Sibelius Symphony No.1

April 27th 2024 at 15:00 – 17:00

Join us for the epic conclusion to the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra’s golden jubilee season. Throughout its 50 year history, the TSYO has taught young musicians to be the best versions of themselves, both inside and outside the concert hall. TSYO musicians have seen their share of trials and tribulations, but they have always emerged triumphant, just like the featured piece in this milestone concert—Mahler’s First Symphony.

Simon Rivard, conductor
Trevor Wilson, RBC Resident Conductor
Cian Bryson, bassoon (2022/23 TSYO Concerto Competition winner)

Shostakovich: Festive Overture
Kalevi Aho: Bassoon Concerto
Mahler: Symphony No. 1

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BBC SO Total Immersion: Italian Radicals

BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Singers

May 5th 2024 at 19:30 – 22:00

Martyn Brabbins, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Singers launch an evening-long odyssey through the music of Dallapiccola, Maderna, Nono and Berio.

‘Keep going!’ Imagine a symphony that takes everything a symphony has been and everything a symphony could be: an orchestral showpiece that’s simultaneously a protest, a celebration, and a postmodern prank from the heart of 1960s counterculture. Berio’s Sinfonia is the climax to a day-long immersion in the music of postwar Italy.

But as we’ve heard, it’s just part of a far bigger – and even more gripping – story. Bristling, brilliant sonic adventures by Dallapiccola, by former BBC Symphony Orchestra guest conductor Bruno Maderna and by the far-left maverick Luigi Nono pave the way to Berio’s modern classic: outsize creative personalities who set out to remake the world, and left a legacy of music that continues to outrage, astonish and enchant.

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Julian Bliss & Carducci Quartet

May 5th 2024 at 16:00 – 17:00

The rich and harmonious blend of clarinet and strings is alive to human joys and sadness and the clarinet’s nimble agility and vocal qualities are nowhere better captured than in two of the Romantic era’s best-loved works for that evergreen instrumental combination.

Weber the opera composer, and Brahms the symphonist are reflected in two chamber music gems, with bravura public display set alongside whispered confidences to trusted friends. Weber’s soloist gurgles, frolics and declaims but in Brahms, a boisterous gypsy dance acts as a counterweight to a pervading tender melancholy, a delicately spun succession of songs without words reflecting the dark tones of Beethoven’s imposing quartet. It’s a programme made for longstanding collaborators – the charismatic, versatile Julian Bliss, deeply and intuitively attuned to his quartet companions.

Beethoven – String Quartet No.11 Op.95 in F minor “Serioso”
Weber – Clarinet Quintet in B-flat major, Op.34
Brahms – Clarinet Quintet in B minor Op.115

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Alexander Glazunov – Saxophone Concerto

May 9th 2024 at 19:00 – 21:10

Pounding timpani, inexorably rising violins and musical tension ratcheting up with unyielding momentum: the opening of Brahms’ first symphony must have been quite the shock for the audience attending its 1876 premiere. Drama is everywhere in this powerful piece that provides emotional stress and release right through to the galloping energy of its exhilarating, visionary, conclusion.

Earlier, superstar Saxophonist Jess Gillam solos in Glazunov’s concerto, a piece that’s full of twists and turns and which showcases the gentle and soulful side of the instrument. Elfrida Andrée’s majestic overture starts the concert.

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Alexander Glazunov – Saxophone Concerto

May 9th 2024 at 19:30 – 21:40

Pounding timpani, inexorably rising violins and musical tension ratcheting up with unyielding momentum: the opening of Brahms’ first symphony must have been quite the shock for the audience attending its 1876 premiere. Drama is everywhere in this powerful piece that provides emotional stress and release right through to the galloping energy of its exhilarating, visionary, conclusion.

Earlier, superstar Saxophonist Jess Gillam solos in Glazunov’s concerto, a piece that’s full of twists and turns and which showcases the gentle and soulful side of the instrument. Elfrida Andrée’s majestic overture starts the concert.

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May 11th 2024 at 19:15 – 20:45

Conductor Shaun Matthew
Bassoon Linton Stephens

Brahms – Academic Festival Overture
Fogg – Bassoon Concerto
Boulanger – D’un Soir Triste
Grant Still – Symphony No.4, ‘Autochthonous’ (UK première)

Our concert begins with Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture. Composed in 1880 and dedicated to the University of Breslau, Brahms conjures up less of a sense of the academic student but more of the comradeship in the student world.

We are proud to welcome Linton Stephens to perform the Bassoon Concerto by English composer, Eric Fogg. Written in 1931, it is an exciting, three movement work with the most glorious Chaconne as its 2nd movement. The outer movements display all the fun, cheekiness and virtuosic nature of the bassoon.

We continue with one of Lili Boulanger’s final works, D’un Soir Triste. This short but powerful piece displays the conflict of a terminally ill Lili Boulanger confronting her own mortality.

We close our concert with the UK première of William Grant Still’s Symphony no. 4, ‘Autochthonous’. Still’s original programme note states that the symphony ‘speaks of the fusion of musical cultures in North America.’ Join us for this amazing work, full of melody and the human spirit.

