Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Smetana...oh my!

I can’t wait for this weekend’s concert. And that’s an understatement. We’ve got some tremendous performances lined up this season, but A Romantic Journey is definitely one of the ones I’m most looking forward to. It features Smetana’s Overture to the Bartered Bride, Dvorak’s New World Symphony, and Tchaikovsky’s ever-popular violin concerto.

This concert is an absolute knockout. The orchestra’s going to kill me for programming these three pieces in one performance – but I hope you will enjoy it. It is full of inspiration, sentiment, and satisfaction.

Everyone experiences music differently, but it’s always my wish that we can share the emotions of the music with the audience. Music covers all the complexities of emotion, and especially all the complexities of love – tenderness, passion, and subsequently hurt and loss.

A highlight of A Romantic Journey will be Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto, written in 1878. Tchaikovsky knew all about love and passion in his own way, a sad way really, and he poured all of that into this concerto. As a result, this particular piece is easily one of the most technically difficult concertos ever written.

Andréa Tyniec will join us for this well-known score. I stumbled upon a video of her playing the concerto on YouTube, and I made it my mission to bring her to Kingston.

She is a fabulously talented musician – I guarantee you’ll want to see her tackle this ridiculously challenging piece. To perform this concerto you need endurance, and you need to be balanced – you have to have as much sensitivity as you have strength. Andréa has all of it, and she presents it with both poise and passion.

Andréa plays on a violin constructed by Januarius Gagliano in 1747. She won the opportunity to play on this instrument from the Instrument Bank of the Canada Council for the Arts. Every three years, musicians from across Canada compete intensely in front of a jury of professional musicians who decide which competitor will have the opportunity to develop their craft on an antique instrument. The winners choose the instrument they would like to use in order of their placement in the competition.

This violin was around for more than a hundred years before Tchaikovsky wrote his violin concerto, so to hear this piece coming from an almost 300-year-old instrument adds even more fascination. There’s so much history there. And to know that a young musician who is passionate about the classical music industry is carrying on this tradition and history is a fantastic thing.

Music is so central to my core – it’s how I relate to the world. This concert is, I hope, a chance for the audience to connect with the orchestra and with the world around them. The Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto is responsible for luring many people into the world of classical music. I hope that this concert will be no exception, and that everyone in the audience – whether they are long-time classical fanatics or newbies to the world of the classics – will be affected to their very core.

There will be two special performances of A Romantic Journey on Saturday, November 20 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, November 21 at 2:30 p.m. at the Kingston Gospel Temple, 2295 Princess Street. Tickets will be available at the door.