A Chamberful of success
Healthy attendance, smooth operations marked this year’s festival
Richard Todd, The Ottawa Citizen
The 18th annual Ottawa Chamber Music Festival is history now, though such recent history that a box office and financial analysis will not be ready for some time. Still, anyone who has attended the Chamberfest regularly over the years will have noticed that the main venue, Dominion-Chalmers church, was full or close to it every evening.
What may have surprised some people was the attendance at St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts at 310 St. Patrick St in the ByWard Market, which was remarkably higher than in recent years. In the past some potential audience members have avoided this venue because it is in a part of town some regard as a little shady, parking can be difficult and there has been a perception that the best artists are at Dominion-Chalmers.
But this year there was a shuttle service between Dominion-Chalmers and St. Brigid’s. You could leave you car at D-C, catch all or part of the performance there, take the shuttle to the ByMarket venue and get a ride back, either at the end of the 8 p.m. concert or after the 10:30 cabaret events. “Clearly this was a breakthrough,” says Chamberfest’s director of Marketing and Communications, James Whittall.
Canada’s classical all-stars hit the stage
Steven Mazey, The Ottawa Citizen
It is not an easy thing to land a spot in the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.
In January, about 500 student musicians from across Canada auditioned for the 92 coveted positions in the ensemble, which offers players aged 16 to 28 intensive summer training with veteran professional players and conductors before taking them on the road for a concert tour to show what they’ve learned.
Nine of the young people who made the cut this year are from the Ottawa area, so you’re likely to hear a few extra cheers and whistles from proud relatives and friends when the orchestra performs July 27 at Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts as part of the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival.
The concert is part of an 11-performance tour following four weeks of orchestral boot camp on the campus of the University of Western Ontario in London. Conductor Jonathan Darlington, music director of Vancouver Opera, will conduct the players in Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, Richard Strauss’s Suite from Der Rosenkavalier and a new piece by Ottawa composer Brian Current, who has won some major international prizes.
Evening with quartet and ensemble an enjoyable outing
Richard Todd, The Ottawa Citizen
REVIEW
Leipzig String Quartet
7 p.m. Monday at Dominion-Chalmers Church
Ensemble Caprice
8 p.m. Monday at St. Brigid’s
Mid-evening concerts at the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival are on a staggered schedule. Those at Dominion-Chalmers are at 7 p.m., while those at St. Brigid’s, the Market Soirées as they’ve been dubbed, are at eight.
This means that, with a little spirit of adventure, you can attend part of one and part of the other.
Monday evening the Leipzig String Quartet took the stage at D-C offering a program of a familiar work, Mozart’s Quartet in D. K. 499, nicknamed the Hoffmeister, and three that are lesser-known in varying degrees.
The program opened with the Mozart, in a reading that was as precise, lucid and musical as we’ve come to expect from the Leipzigs. The opening Allegretto was endowed with a lightness of touch, and the Adagio glowed.
Next came the Quartet no. 3 of Jörg Widmann. It, too, has a nickname, Hunting.
Chamber Music Festival: Divas, street bands and kitchen sinks
Steve Mazey, The Ottawa Citizen
OTTAWA CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL
When and where: July 23 to Aug. 5. Venues include Dominion-Chalmers Church, St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts, Church of St. John the Evangelist and others.
Passes and tickets: A festival pass at $200 includes admission to all concerts and events except for the National Arts Centre Orchestra concerts July 23 and 24 and the closing concert Aug. 5. Prices to those concerts range from $35 to $55. The festival also offers a 10-ticket package, at $180 general; $90 for students.
Details and information: 613-234-6306 or www.chamberfest.com
Watch a clip: click here to see video of New York City street band the Asphalt Orchestra.
OTTAWA — At Dominion-Chalmers Church Saturday, the opening gala of the 2011 Ottawa Chamber Music Festival will include two hours of Mozart and the first Ottawa appearance in several years by Karina Gauvin, the creamy-voiced Canadian soprano who performs with orchestras and opera houses around the world.
Praised by a Toronto critic as “one of the dream sopranos of our time,” Gauvin will join the National Arts Centre Orchestra and guest conductor Jean-Michaël Lavoie, the young Canadian maestro who spent the past season as an assistant conductor at the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Your chance to be Chamberfest Idol
The Ottawa Citizen
OTTAWA — If you’ve ever dreamed of getting up in front of several hundred people and introducing a concert at the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, this could be your big break. The festival, to run this year July 23 to Aug. 5, is looking for “dynamic, entertaining and bilingual concert hosts,” and the organization has launched a Chamberfest Idol competition to find them. Concert hosts talk to audiences, make festival announcements, thank sponsors and introduce the musicians.
Auditions will run July 4 to 15 on the festival Facebook fan page (facebook.com/ottawachamberfest) and the festival’s YouTube channel (youtube.com/user/Ottawa-Chamberfest).