In partnership with Big Ideas By The Sea

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Calefax Reed Quintet

Bach, Dvořák, Debussy, Gershwin

May 13th 2023 at 13:00 – 14:00

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Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto

May 23rd 2024 at 19:30 – 21:15

Fresh, optimistic and convivial, Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto is the centrepiece of this concert, which closes with Beethoven’s graceful yet high-voltage Symphony No. 1. Along the way experience the rhythmic energy of Stravinsky’s spiky Danses Concertantes and Fazil Say’s Chamber Symphony, inspired by the music of Turkey.

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Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto

May 24th 2024 at 19:30 – 21:15

Fresh, optimistic and convivial, Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto is the centrepiece of this concert, which closes with Beethoven’s graceful yet high-voltage Symphony No. 1. Along the way experience the rhythmic energy of Stravinsky’s spiky Danses Concertantes and Fazil Say’s Chamber Symphony, inspired by the music of Turkey.

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Darkness to Light: Manfred & Mahler 5

June 7th 2024 at 20:00 – 22:00

The program begins with the sounds of New York’s “frenetic energy and multicultural aural palette” in Jessie Montgomery’s Coincident Dances. Principal Oboe, Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida, and Principal Horn, William Caballero, then join to premiere a double concerto by Michael Daugherty.

The night ends with Mahler’s epic 5th Symphony. Written at the beginning of his relationship with his wife, Alma, this work is seen as a love letter to her, as it begins with a funeral march and culminates in celebration.

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Darkness to Light: Manfred & Mahler 5

June 8th 2024 at 19:30 – 21:30

The program begins with the sounds of New York’s “frenetic energy and multicultural aural palette” in Jessie Montgomery’s Coincident Dances. Principal Oboe, Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida, and Principal Horn, William Caballero, then join to premiere a double concerto by Michael Daugherty.

The night ends with Mahler’s epic 5th Symphony. Written at the beginning of his relationship with his wife, Alma, this work is seen as a love letter to her, as it begins with a funeral march and culminates in celebration.

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Darkness to Light: Manfred & Mahler 5

June 9th 2024 at 14:30 – 16:30

The program begins with the sounds of New York’s “frenetic energy and multicultural aural palette” in Jessie Montgomery’s Coincident Dances. Principal Oboe, Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida, and Principal Horn, William Caballero, then join to premiere a double concerto by Michael Daugherty.

The night ends with Mahler’s epic 5th Symphony. Written at the beginning of his relationship with his wife, Alma, this work is seen as a love letter to her, as it begins with a funeral march and culminates in celebration.

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Close-up: Tutti in threes

June 16th 2024 at 14:15 – 16:35

The Close-up series is the best way to experience the Concertgebouw Orchestra’s musicians as individuals! Tonight wind players form the orchestra will come to the foreground, playing music by Beethoven, Reicha, Glinka and Poulenc, with the number 3 as the unifying theme.

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Woodwind Forward!

June 16th 2024 at 11:00 – 13:00

Already in the first half of the 20th century, French composers and orchestras used to put the woodwinds in the foreground. It should define their style and the special French sound. Francis Poulenc was one of the most important representatives of this tradition, and his music focuses on multicolor and sensitive poetry.

“”After all the impressionistic mists, will not this simple and clear art [of Poulenc], so reminiscent of Scarlatti and Mozart, be the next phase of our music?”” of wind music prove true in any case. With his few wind works, he set standards that still have an impact today.

Poulenc’s compositional spheres are complemented by the music of Henri Tomasis, Jean Françaix and Charles Koechlin. Behind the seemingly naïve title of Tomasi’s rural concerto »Concert champêtre« lies a knowledgeable allusion to French rococo music mixed with the Corsican flair of Tomasi’s homeland.

Charles Koechlin’s Bassoon Sonata takes us back to the sounds of Impressionism. In the France of his time, Koechlin was considered an outsider and yet created an exceptional work that shows how delicate and at the same time wild and intoxicating the bassoon is. And how many magnificent nuances of sound the instrument, which usually stands in the background, carries within itself.

Jean Françaix’s trio in four movements shows the 82-year-old composer still at the height of his creative power: melodic invention, rhythmic wit, harmonic elasticity and an elegant instrumental writing form a particularly fortunate combination.

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Beethoven, Beamish & Prokofiev

June 20th 2024 at 19:00 – 20:40

Sally Beamish’s concerto begins with two soloists calling to each other across a distance, and explores connection and longing. This delicately nuanced interpretation of the Seventh Symphony forms part of Gianandrea Noseda’s thrilling Prokofiev cycle with the LSO. Distans was written for Janine Jansen and Martin Fröst, designed to make the most of their astonishing abilities.

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African Art Music for Woodwind – Rowland Sutherland

July 20th 2024 at 11:30 – 12:30 BST

The programme will feature works for flute by African composers from the West African School of Art Music with flautist Rowland Sutherland who enjoys an international career as a classical and jazz musician; and West African songs for traditional instruments, the Oja flute and percussion, performed by the African Cultural Group.

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