Andrew Crust, Associate Conductor
Timothy Steeves, Violin Soloist
Jane Coop, Leader and Piano Soloist
Bach Concerto in D Minor for Violinand string orchestra, BWV 1052R
Kati Agócs Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra
Mozart Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 23 in A Major K. 488 * (arr.Jane Coop)
VSO Associate Concertmaster Timothy Steeves is the soloist in J.S. Bach’s Concerto for Violin in D Minor and a new Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra from Kati Agócs, whose music is described as “fluidity and austere beauty” by the Boston Globe. Vancouver’s own Jane Coop leads the VSO in a performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A on our stunning new Steinway Concert Grand piano.
Timothy Steeves, Violin Soloist
Canadian violinist Timothy Steeves has performed throughout North America and Europe as a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral musician, and advocate of contemporary music. He has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and the Salzburger Festspiele and his performances have been heard on BBC Radio, NPR, and Radio Canada among others. Timothy made his solo debut in 2004 with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and has since performed with orchestras in both Canada and the United States in repertoire ranging from baroque standards to world premieres.
Timothy is the Associate Concertmaster of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the founding violinist of the new music ensemble Latitude 49. In great demand as a recitalist and chamber musician, his collaborators have included Pierre Amoyal, Andrés Cárdenes, Steven Mackey, and Paul Schoenfeld. He has also toured both Canada and the United States in recital with pianist Jani Parsons and soprano Alexandra Smither.
Timothy is a recipient of the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award and a Laureate of the 2015 Canada Council Musical Instrument Bank Competition. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from Rice University where his research centered on the twenty-first century violin concerto literature. He previously attained both a Bachelor and Masters of Music from the University of Michigan and ARCT Performance Diplomas in both Violin and Piano Performance from the Royal Conservatory in Toronto. Timothy’s primary teachers include Edmond Agopian, David Halen, Cho-Liang Lin, and Nick Pulos.
Andrew Crust, conductor
Andrew Crust has developed a versatile international career as a conductor of orchestral, opera, ballet and pops programs. Currently serving as the Associate Conductor of the Vancouver Symphony in Canada, Andrew conducts a large number of subscription, pops, educational and contemporary concerts with the VSO each season. Andrew is the newly-appointed Music Director of the Lima Symphony Orchestra beginning in the 20/21, where he programs and conducts the Grand Classics, Pops and Educational series, featuring such soloists as Awadagin Pratt, Amit Peled and Katherine Jolly.
In the current and upcoming seasons Andrew will debut with the Arkansas and Vermont Symphonies as Music Director finalist, and with the San Diego Symphony and Calgary Philharmonic as a guest conductor. Other recent engagements include performances with the Winnipeg Symphony, Memphis Symphony, Hartford Symphony, Bozeman Symphony and l’Orchestre de la Francophonie in Québec.
Andrew is a 2020 winner of the Solti Foundation US Career Assistance Award. In 2017 he was awarded first prize at the Accademia Chigiana by Daniele Gatti, receiving a scholarship and an invitation to guest conduct the Orchestra di Sanremo in Italy. He was a semi-finalist for the Nestlé/Salzburg Festival’s Young Conductors Award competition, and was selected by members of the Vienna Philharmonic as a winner of the Ansbacher Fellowship, with full access to all rehearsals and performances of the Salzburg Festival.
Andrew is equally at ease in the pit, having conducted ballet with Ballet Memphis and the New Ballet Ensemble, and opera with Opera McGill, College Light Opera Company, Boulder Opera Company, and others. As a Pops conductor, Andrew has collaborated with such artists as Rufus Wainwright, Steven Page, Michael Bolton, Cirque de la Symphonie, and the United States Jazz Ambassadors. Andrew has also established himself as a conductor of films with orchestra.
Andrew served as Assistant Conductor of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra from 2017-2019 where he conducted around forty concerts each season. He stepped in last minute for a successful subscription performance featuring Bernstein’s Serenade with violinist Charles Yang. Andrew also served as Conductor of the Memphis Youth Symphony Program. As the Assistant Conductor of the Portland Symphony Orchestra in Maine from 2016-2018, he conducted a variety of concert series, helped coordinate the orchestra’s extensive educational programs, and helped lead a program for concertgoers under 40 called “Symphony and Spirits”.
