD by BBC Worldwide. In 2002, Valdine gave a highly successful recital debut at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Valdine has worked with such composers as Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Gavin Bryars, and has collaborated with conductors Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Edo de Waart and David Zinman. In 2003, she toured the US with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle. In Canada, she has appeared with Edmonton Opera, Manitoba Opera and Vancouver opera where roles have included Blonde (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Micaela (Carmen) and Papagena (The Magic Flute).

Valdine Anderson’s many recordings include Gerald Finzi: Meditation, with Simon Streatfeild and the MCO (CBC Records), Maxwell-Davies’ Job (Collins), Freedman’s Spirit Song, Adès’ Five Eliot Landscapes (EMI), Lutoslawski’s Chantefleurs et Chantefables (BIS), Bryars’ Adnan’s Songbook, Torke’s Book of Proverbs (Decca) and a CD of the BBC Proms performance of Szymanowski’s Songs of a Fairy Princess (BBC Music), Adès Powder Her Face (EMI), which was nominated for Grammy Award and, most recently, Carter’s What Next? (ECM). Future releases include a CD of Webern Songs with the Nieuw Ensemble.

Fubuki Daiko

Based in Winnipeg, Fubuki Daiko (Blizzard Drums) has performed at concert halls, festivals, rodeos, and bar mitzvahs across North America. The core members received their formative training from Grandmaster Seiichi Tanaka, founder of the San Francisco Taiko Dojo. The group’s debut CD, Fubuki, was voted ‘Outstanding Instrumental Recording’ at the 2001 Prairie Music Awards. A follow-up album, Zanshin, was released in April, 2004.

Koshiyama is the only Canadian formally trained in the art of the Japanese Lion Dance by world-renowned lion dancer, Nosuke Akiyama. His back appeared in Philip Kaufman’s feature film Rising Sun and he performed on the film’s soundtrack. His back also appeared in the TV movie, Category 6: Day of Destruction, with Brian Dennehy. Naomi Guilbert’s resemblance to Nancy McKeon, on the other hand, resulted in her being left on the cutting room floor of the same movie. Married since the group’s inception 10 years ago, Hiroshi and Naomi have been in constant contact touring, managing and rehearsing. Not once during that time have they considered killing each other.

Robertson also has over ten years of taiko experience. He enjoys jumping around like a monkey, yelling loudly, hitting things with big sticks and then lying inert for long periods of time afterwards. He feels his Scottish ancestors would approve.

Berceuse, for violin
and piano (arr. for strings)
Donald Sur

Donald Sur was born in Honolulu of Korean parents and eventually settled in Boston. As a child he studied the ukulele and mandolin; later he took instruction in other stringed instruments (violin, viola & bass).

Sur attended UCLA, UC Berkeley and Princeton, studying with Colin McPhee, Andrew Imbrie, Roger Sessions and Earl Kim. During his career he received numerous commissions in the US and abroad, including the American National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and the governments of the Netherlands and Korea.

The following is a program note Sur wrote for a performance of Berceuse: “Berceuse, dedicated to Scott Yoo, is inspired by Walt Whitman’s work, Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking. In Berceuse, I highlight the poignantly sad aspect of the poem, in which a male bird is left waiting for the return of its mate. This sentimental tone is a departure from most of Whitman’s works; he is known usually for having more optimistic tones in his work. Stylistically, I have attempted to capture the painful anticipation and longing felt by the bird in this new piece.”

Soulmate, for cello and strings
Chan Ka Nin

Soulmate was originally the second movement of a piece for string orchestra, Poetry on Ice, in which the strings played the theme in unison. The composer then transcribed the piece for cello solo for the Canadian cellist Shauna Rolston. Then Rolston asked Chan Ka Nin to re-arrange this piece for cello and string orchestra, after which Soulmate took on a new dimension. It went from an intimate monologue to a musical dialogue between a passionate soloist and sympathetic strings.

Chan Ka Nin was born in Hong Kong and moved to Vancouver in 1965. He studied composition with composer Jean Coulthard at the University of British Columbia. On graduation Chan went on to study with Bernard Heiden at Indiana University where he obtained his Masters and Doctoral degrees in music. Since 1982 he has been teaching theory and composition at the University of Toronto.

His numerous awards include twice winner of Juno Awards, the Jean Chalmers Award and winner of the Béla Bartók International Composer’s competition.

