White Rock music lovers – and those keen to expand their knowledge of the classical repertoire – have more treats in store in 2015.
Among them are a new year of Encore Peninsula Concerts and the City of White Rock presenting high-level international classical musicians in a series of afternoon performances at First United Church.
In the first Encore Peninsula concert this year (Sunday, Jan. 25 at 3 p.m.), series impresario, pianist and music educator Eugene Skovorodnikov will present a program of trio works by Sergei Rachmaninoff and Dimitri Shostakovich, with Peter Krysa (violin) and Ariel Barnes (cello).
For those whose notions of classical music are stereotypes of bombastic symphonic conductors and operatic excess, the series offers an eye-opening opportunity to learn about the aesthetic subtlety and versatility of the chamber music format.
And Skovorodnikov makes a point of providing interesting background before each performance, including biographical detail about the composers and the personal events and socio-historic context that inspired each piece.
But the most important connection audience members should make with the music comes from their own emotions, he said.
“I tell people they don’t have to understand the music – just relax and open your heart,” he said. “Feel whatever you feel. It doesn’t matter whether it makes you feel happy or makes you want to cry. Music is not always for enjoyment – it’s about emotional enhancement. It’s talking about the depths of our emotional states.”
Once the youngest faculty member at the historic St. Petersburg Conservatory in Russia, Skovorodnikov has had a long and equally distinguished concert career since he left his native land in 1990 – and he’s joined by colleagues of equal musical calibre.
The Moscow-born Krysa studied with his father Oleh Krysa – “a very famous violinist in Russia who studied with David Oistrakh.”
Also well-known for chamber music in the U.S., particularly as leader of his own trio in the Boston area, Krysa subsequently moved to Vancouver where he is a full-time member of the Vancouver Opera Orchestra and a regular performer with the VSO.
Cellist Diliana Momtchilova, originally announced as a member of the trio, was unable to participate in the concert due to other performing commitments in Europe. But Barnes is anything but a second-string substitute, Skovorodnikov said.
Having a cellist of Barnes’ ability is crucial to the upcoming performance, Skovorodnikov explained.
“These particular trios are extremely demanding for a cello player – in late romantic and post-romantic pieces like these the cello becomes an absolutely equal voice with the piano and violin, rather than the basso continuo role it played earlier, in Mozart’s trios, for example.”
Both trios, he noted, are of “a very tragic nature,” even though both include moments of exhilaration.
Rachmaninoff’s Trio elegiaque No. 2 was written to memorialize Tchaikovsky after the latter’s unexpected – and still mysterious – death in 1893.
“It’s a tribute to a great artist – an early work, very passionate and very youthful,” he said.
Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio is similarly dedicated to its composer’s great friend and frequent collaborator, the intellectual Ivan Sollertinsky, who died in 1944.
Skovorodnikov, who did his doctoral thesis on Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes, said the piece typifies the composer’s work in hiding a subtext of commentary underneath pieces designed to mollify Stalinist dictates (Shostakovich twice faced denunciation as an “enemy of the people” for being too willing to embrace western musical ideas) – and also marks his fascination with Jewish culture in the use of themes evocative of klesmer music.
Other concerts in the season will also offer a rich feast of musical styles.
The locally-based piano duo of Elizabeth and Marcel Bergmann will be highlighted on Feb. 22, featuring pieces by jazz-inspired 20th century master George Gershwin, and also original compositions by Marcel.
Kosovar violinist Sihana Badivuku will be highlighted on March 29, joined by Skovorodnikov, in a concert of profoundly emotional compositions by Beethoven and Brahms.
Concluding the 2014-15 season will be a concert by Paris-based pianist Hugues Leclere, focusing on the impressionist style of fellow-countrymen Debussy and Faure.
For information or to purchase individual tickets ($25, seniors and students $22), call 604-541-2199, or visit www.whiterockcity.ca or the White Rock Community Centre, 15154 Russell Ave.