Crust was the Assistant Conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of the USA (NYO-USA) in the summers of 2017 and 2018, assisting Michael Tilson Thomas on an Asian tour, as well as Giancarlo Guerrero, Marin Alsop and James Ross at Carnegie Hall and in a side-by-side performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has also served as Cover Conductor of the Kansas City Symphony, San Diego Symphony and Nashville Symphony, Assistant/Cover Conductor of the Boulder Philharmonic and Assistant Conductor of Opera McGill.
Abroad, he has led concerts with the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana in Italy, Hamburger Symphoniker at the Mendelssohn Festival in Germany, the Moravian Philharmonic in the Czech Republic and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Chile in Santiago.
As an arranger/orchestrator, Andrew is currently working with Schirmer to make orchestrations of a set of Florence Price’s art songs, has orchestrated works by Alma Mahler and Prokofiev, as well as many pops and educational selections.
Andrew is dedicated to exploring new ways of bringing the classical music experience into the 21st century through innovative programming and marketing, creating community-oriented and socially-sensitive concert experiences, and utilizing social media and unique venues. Andrew is a firm believer in meaningful music education, having produced and written a number of original educational programs with orchestras.
Jane Coop, leader & piano soloist
Pianist Jane Coop, one of Canada’s most prominent and distinguished artists, was born in Saint John, New Brunswick and grew up in Calgary, Alberta. For advanced studies her principal teachers were Anton Kuerti in Toronto and Leon Fleisher in Baltimore.
At the age of nineteen she won First Prize in the CBC’s national radio competition (the Young Performers Competition), and this, along with First Prize at the Washington International Competition, launched her career. In the early years she made recital debuts at Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Recital Hall (now called Weill Hall), and gave concerto performances with the Toronto Symphony, the Calgary Philharmonic the Victoria Symphony and the CBC Vancouver Orchestra. In 1976 she was invited to tour the New England States as soloist with Mario Bernardi and the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada in Mozart’s Concerto in D minor, K.466.
Subsequently she has played in over twenty countries, in such eminent halls as the Bolshoi Hall in St. Petersburg, the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall, Roy Thomson Hall, the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, the Beijing Concert Hall and the Salle Gaveau (Paris). In her own country she has given concerts from north to south: Whitehorse (Yukon) and Niagara Falls (ON), and from west to east: Tofino (BC) and St. John’s (Nfld) and many, many cities, towns and communities in between. She is in fact one of the few who has remained resident in Canada throughout her career.
Coop’s love of chamber music has led her to collaborate with artists from many parts of the world. Her longtime association with violinist Andrew Dawes, and her more recent partnership with cellist Antonio Lysy have given her the opportunity to delve into the sonata literature of Beethoven, a body of music to which she feels particularly drawn. Summer festivals in North America and Europe have provided venues for performances with the Manhattan, Miami, Audubon, Orford, Lafayette, Colorado, Seattle, Angeles and Pacifica String Quartets, as well as the Los Angeles Chamber Winds, York Winds, and such luminaries as Barry Tuckwell, Jamie Somerville, Martin Beaver, Jeanne Baxtrasser and Michelle Zukovsky. Coop is a cherished faculty artist at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, the oldest chamber festival in North America. There she collaborates in performances of much of the chamber music literature for piano and strings, and coaches brilliant young musicians from across the continent.
Her commitment to teaching is centred around her long time position at the University of British Columbia’s School of Music in Vancouver, where she was a senior professor and Head of the Piano Division. In 2003 she was designated Distinguished University Scholar by the university’s president, and in 2007 she received a Killam Teaching Award. In 1992 she was the founding Artistic Director of the Young Artists’ Experience – a summer chamber music program for students from the age of 14 to 18 which took place in Whistler, BC. Its mandate was to give the young people a wide exposure to art and life, thus offering in the daily schedule yoga, composition, poetry, philosophy and visual art as well as music.
Coop’s reputation has inspired international competition organizers to invite her to judge their events over the past fifteen years. She has served on the juries of the Kapell (Maryland), Dublin, Washington DC, Hilton Head, Honens, Gina Bachauer and the New York Piano Competitions. She has also been a jury member for the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards, the Glenn Gould Prize, the Hnatyshyn Foundation Developing Artists Grants and various Canada Council grant awards. Her sixteen recordings, three of which have been nominated for Juno awards, have garnered glowing reviews and have been heard on classical radio programs in many countries.