Concerto for pipa and strings (1999)
Tan Dun

Tan Dun is doubtless the best known Chinese composer in the West. His popularity seems to owe as much to his participation in political and media-based projects as to his remarkable talent, an example being his Symphony 1997, written for the transfer of power from Hong Kong to China.

Tan Dun’s works from the 1980s have fused with the spirit of a counter-culture. His compositions changed considerably in that decade. Besides fusing the old and the new, he developed a less complex style, which was to have a great influence on other Chinese composers.

Central to his body of work, Tan Dun has composed distinct series of works which reflect his individual concepts. Among them are the Orchestral Theatre Series, bringing his childhood memories of China and the shamanistic ritual into symphonic performances. Another aspect of his output is his Organic Music, consisting of musical works that incorporate elements from the natural world, such as the Water Concerto, for water, percussion and orchestra, and also the Paper Concerto, for paper instruments and orchestra. In addition there is the Concerto Multimedia, which includes a symbolic piece, The Map, Concerto for cello, video and orchestra, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, with the composer conducting.

Opera has played a significant role in Tan Dun’s creative output in the past decade: Marco Polo has had three different productions; Peony Pavilion (1998), on a text by Tang Xianzu, has had over 50 performances at major festivals in Vienna, Paris, London & Rome; Tea: A Mirror of the Soul (2002), and set to music of ceramic, stone and paper instruments, premiered in Japan and Holland and was produced at Lyons National Opera in 2004.

Based in New York, Tan Dun was born in Simao, China. He served as a rice-planter and performer of Peking Opera during the Cultural Revolution and later studied at Beijing’s Central Conservatory. He holds a doctoral degree in musical arts from Columbia University of New York. He has received numerous international awards and many of his compositions have been recorded, principally on Sony Classical and Deutsche Grammophon.

Violin concerto, no. 5, in A
(K219, final movement)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

All five of the authentic violin concertos date from between April and December 1775 when Mozart was 19 and held the position of Concertmaster of the Salzburg Court Orchestra.

The most striking feature of the last movement is the well-known ‘Turkish’ episode in A minor, for which Mozart borrowed material from his ballet Le gelosie del seraglio which he wrote for his opera Lucio Silla in 1772.

The first half of this episode has a strong Hungarian flavour of the kind only rarely in Mozart but often enough in Haydn.

Suite, in C major, op. 35
for strings (movement Orientale)
Alexander Glazunov

Glazunov was a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov but he was later influenced by Wagner and Liszt. He became director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1905. His compositions include nine symphonies. Glazunov left Russia in 1928 and eventually took up residence in Paris. His music is thought to be more cosmopolitan than nationalist in style. He became well known for his ballet scores, which included Raymonda (1896-97) and The Seasons (1899).
Glazunov’s early Suite was originally written for string quartet but is easily performed by a string orchestra with no losses involved. The Suite is in five movements but only one movement is programmed — the Orientale section.

Illuminations
for soprano, strings & harp
Earl Kim (orch. by Anthony Brandt)

Earl Kim was a noted composer and pianist and an important mentor to younger musicians. His output consisted primarily of spare but expressive vocal works: he was known especially for his compositions for music theatre and had a penchant for setting texts by Samuel Beckett.

Kim was born in California, the third son of immigrant Korean parents. He studied composition and theory with Arnold Schoenberg at UCLA, and with Ernest Bloch at the University of California. After studying for several years with Roger Sessions, he accepted a teaching post at Princeton, and in 1967 joined the faculty of music of Harvard, where he taught for 23 years until his retirement.

Illuminations, a setting of the aphoristic poetry of the French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, was his last work, finished, apparently, on the day of his death. The orchestration was completed by his pupil Anthony Brandt.

The choice of Rimbaud’s fragmentary verses is different from that of Benjamin Britten’s early masterpiece, Les Illuminations, which sets Rimbaud’s original texts in French. Illuminations as set by Kim is performed without breaks. The work was premiered by soprano Karol Bennett and the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra of Boston in February 2003.

 

 

MCO's 2007/08 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 Two 98.3, Golden West Radio & Shaw Cable. MCO's Chamber Chatter newsletter
is sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Heartstrings gala
sponsor: Mackenzie Financial Corporation.

© 2007 Manitoba Chamber Orchestra