Festival artistic director Roman Borys will choose five finalists from audition tapes. The finalists will compete as hosts during the festival and a winner will be named official festival host for 2012. To audition, contestants have to introduce a fictitious chamber group using a script prepared by the festival. Festival officials will screen the videos for suitability and adherence to rules before posting them on YouTube. The festival’s Facebook fans can then vote for their favourites. Borys will choose finalists based on votes, charisma and other criteria. Finalists will be announced on Facebook July 18. Rules, instructions and a downloadable auction script are at www.chamberfest.com/ chamberfest-idol.
Ottawa Chamberfest 2011 lineup revealed
The Ottawa Chamber Music Festival unveiled its concerts for this summer on Wednesday, promising plenty of nods to Franz Liszt to mark the 200th anniversary of the Hungarian pianist’s birth.
Concerts by Katherine Chi and Marc-André Hamelin, as well as a conference at Carleton University, will celebrate the composer’s work at Ottawa Chamberfest 2011.
The chamber music society’s artistic director, Roman Borys, also lined up a superstar Canadian soprano to open the festival.
Early-bird passes are on sale now until June 3, 2011. For ticket pricing information, keep checking the festival’s website. A complete program and the full list of performers will also be made available on the website on May 2.
For the full story visit Ottawa Chamberfest 2011 lineup revealed.
OCMS Wine Auction!
On Wednesday, September 29th, the Ottawa Chamber Music Society presents its annual Wine Auction at the Chateau Laurier featuring over 500 bottles of fine and vintage wines. Registration and a reception begin at 7 p.m. and the Live Auction begins at 8 p.m. Tickets are $50 and can be purchased through the OCMS office at 613-234-6306. To view the catalogue, please visit: chamberfest.com.
Tokyo Quartet showed amazing virtuosity
By Richard Todd, Citizen Special
The venerable and acclaimed Tokyo String Quartet brought this year’s Ottawa Chamber Music Festival to a close Saturday at Dominion-Chalmers. Its well-chosen program included quartets by Schubert, Bartók and Debussy.
It’s hard to believe that Canadian violinist Martin Beaver has occupied the first chair of the quartet for eight years already. He helped solidify the ensemble’s musical identity after a period in which its first violinists came and went. Its forward, polished sound has been stable for some years now.
The concert opened with Schubert’s Quartet no. 10 in E-flat. Despite its number, this is an early work, written when the composer was just 15. Perhaps that’s not so very early for someone who died at the age of 32. But to look at another way, by the standards we apply to most composers, everything he wrote was an early work.
In any case, it’s a lovely piece and the Tokyo players brought exactly the right flavour and delicacy to it. Among the highlights were the exquisite Trio in the second movement and the Haydnesque slow movement. The balance and blend were, for all intents and purposes, perfect.
Read more: Tokyo Quartet showed amazing virtuosity
Von Stade a memorable opener for 2010 chamberfest
By smazey, Classical Ottawa
(Frederica von Stade. Photo by Robert Millard)
It was a bittersweet opening night to the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival July 24: American mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, who at 65 is winding down her singing career, sang a goodbye to Ottawa audiences as part of her farewell recital tour.
A large audience turned out to hear von Stade in recital with pianist and composer Jake Heggie at Dominion-Chalmers Church. For her goodbye, Von Stade put together a special recital of songs and arias as a kind of musical autobiography, choosing pieces with strong personal connections to her life and career. She also told stories between selections to introduce the pieces, mixing effortlessly between English and French in her comments.
I have fond memories of hearing von Stade in recital in Toronto in the 1990s, at Roy Thomson Hall and at the intimate recital hall in North York. This is an opera singer who shines at the intimate art form of the recital, with an endearing warmth and down-to-Earth manner that creates an immediate bond with her listeners.
Read more: Von Stade a memorable opener for 2010 chamberfest
Marathon man: Pianist tackles 32 Beethoven sonatas in five days flat
By Steven Mazey, The Ottawa Citizen
Canadian pianist Stewart Goodyear first learned the complete Beethoven sonatas at age 16. He begins the chamberfest series July 27.
Photograph by: Andrew Garn, Ottawa Citizen
Performing one or two concerts? Kidstuff.
Star Canadian pianist Stewart Goodyear, the former child prodigy who first performed with the National Arts Centre Orchestra at age 12, is taking on nine solo performances at the 2010 Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, in a project that will test his endurance, his memory and his interpretive skills, not to mention his arm and hand muscles.
At this year’s festival, which opens Saturday and will present more than 90 events through Aug. 7, Goodyear will perform the nine concerts in five days flat. His high-profile assignment? Performing all of the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas, the works that have been called merely “one of the great contributions to the musical art.”
Read more: Marathon man