In December 2012, Jane Coop was appointed to the Order of Canada, our country’s highest honour for lifetime achievement. She was also appointed to the Order of British Columbia in May, 2019.
“Something old, something new, something borrowed…”
We marry three concertos of different provenance in a program that is guaranteed to beat the blues. Vancouver’s own Jane Coop returns to play Mozart – a complement to her earlier performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4. We also shine the spotlight on Associate Concertmaster Timothy Steeves, who is featured in a reconstruction of a violin concerto by J.S. Bach, and a dazzling new work by the Canadian composer Kati Agócs for violin with percussion orchestra!
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
b. March 21, 1685 / Eisenach, Germany
d. July 28, 1750 / Leipzig, Germany
Johann Sebastian Bach grew up with the violin. Some his earliest musical memories must have been hearing his father fiddling about in the family household. And late in his life, he still played the violin very well. His son, Carl Philipp Emmanuel, spoke of his father’s skill, stating that ''In his youth and until the approach of old age, he played the violin cleanly and penetratingly, and thus kept the orchestra in better order than he could have done with the harpsichord…He understood to perfection the possibilities of all stringed instruments.''
Being the practical man that he was, Bach was not averse to adapting his own works to suit the available opportunity. In the case of the Concerto in D minor, it is catalogued as the Concerto No. 1 for Harpsichord, BWV 1052. Scholarly research indicates that it may well have originated as an organ concerto, where certain complexities could be better handled by multiple keyboards and pedals. Others feel that its first incarnation was as a Violin Concerto, albeit one that proved too difficult for most of the violinists of the day. Whatever the case, the only surviving manuscripts have provided clues, but no clear answers, to Bach’s original intentions.
Where Bach may have transcribed his solo violin part into the florid right hand of his version for harpsichord, the challenge lies in “reverse engineering” the manuscript without the assistance of any “blueprints”. The concerto played here has been reconstructed or adapted several times over the years by luminaries such as Mendelssohn’s concertmaster, Ferdinand David, pianist Ferruccio Busoni, the Swiss violinist Robert Reitz. The present edition was created in 1970 by the German conductor and musicologist Wilfried Fischer.
Notes: Matthew Baird
KATI AGÓCS
b. January 20, 1975 / Windsor, Ontario, Canada
“One of the brightest stars in her generation of composers” (Audiophile Audition), Kati Agócs writes music that delivers visceral power and otherworldly lyricism with soulful directness. Her diverse and growing body of works has often been praised for its elegance and emotion and is performed by leading musicians worldwide. The Boston Globe calls it “music of fluidity and austere beauty…with a visceral intensity of expression.” The New York Times characterizes it as “striking…her vocal music has an almost nineteenth-century naturalness.” Kati Agócs is a Guggenheim Fellow and winner of the lifetime achievement award in music composition from The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her music is commissioned and performed by many premier organizations including the Toronto Symphony, Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Minnesota Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, New World Symphony, Ensemble Reconsil Vienna, Lontano (U.K.), Ensemble Contemporain de Montreal, and multiple Grammy-award winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird. She was nominated for a Juno Award for The Debrecen Passion, the title track on her vocal/orchestral album with Boston Modern Orchestra Project. The Boston Globe named the album one of its Top Ten Classical Recordings of 2016. Born in Windsor, Ontario of Hungarian and American parents, Kati Agócs earned doctoral and master's degrees from Juilliard, studying with Milton Babbitt. She serves on the New England Conservatory’s composition faculty and maintains a studio in Flatrock, Newfoundland.
Ms. Agócs has provided the following program note:
“Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra was commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University. Scored for solo violin and six percussionists and conceived as a companion piece to the eponymous work by Lou Harrison, my concerto is cast in four contrasting movements that flow into one another to make an eighteen-minute trajectory; the last two movements are played without pause. The first movement, marked “encantata” (enchanted), conjurs an exotic, pure sound world by way of a lyrical violin barcarolle with ringing pitched percussion, including a pair of vibraphones, as the accompaniment. The second movement, “inquieto” (restless), is a fast dirge that highlights two xylophones in close conversation both with one another and with the violin. The third movement, majestic in tone and tempo, is a recitative and aria that showcase the warmth and mysterious colour of a pair of marimbas. The recitative features the solo timpani in dialogue with the violin; chromatic inflections of the aria’s lyrical violin line embody the drama (and sense of melting) of flying too close to the sun. The final movement, “brioso” (spirited), creates a dialectic between a wild, exotic dance and a bittersweet anthem (“cantabile”). All mallet percussion instruments now join in a melodic role, building to a “wall of sound” with the return of the brioso theme. After a brief violin cadenza, the skins (drums) rise energetically to the foreground for the first time. Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra is dedicated with gratitude and appreciation to Frank Epstein, Nicholas Kitchen, and the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble.”
