The Canadian Music Centre in BC Presents The Murray Adaskin Salon Concert Series CMCBC GALA FUNDRAISER Ow?/Wo CMC Gala Fundraiser Concert and Lifetime Achievement Award Wednesday, March 8, 2017 • 7:00pm As a courtesy… Please turn off the sound for all phones and other electronic devices. You are welcome to take non-flash photos during applause between pieces, but please refrain from taking photos during a performance and between movements, thank you. We encourage you to post your photos and share your experience on social media using the hashtag #CMCBC CMC BC on Twitter: @MusicCentreBC CMC BC on Facebook: facebook.com/CanadianMusicCentreBC Website: musiccentrebc.ca CMC National on Twitter: @CMCnational CMC National on Facebook: facebook.com/CanadianMusic Website: musiccentre.ca Red and white wine from Show your ticket and get Chaberton Estate Winery, a 10% off all hot beverages at local vineyard in Langley, BC, Breka Bakery next door at is available at the lobby bar. 855 Davie Street. Letter from the BC Director Tonight’s concert is full of connections and meaning for me. I first heard Avan Yu play the piano when he was fifteen, playing Chopin so beautifully it made me cry. I first heard Timothy when he was fourteen. He played unaccompanied Bach for me in a cold classroom at the Victoria Conservatory without even warming up. It was so profoundly beautiful and musically so far beyond his years, played with such a gorgeous, round sound, that I was incredulous. My entire life has been spent involved in music, much of it trying to find and help develop extraordinary artistry. But even so, I have rarely encountered the innate musicality and ability that I first encountered in these two extraordinary young artists. They have gone on to become the most internationally celebrated young soloists that BC has produced in a generation. I have long imagined them playing together and I’m particularly pleased we are bringing these two great BC artists together to make music with each other for the very first time here in our Adaskin Salon. The Canadian Music Centre is extremely grateful to the artists for donating their time and coordinating complex touring itineraries to be here to perform for us this evening. Avan and Timothy are joined this evening by our own Stefan Hintersteininger, the very heart of the CMC in BC. Stefan is a remarkably talented cellist, as you will hear tonight in the Adaskin Trio. But he is also our prized Librarian — not every region has their own. He is also one of the most knowledgeable experts on Canadian repertoire in the country, as well as being an Associate Composer of the CMC. To be able to hear him bring this knowledge and background to Murray Adaskin’s Trio in collaboration with these extraordinary artists is something quite rare and special. – 1! – Murray Adaskin was particularly devoted to teaching and developing young artists. I played for him once myself many years ago. And we have one of his star pupils in the audience tonight — Andy Dawes, one of Canada’s best-known violinists and founder of the Orford String Quartet. I know how much Murray would have loved to hear Timothy Chooi play the violin, to hear Avan Yu play his piano, and to hear these three remarkable young artists play his piano trio. Tonight we’ll also hear two works from the new Harry Adaskin Special Collection of our Barbara Pentland Library, scores of works that have not been performed publicly for many decades, if at all. They are hand-marked with bowings, fingerings and annotations made by Harry and Frances Adaskin themselves, who would have known and worked directly with the composers they were such great champions of. To have these insights and this remarkable BC heritage brought to life by these outstanding BC artists on Murray Adaskin’s Piano in his new 21st-century Salon is truly remarkable! I hope you enjoy tonight’s concert as much as I know I will, and I hope you will take as much pleasure in all of the connections and meaning that make this performance so uniquely special. Sean Bickerton, BC Director Canadian Music Centre / Centre de musique canadienne – 2! – Program J.S. Bach (1685-1750) from Sonata No.2 in A minor, BWV 1003 III. Andante IV. Allegro Timothy Chooi, violin Hector Gratton (1900-1970) Chanson & Danse, op.9, no.1 & 2 (Harry & Frances Adaskin Special Collection) Timothy Chooi, violin; Avan Yu, piano Barbara Pentland (1912-2000) Arioso (Harry & Frances Adaskin Special Collection) Timothy Chooi, violin; Avan Yu, piano Murray Adaskin (1906-2002) Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano I. Allegro moderato II. Lento III. Allegro giusto Timothy Chooi, violin; Stefan Hintersteininger, cello; Avan Yu, piano Ow INTERMISSION Wo Lifetime Achievement Award Presented to Owen Underhill (see page 8) César Franck (1822-1890) Sonata in A major I. Allegretto ben moderato II. Allegro III. Ben moderato: Recitativo-Fantasia IV. Allegretto poco mosso Timothy Chooi, violin; Avan Yu, piano – 3! – J.S. Bach Sonata for Violin Solo no.2 in A minor, BMV 1003 Bach’s set of six unaccompanied sonatas and partitas for the violin represent the unchallenged peak in solo violin music, both in technique and in expressive variety. The three sonatas follow the four-movement sonata da chiesa pattern, while the three partitas include dance forms. Each sonata has a fugue as its second movement, and in each case this is not only a tour de force, since fugal writing presupposes the participation of three or more voices, but also the dramatic and emotional core of the sonata. All these works require extraordinary skill in double-, triple-, and quadruple-stopping, as if the violin were an instrument with the same potential for chords and harmony as a harpsichord or an organ. The Andante offers a flowing melody over a steady bass line (unbroken eighth-notes) in the manner of a Vivaldi concerto. A third and a fourth voice enter from time to time to enrich the harmony. The Allegro finale leaves chords behind and adopts the conceit of perpetual motion, with some considerable use of echo effects. Bach was not the only composer of his time to write for solo violin, but he far outstrips his contemporaries in this domain, as in so many others. It is likely that he wrote them during his time in Cöthen around 1720 and that he had a particular violinist in mind. Although celebrated as an organist, Bach could also play the violin; it’s a fair guess that he could play these pieces pretty competently himself. — Hugh Macdonald Hector Gratton Chanson and Danse, Op. 9, no. 1 & 2 Composed: unknown (late 1920s or early 1930s) Duration: c. 5:00 Joseph Thomas Hector Gratton was a Canadian composer, arranger, conductor, pianist and music educator. As a composer his music is written in an essentially folkloric and popular style which avoids harmonic sophistication. This delightful pair of miniatures, in an original pen-and-ink manuscript, was discovered in Harry and Frances Adaskin’s personal performance library. The Adaskins were among the greatest champions of Canadian composers of their day, and it is likely that Gratton arranged this piece expressly for them. – 4! – The violin part, as with other scores from this collection, is heavily annotated with Harry Adaskin’s bowings and fingerings. The work seems also to exist in a version for piano, harp and string orchestra (under the title of Troisième danse canadienne) under the Hector Gratton Fonds at Library & Archives Canada, but the present arrangement for violin and piano has almost certainly not been heard since the Adaskins performed it so many decades ago. Barbara Pentland Arioso Original version for orchestra composed 1941 at Tanglewood, Boston, MA. Version for violin and piano transcribed by composer (Vancouver, BC; 1950s or 60s). Duration: 5:00 Barbara Pentland’s Arioso & Rondo is among her earliest mature orchestral works, composed during a summer spent at the Berkshire Music Center, where she studied with Aaron Copland. Pentland was struck by the textural transparency and rhythmic vitality of Copland’s music, and the time she spent with him put her on a path to the neoclassicism which pervaded her work until the mid-1950s. Pentland’s Arioso & Rondo, scored for large orchestra, is essentially a partial symphony (like Schumann’s Overture, Scherzo and Finale) that could easily have been joined by a first movement and a scherzo to make a traditional four-movement work. The Arioso achieves rhythmic interest through the juxtaposition of 3/4 and 6/8 meters, and melodic interest through long, lyrical lines over slowly rocking figures. In 1949, Barbara Pentland was invited to join the newly-formed Faculty of Music at the University of British Columbia by its first department head Harry Adaskin, elder brother of Murray, and a distinguished violinist with a passion for Canadian music. Harry Adaskin, along with his wife, pianist Frances Marr Adaskin, gave the premiere performances of many new works by Healey Willan, Hector Gratton, Robert Turner, John Weinzweig, Murray Adaskin, and others. The Adaskins also commissioned a number of works from Barbara Pentland, with whom they maintained a close, life-long friendship. The composer’s transcription of Arioso for violin and piano was unknown to Pentland’s catalogue until it recently resurfaced in the Adaskins’ private performing library, much of which is now in the collection of the Canadian Music Centre in Vancouver. – 5! – Murray Adaskin Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano Original version composed 1970 in Canoe Lake, SK. Version for piano trio transcribed 1999 by composer in Victoria, BC. Duration: c. 17:00 The Trio in its original version for flute, cello and piano was commissioned by the Alberta Chamber Trio through a grant from the Canada Council.