Mountain View International Festival of Song and Chamber Music 2013

OUTLINE OF ACTIVITIES h Daily master classes for singers and pianists with Rudolf Jansen h Chamber music coachings with Anton Kuerti h Six concerts presented over 8 days; mixed programmes of art song and chamber music with and without voice h Professional Development Program participants will receive private coachings and be encouraged to participate in all the concerts he Mountain View International Festival of Song and Chamber Music hosts three programs: the Master Classes for singers and pianists, the Chamber Music Apprenticeship program and a new Professional Development program. The Master T Classes and Chamber Music Apprenticeship Program are geared towards young professional musicians who are nearing the end of their studies or are about to embark on a professional career while the Professional Development Program is geared towards established musicians. MASTER CLASS PROGRAM Master classes are a daily feature of the 2013 Mountain View Festival. Conducted by master musician, pedagogue and Lied accompanist Rudolf Jansen from the Netherlands, these classes are an outstand- ing opportunity for singers and pianists to workshop the German Lieder with a focus on the texts of Heinrich Heine and the French melodies of Henri Duparc and Francis Poulenc. This is an intensive program focusing on the interpretation and performance of art song. These classes will be given in connection with daily discussion seminars and literary studies. To enhance the music and poetry in the master classes, there will be workshops and discussions about the cultural and literary significance of the song texts and their place in history given by Dr. Sandra Hoenle, and Artisitic Director, Kathleen van Mourik. CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAM In addition, the Festival offers a unique chamber music apprenticeship program for young professionals under the artistic direction of Canadian pianistic icon Anton Kuerti which focuses on interpretation and performance of the chamber music repertoire, specifically piano trios, quartets, quintets, and chamber music with voice, allowing young musicians the invaluable opportunity of performing, rehearsing and coaching the chamber music literature with our guest artists. With enrollment limited to six singers, six pianists and selected instrumentalists, young artists find a close-knit, collegial atmosphere as they work with a distinguished faculty of internationally recognised guest artists for private coaching and chamber music. Together they search for approaches to learn and master works from a broad repertoire. The Festival fosters a noncompetitive environment for study and performance with participants from around the world creating a distinctive artistic community on the University of Calgary campus. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM For the first time the Festival will be offering established musicians an opportunity to design their own collaborative project and work together with established pedagogues Anton Kuerti and Rudolf Jansen. VENUES All concerts of the Mountain View Festival take place at Calgary’s historic Lougheed House, Christ Church, one of Calgary’s oldest and most beautiful settings for classical music, and the Rozsa Centre on the University of Calgary campus, one of the premiere music recital facilities in Western Canada. The Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall is a 384 seat acoustic gem and the Hall also has a recently acquired Bach organ built by Jürgen and Hendrik Ahrend. GUEST ARTISTS ianist Anton Kuerti was born in Austria, grew up in the U.S., and has lived In Canada Kuerti has appeared in 140 communities from coast to coast, and has played with every professional orchestra, including in Canada for most of his adult life. His teachers included Arthur Loesser, 39 concerts with the Toronto Symphony. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and has received numerous honorary doctorates. Mieczyslaw Horszowski and Rudolf Serkin. At the age of 11 he performed theP Grieg Concerto with Arthur Fiedler, and, while still a student, he won the fa- Recent engagements included concerts with the orchestras of Ottawa, St. Louis, Houston, Denver and Philadelphia, and concerts mous Leventritt Award. in Germany, New Zealand, China, Australia and Malaysia. After a recent recital at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, critics were in rapture: “Kuerti played [the Diabelli Variations] so flawlessly that you could have made it into a CD. And, much more importantly, Anton Kuerti has toured 39 countries, including Japan, Russia, and most European it was more poetically refined than you will ever hear anywhere else.” - de Volkskrant; the Noord-Hollands Dagblad raved “ The countries, and has performed with most major U.S. orchestras and conductors, such great imagination Kuerti brought to the works