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
b. January 27, 1756 / Salzburg, Austria
d. December 5, 1791 / Vienna Austria
Over the course of his incredibly productive yet tragically truncated life, Mozart composed 27 concertos for piano and orchestra (including a couple of examples for multiple pianos). The majority were written after Mozart settled in Vienna, from 1782 onwards, and contributed greatly to his success as both a piano soloist and as a composer. The Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488 is a particularly attractive example, one that Mozart retained for himself as a valuable musical calling card. In his words, it was among the “compositions that I keep for myself or for a small circle of music lovers and connoisseurs (who promise not to let them out of their hands).” While other concertos are extroverted and flashy, there are few that are as graceful, understated and, quite simply, beautiful.
The piece was the second of three piano concertos that Mozart wrote in late 1785 and early 1786, which he presented in a series of subscription concerts in Vienna. At the same time, Mozart was also creating his comic opera The Marriage of Figaro. Some of the high spirits and good humour of the opera buffa tradition are present in the finale of the concerto. But the absence of oboes, trumpets, and drums signals a warmth and intimacy to overall mood. In Mozart’s original score the pianist is supported by the strings, plus flute, two clarinets, two horns, and bassoon. In the present setting, (adapted by soloist Jane Coop), the forces are reduced to string quintet, plus flute, clarinet, bassoon and horn. The result bares favourable comparison with Mozart’s earlier Quintet for Piano and Winds, K. 452, as well as the subsequent Clarinet Quintet, K. 581, and the Clarinet Concerto K.622, completed in the final months of his life. They each share an emotional depth and air of pathos that is referred to in German as Emfindsamkeit – a sentimental or hypersensitive style that tugs at the heartstrings.
Notes: Matthew Baird
Andrew Crust, Associate Conductor
Timothy Steeves, Violin Soloist
Jane Coop, Leader and Piano Soloist
Bach Concerto in D Minor for Violinand string orchestra, BWV 1052R
Kati Agócs Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra
Mozart Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 23 in A Major K. 488 * (arr.Jane Coop)
VSO Associate Concertmaster Timothy Steeves is the soloist in J.S. Bach’s Concerto for Violin in D Minor and a new Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra from Kati Agócs, whose music is described as “fluidity and austere beauty” by the Boston Globe. Vancouver’s own Jane Coop leads the VSO in a performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A on our stunning new Steinway Concert Grand piano.
Timothy Steeves, Violin Soloist
Canadian violinist Timothy Steeves has performed throughout North America and Europe as a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral musician, and advocate of contemporary music. He has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and the Salzburger Festspiele and his performances have been heard on BBC Radio, NPR, and Radio Canada among others. Timothy made his solo debut in 2004 with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and has since performed with orchestras in both Canada and the United States in repertoire ranging from baroque standards to world premieres.
Timothy is the Associate Concertmaster of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the founding violinist of the new music ensemble Latitude 49. In great demand as a recitalist and chamber musician, his collaborators have included Pierre Amoyal, Andrés Cárdenes, Steven Mackey, and Paul Schoenfeld. He has also toured both Canada and the United States in recital with pianist Jani Parsons and soprano Alexandra Smither.
Timothy is a recipient of the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award and a Laureate of the 2015 Canada Council Musical Instrument Bank Competition. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from Rice University where his research centered on the twenty-first century violin concerto literature. He previously attained both a Bachelor and Masters of Music from the University of Michigan and ARCT Performance Diplomas in both Violin and Piano Performance from the Royal Conservatory in Toronto. Timothy’s primary teachers include Edmond Agopian, David Halen, Cho-Liang Lin, and Nick Pulos.
Andrew Crust, conductor
Andrew Crust has developed a versatile international career as a conductor of orchestral, opera, ballet and pops programs. Currently serving as the Associate Conductor of the Vancouver Symphony in Canada, Andrew conducts a large number of subscription, pops, educational and contemporary concerts with the VSO each season. Andrew is the newly-appointed Music Director of the Lima Symphony Orchestra beginning in the 20/21, where he programs and conducts the Grand Classics, Pops and Educational series, featuring such soloists as Awadagin Pratt, Amit Peled and Katherine Jolly.
