Riding a big crescendo of enthusiasm generated by record-breaking crowds at the Vancouver Arts & Music Festival, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is ready to open its 46th season.
The festival attracted about 40,000 people to downtown Vancouver and generated $1.2 million in economic impact, said Igor Shakhman, the orchestra’s executive director.
During the past year, the orchestra expanded its educational program, providing free educational performances, workshops, master classes and vouchers to local school districts, Shakhman said. Ticket sales increased last season by 24 percent for the symphonic series and 40 percent for the orchestra’s chamber music series.
Adding to the feeling of forte, Music Director Salvador Brotons will begin his 34th season at the helm. His concerto for a brass quintet and orchestra will open the season at Skyview Concert Hall. This rare concoction will be performed by the Spanish Brass, one of Europe’s premiere brass ensembles.
“The concerto has spectacular music that is full of contrasting dynamics, melodic themes, striking tempos and rhythms,” Brotons said. “It has been recorded in the three versions — one for brass and piano, another for brass and symphonic band, and also for brass and orchestra, which we will do with the VSO. All three versions are available on CD as well as on YouTube and Spotify. It’s a showpiece for the Spanish Brass. They are fabulous players.”
Founded in 1989, the Spanish Brass has won multiple awards, including first prize in 1996 at the International Competition for Brass Quintets and the 2020 National Music Prize from Spain’s Ministry of Culture, the country’s highest musical honor. The ensemble is also featured in 32 recordings and has often performed several of Brotons’ pieces in Europe and Asia.
In an email exchange, Spanish Brass trumpeter Carlos Benetó said Brotons’ music “is truly inspiring.”
“His way of writing is not simple at first sight. When you first encounter one of his pieces, you need to take a deep breath and fully charge the metronome battery. They are intense, heartfelt and triumphant. The fast movements are dazzling, like a huge puzzle of tiny pieces. The slow movements are fascinating for their ability to express melodies that span numerous bars,” Benetó said. “His music is always a challenge in a live concert, but so rewarding that any effort is more than worth it.”
Benetó also praised Brotons’ conducting.
“Salvador is rhythmically precise, and his gestures pull you along so that you can go with him without wondering where you are,” he said. “It will be great to have him on the podium next to us. The ‘Brass Quintet Concerto’ is a pure example of Salvador’s musical and expressive DNA.”
In the second half of the concert, Brotons will lead the orchestra in Antonín Dvorák’s Symphony No. 8, which is thoroughly imbued with folk influences from his native Czech culture. It has a sunny and genial outlook with sounds of the countryside and winds up with a trumpet fanfare that invites listeners to a Bohemian dance.
The concert will open with “Argentum” by Dani Howard, a young British composer whose works have been steadily gaining international recognition. The title refers to the Latin word for silver, reflecting the 25th year of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the UK’s Classic FM radio station. Howard describes the piece as “a short, vibrant and fun, yet reflective, piece centered around celebration.”
Upcoming season
On Nov. 2 and 3, violinist Rachel Barton Pine returns to Skyview Concert Hall to perform Felix Mendelssohn’s “Violin Concerto,” which is famous for its lyrical and poignant melodies. Also on the program is Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10. Many scholars think that this symphony celebrates the composer’s triumph over the constricting grip of Joseph Stalin, because it was written in the months after Stalin’s death in March of 1953.
The annual Holiday Pops concert (Dec. 14 and 15) will be led by guest conductor Farkhad Khudyev, who is a rising star and a finalist for the music director position with the Eugene Symphony. Khudyev will direct a family-friendly program that will feature Columbia Dance in Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” and several numbers that will showcase the virtuosity of clarinetist David Shifrin.
Winners of the VSO’s Young Artist Competition will highlight the orchestra’s first concert of 2025 on Jan. 25 and 26. Because the competition attracts the very best young musicians from around the nation, this concert has consistently regaled audiences with jaw-dropping talent. In the second half of the program, Brotons will lead the orchestra in selections from Manuel de Falla’s “The Three-Cornered Hat.”
The orchestra has not played Mozart’s symphonies in quite some time, so it will be fun to hear Mozart’s Symphony No. 38 on Feb. 22 and 23. Considered one of Mozart’s best symphonic works, it is called the Prague symphony because it was first performed there. Hector Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” will take the audience on a wild ride in which the hero, rejected by his beloved, takes opium and then imagines his own death complete with a witches sabbath and march to the guillotine.
Is there anything more ethereal than a harp? Yes, harp with orchestra! That’s what you’ll hear April 12 and 13 when soloist Cristina Montes Mateo and VSO perform the “Concerto for Harp and Orchestra” by Spanish-Catalonian composer Xavier Montsalvatge. The music of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” will evoke the exotic stories from “One Thousand and One Nights.”
Pianist Olga Kern, who thrilled listeners at the Vancouver Arts and Music Festival, will perform Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 on May 31 and June 1. The orchestra will top that off with Stravinsky’s “The Right of Spring,” the propulsive work with barbaric sounds that caused concertgoers to riot when it was first performed in Paris in 1913.
In addition to the symphonic series, musicians of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra offer a variety of chamber music concerts. Three programs accompany silent moves and take place at the Kiggins Theatre. Four performances, usually at First Presbyterian Church on Sunday afternoons, explore everything from Mozart to modern numbers.