elevated the performance to an absolutely top level. What perfection!” as the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony (Menuhin), Cleveland Orches- Kuerti has participated in leading festivals, and on many occasions has shown remarkable stamina, performing all 5 Beethoven tra (Szell), and the orchestras of Honolulu, Seattle, Montreal and San Francisco. His Concertos plus the Choral Fantasy, or the last 5 Beethoven Piano Sonatas, in one extended concert. As a chamber musician, he vast repertoire includes some 50 concertos, including one he composed himself. has performed the major repertoire with such artists as Gidon Kremer, Yo-Yo Ma, Janos Starker, and the Cleveland, Guarneri, St. Lawrence and Tokyo Quartets. His Beethoven Emperor Concerto with the Boston Symphony was hailed by the Boston Globe: “Kuerti is one of the best interpreters of Beethoven around….. His Anton Kuerti is one of today’s most recorded artists, having put on disc all the Beethoven Concertos and Sonatas, the Brahms and playing is strikingly individual….. a focus on line and touch, a clear and flexible Schumann concertos, the Schubert Sonatas and works by many other composers. His recordings are heard almost daily on the CBC. rhythm, a deeply analytical and exploratory approach. … not a note had been taken Kuerti’s newest CD features six Haydn Sonatas. Gramophone magazine called his recent CD of the Schumann Piano Concerto, “a for granted, with even the most prosaic passages refracted through a powerful intel- deeply memorable contribution to this concerto’s recorded history”. lectual prism….. Beethoven’s explosive juxtapositions were not merely jolts, but the sudden release of coiled tension…… the piano positively detonated the blaz- CD Review (London) called him ‘one of the truly great pianists of this century...stunningly played...poignantly beautiful...a superb ing coda……emphasizing spontaneity over smoothness, inquiry over indulgence, Schubert player’, while the Montreal La Presse wrote “Kuerti possesses this music - the “Third” [Beethoven] and all the other con- father and son showed why some warhorses deserve their status -- how, with enough certos - as though he had written it, even to the point of visually suggesting the composer.” intelligence and daring, even familiar music can seem new.” [3/12/08] Anton Kuerti has recently been honored with three additional prestigious awards: The Schumann Prize of the Schumann Gesell- schaft in Germany (2007), the National Arts Prize of the Banff Centre in Canada (2007), and the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, the most illustrious artistic honor conferred upon Canada’s performing artists (2008). erman-born mezzo-soprano Christa Pfeiler studied singing and piano at the Berlin udolf Jansen was born in Arnhem (the Netherlands). He studied piano, organ and Conservatory, completing her musical education at the Sweelinck Conservatory harpsichord simultaneously at the Amsterdams Conservatorium with Nelly Wagenaar, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where she received her soloist’s diploma. She his father Simon C. Jansen and Gustav Leonhardt. Gcontinued her studies with Elisabeth Freitag in Berlin (opera) and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf R In 1964 he won the Prix d’Excellence for organ, in 1966 the Prix for piano. He later gradu- in Bern, Switzerland (Lieder-interpretation). From 1983 to 1986, at the Studio of the ated as an accompanist with Felix de Nobel. In 1965 he won the Toonkunst Jubileumprijs Netherlands Opera, she interpreted lead roles in operas by Mozart, Rossini, Händel and and in 1966 the Friends of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw awarded him with the Zilveren others. Vriendenkrans. In addition to his solo career Rudolf Jansen has concentrated more and more Christa Pfeiler has appeared in concerts and oratorios throughout Europe, Russia, South on Lied-accompaniment and chamber music. Concert tours took him all over the world to the America, Canada and the Asian continent with conductors Edo de Waart, Lev Markiz, main halls of prominent cities and the famous Music- Festivals, together with artists of great Klaus-Peter Flor, Hans Vonk, Ton Koopman, Kenneth Montgomery, Kees Bakels, Jean- reputation: Elly Ameling, Robert Holl, Andreas Schmidt, Olaf Bär, Christiane Oelze, Barbara Paul Penin, Nicholas Kraemer, Salvador Mas, Fabio Pirona and Reinbert de Leeuw. Bonney, Hans-Peter Blochwitz, Monica Groop, Tom Krause, Edith Wiens, Birgit Finnilä, Irina With her husband, pianist Rudolf Jansen, she appeared on many stages around the world, Arkhipova, Brigitte Fassbänder and Jean-Pierre Rampal. including several international music festivals, and made a great number of radio- and Rudolf Jansen regularly gives masterclasses for singers and accompanists in, among others, CD-recordings. the Netherlands, Austria,

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