In the current and upcoming seasons Andrew will debut with the Arkansas and Vermont Symphonies as Music Director finalist, and with the San Diego Symphony and Calgary Philharmonic as a guest conductor. Other recent engagements include performances with the Winnipeg Symphony, Memphis Symphony, Hartford Symphony, Bozeman Symphony and l’Orchestre de la Francophonie in Québec.
Andrew is a 2020 winner of the Solti Foundation US Career Assistance Award. In 2017 he was awarded first prize at the Accademia Chigiana by Daniele Gatti, receiving a scholarship and an invitation to guest conduct the Orchestra di Sanremo in Italy. He was a semi-finalist for the Nestlé/Salzburg Festival’s Young Conductors Award competition, and was selected by members of the Vienna Philharmonic as a winner of the Ansbacher Fellowship, with full access to all rehearsals and performances of the Salzburg Festival.
Andrew is equally at ease in the pit, having conducted ballet with Ballet Memphis and the New Ballet Ensemble, and opera with Opera McGill, College Light Opera Company, Boulder Opera Company, and others. As a Pops conductor, Andrew has collaborated with such artists as Rufus Wainwright, Steven Page, Michael Bolton, Cirque de la Symphonie, and the United States Jazz Ambassadors. Andrew has also established himself as a conductor of films with orchestra.
Andrew served as Assistant Conductor of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra from 2017-2019 where he conducted around forty concerts each season. He stepped in last minute for a successful subscription performance featuring Bernstein’s Serenade with violinist Charles Yang. Andrew also served as Conductor of the Memphis Youth Symphony Program. As the Assistant Conductor of the Portland Symphony Orchestra in Maine from 2016-2018, he conducted a variety of concert series, helped coordinate the orchestra’s extensive educational programs, and helped lead a program for concertgoers under 40 called “Symphony and Spirits”.
Crust was the Assistant Conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of the USA (NYO-USA) in the summers of 2017 and 2018, assisting Michael Tilson Thomas on an Asian tour, as well as Giancarlo Guerrero, Marin Alsop and James Ross at Carnegie Hall and in a side-by-side performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has also served as Cover Conductor of the Kansas City Symphony, San Diego Symphony and Nashville Symphony, Assistant/Cover Conductor of the Boulder Philharmonic and Assistant Conductor of Opera McGill.
Abroad, he has led concerts with the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana in Italy, Hamburger Symphoniker at the Mendelssohn Festival in Germany, the Moravian Philharmonic in the Czech Republic and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Chile in Santiago.
As an arranger/orchestrator, Andrew is currently working with Schirmer to make orchestrations of a set of Florence Price’s art songs, has orchestrated works by Alma Mahler and Prokofiev, as well as many pops and educational selections.
Andrew is dedicated to exploring new ways of bringing the classical music experience into the 21st century through innovative programming and marketing, creating community-oriented and socially-sensitive concert experiences, and utilizing social media and unique venues. Andrew is a firm believer in meaningful music education, having produced and written a number of original educational programs with orchestras.
Jane Coop, leader & piano soloist
Pianist Jane Coop, one of Canada’s most prominent and distinguished artists, was born in Saint John, New Brunswick and grew up in Calgary, Alberta. For advanced studies her principal teachers were Anton Kuerti in Toronto and Leon Fleisher in Baltimore.
At the age of nineteen she won First Prize in the CBC’s national radio competition (the Young Performers Competition), and this, along with First Prize at the Washington International Competition, launched her career. In the early years she made recital debuts at Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Recital Hall (now called Weill Hall), and gave concerto performances with the Toronto Symphony, the Calgary Philharmonic the Victoria Symphony and the CBC Vancouver Orchestra. In 1976 she was invited to tour the New England States as soloist with Mario Bernardi and the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada in Mozart’s Concerto in D minor, K.466.
Subsequently she has played in over twenty countries, in such eminent halls as the Bolshoi Hall in St. Petersburg, the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall, Roy Thomson Hall, the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, the Beijing Concert Hall and the Salle Gaveau (Paris). In her own country she has given concerts from north to south: Whitehorse (Yukon) and Niagara Falls (ON), and from west to east: Tofino (BC) and St. John’s (Nfld) and many, many cities, towns and communities in between. She is in fact one of the few who has remained resident in Canada throughout her career.
