Victoria Symphony trumpet player Ryan Cole will make his debut as a soloist on Monday (Dec. 1) playing Arutiunian’s Trumpet Concerto.
Symphony music director Tania Miller will lead the tour-de-force concert that include Barber’s Adagio and Vaughan Williams’ London Symphony.
In his third year as principal trumpet of the Victoria Symphony, Saskatoon-born Cole began playing the trumpet in Grade 6 because the trumpet allowed him to sit at the back of the classroom.
Since then Cole has earned a bachelor and master’s degrees, and has been playing “at the back” of various orchestras in Canada, including Regina, Montreal and Saskatoon.
Cole is looking forward to playing at the front of the orchestra for a change next week playing the Arutiunian Trumpet Concerto. He first learned the concerto while completing his undergraduate degree, and says that “playing it now is completely different from then – it’s like I had to re-learn the piece” as his playing has changed so much since college.
The concerto is a favourite among trumpet players as a virtuoso showpiece for the instrument. Cole will play the version including the cadenzas written by its first performer Timofei Dokschitzer.
In addition to Arutiunian’s work, the first half of the concert will feature Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3.
The second half of the concert will be dedicated to the performance of Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No. 2 – A London Symphony. The work is an attempt, movement by movement, to capture the essence of a part of the great city.
Premiered in 1914, the original score of the work was lost when it was en route to Germany at the start of the First World War.
Although a score was put together from the existing orchestra parts, Williams continued to revise the piece to perfectly communicate his vision of London scenes, completing a version in 1920, and yet another in 1933 (published in 1936).
Although Williams wrote “This revised edition superseded the original [1920] version which should no longer be used” in his final revision, the original 1920 publication remains the most popular version, and is the one Miller will lead on Monday.