Coop’s love of chamber music has led her to collaborate with artists from many parts of the world. Her longtime association with violinist Andrew Dawes, and her more recent partnership with cellist Antonio Lysy have given her the opportunity to delve into the sonata literature of Beethoven, a body of music to which she feels particularly drawn. Summer festivals in North America and Europe have provided venues for performances with the Manhattan, Miami, Audubon, Orford, Lafayette, Colorado, Seattle, Angeles and Pacifica String Quartets, as well as the Los Angeles Chamber Winds, York Winds, and such luminaries as Barry Tuckwell, Jamie Somerville, Martin Beaver, Jeanne Baxtrasser and Michelle Zukovsky. Coop is a cherished faculty artist at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, the oldest chamber festival in North America. There she collaborates in performances of much of the chamber music literature for piano and strings, and coaches brilliant young musicians from across the continent.
Her commitment to teaching is centred around her long time position at the University of British Columbia’s School of Music in Vancouver, where she was a senior professor and Head of the Piano Division. In 2003 she was designated Distinguished University Scholar by the university’s president, and in 2007 she received a Killam Teaching Award. In 1992 she was the founding Artistic Director of the Young Artists’ Experience – a summer chamber music program for students from the age of 14 to 18 which took place in Whistler, BC. Its mandate was to give the young people a wide exposure to art and life, thus offering in the daily schedule yoga, composition, poetry, philosophy and visual art as well as music.
Coop’s reputation has inspired international competition organizers to invite her to judge their events over the past fifteen years. She has served on the juries of the Kapell (Maryland), Dublin, Washington DC, Hilton Head, Honens, Gina Bachauer and the New York Piano Competitions. She has also been a jury member for the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards, the Glenn Gould Prize, the Hnatyshyn Foundation Developing Artists Grants and various Canada Council grant awards. Her sixteen recordings, three of which have been nominated for Juno awards, have garnered glowing reviews and have been heard on classical radio programs in many countries.
In December 2012, Jane Coop was appointed to the Order of Canada, our country’s highest honour for lifetime achievement. She was also appointed to the Order of British Columbia in May, 2019.
“Something old, something new, something borrowed…”
We marry three concertos of different provenance in a program that is guaranteed to beat the blues. Vancouver’s own Jane Coop returns to play Mozart – a complement to her earlier performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4. We also shine the spotlight on Associate Concertmaster Timothy Steeves, who is featured in a reconstruction of a violin concerto by J.S. Bach, and a dazzling new work by the Canadian composer Kati Agócs for violin with percussion orchestra!
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
b. March 21, 1685 / Eisenach, Germany
d. July 28, 1750 / Leipzig, Germany
Johann Sebastian Bach grew up with the violin. Some his earliest musical memories must have been hearing his father fiddling about in the family household. And late in his life, he still played the violin very well. His son, Carl Philipp Emmanuel, spoke of his father’s skill, stating that ''In his youth and until the approach of old age, he played the violin cleanly and penetratingly, and thus kept the orchestra in better order than he could have done with the harpsichord…He understood to perfection the possibilities of all stringed instruments.''
Being the practical man that he was, Bach was not averse to adapting his own works to suit the available opportunity. In the case of the Concerto in D minor, it is catalogued as the Concerto No. 1 for Harpsichord, BWV 1052. Scholarly research indicates that it may well have originated as an organ concerto, where certain complexities could be better handled by multiple keyboards and pedals. Others feel that its first incarnation was as a Violin Concerto, albeit one that proved too difficult for most of the violinists of the day. Whatever the case, the only surviving manuscripts have provided clues, but no clear answers, to Bach’s original intentions.
Where Bach may have transcribed his solo violin part into the florid right hand of his version for harpsichord, the challenge lies in “reverse engineering” the manuscript without the assistance of any “blueprints”. The concerto played here has been reconstructed or adapted several times over the years by luminaries such as Mendelssohn’s concertmaster, Ferdinand David, pianist Ferruccio Busoni, the Swiss violinist Robert Reitz. The present edition was created in 1970 by the German conductor and musicologist Wilfried Fischer.
Notes: Matthew Baird
KATI AGÓCS
b. January 20, 1975 / Windsor, Ontario, Canada
“One of the brightest stars in her generation of composers” (Audiophile Audition), Kati Agócs writes music that delivers visceral power and otherworldly lyricism with soulful directness. Her diverse and growing body of works has often been praised for its elegance and emotion and is performed by leading musicians worldwide. The Boston Globe calls it “music of fluidity and austere beauty…with a visceral intensity of expression.” The New York Times characterizes it as “striking…her vocal music has an almost nineteenth-century naturalness.” Kati Agócs is a Guggenheim Fellow and winner of the lifetime achievement award in music composition from The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her music is commissioned and performed by many premier organizations including the Toronto Symphony, Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Minnesota Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, New World Symphony, Ensemble Reconsil Vienna, Lontano (U.K.), Ensemble Contemporain de Montreal, and multiple Grammy-award winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird. She was nominated for a Juno Award for The Debrecen Passion, the title track on her vocal/orchestral album with Boston Modern Orchestra Project. The Boston Globe named the album one of its Top Ten Classical Recordings of 2016. Born in Windsor, Ontario of Hungarian and American parents, Kati Agócs earned doctoral and master's degrees from Juilliard, studying with Milton Babbitt. She serves on the New England Conservatory’s composition faculty and maintains a studio in Flatrock, Newfoundland.
Ms. Agócs has provided the following program note:
“Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra was commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University. Scored for solo violin and six percussionists and conceived as a companion piece to the eponymous work by Lou Harrison, my concerto is cast in four contrasting movements that flow into one another to make an eighteen-minute trajectory; the last two movements are played without pause. The first movement, marked “encantata” (enchanted), conjurs an exotic, pure sound world by way of a lyrical violin barcarolle with ringing pitched percussion, including a pair of vibraphones, as the accompaniment. The second movement, “inquieto” (restless), is a fast dirge that highlights two xylophones in close conversation both with one another and with the violin. The third movement, majestic in tone and tempo, is a recitative and aria that showcase the warmth and mysterious colour of a pair of marimbas. The recitative features the solo timpani in dialogue with the violin; chromatic inflections of the aria’s lyrical violin line embody the drama (and sense of melting) of flying too close to the sun. The final movement, “brioso” (spirited), creates a dialectic between a wild, exotic dance and a bittersweet anthem (“cantabile”). All mallet percussion instruments now join in a melodic role, building to a “wall of sound” with the return of the brioso theme. After a brief violin cadenza, the skins (drums) rise energetically to the foreground for the first time. Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra is dedicated with gratitude and appreciation to Frank Epstein, Nicholas Kitchen, and the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble.”
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
b. January 27, 1756 / Salzburg, Austria
d. December 5, 1791 / Vienna Austria
Over the course of his incredibly productive yet tragically truncated life, Mozart composed 27 concertos for piano and orchestra (including a couple of examples for multiple pianos). The majority were written after Mozart settled in Vienna, from 1782 onwards, and contributed greatly to his success as both a piano soloist and as a composer. The Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488 is a particularly attractive example, one that Mozart retained for himself as a valuable musical calling card. In his words, it was among the “compositions that I keep for myself or for a small circle of music lovers and connoisseurs (who promise not to let them out of their hands).” While other concertos are extroverted and flashy, there are few that are as graceful, understated and, quite simply, beautiful.
The piece was the second of three piano concertos that Mozart wrote in late 1785 and early 1786, which he presented in a series of subscription concerts in Vienna. At the same time, Mozart was also creating his comic opera The Marriage of Figaro. Some of the high spirits and good humour of the opera buffa tradition are present in the finale of the concerto. But the absence of oboes, trumpets, and drums signals a warmth and intimacy to overall mood. In Mozart’s original score the pianist is supported by the strings, plus flute, two clarinets, two horns, and bassoon. In the present setting, (adapted by soloist Jane Coop), the forces are reduced to string quintet, plus flute, clarinet, bassoon and horn. The result bares favourable comparison with Mozart’s earlier Quintet for Piano and Winds, K. 452, as well as the subsequent Clarinet Quintet, K. 581, and the Clarinet Concerto K.622, completed in the final months of his life. They each share an emotional depth and air of pathos that is referred to in German as Emfindsamkeit – a sentimental or hypersensitive style that tugs at the heartstrings.
Notes: Matthew Baird
