{"id":5181,"date":"2013-06-12T08:53:18","date_gmt":"2013-06-12T08:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/?p=5181"},"modified":"2013-06-12T09:04:05","modified_gmt":"2013-06-12T09:04:05","slug":"scotia-festival-2013-in-review-final-gala-concert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2013\/06\/12\/scotia-festival-2013-in-review-final-gala-concert\/","title":{"rendered":"Scotia Festival 2013 in review- Final Gala Concert"},"content":{"rendered":"

A review of the final Gala concert of the 2013 Scotia Festival of Music from critic Stephen Pederson at the Chronicle Herald. Read the original here.<\/a><\/p>\n

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June 10, 2013<\/div>\n
Concerto performances stunning<\/strong><\/div>\n
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\u00a0Scotia Festival of Music ended on triple stun Sunday afternoon in the Dunn Theatre: stunning program, stunning soloists, stunning orchestra.<\/div>\n

Under the understated guidance of Kenneth Woods (also stunning in its delivery of the music without either mannerism or exaggerated expression), the orchestra of professionals and students simply delivered a full house of concertos with violinist Mark Fewer, pianist John Novacek and cellist Denise Djokic.<\/p>\n

Novacek, with his inimitable nimbleness of 10-fingered nuances, played Mozart\u2019s extraordinary Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K. 453 just before the intermission, with Fewer introducing us to the resourceful tangles and inventive graces of John Adams\u2019 1994 Violin Concerto and Djokic delivering a powerful performance of the Cello Concerto No. l in E-flat major of Dmitri Shostakovich.<\/p>\n

A perfect storm, in other words, in the fusion of composers, soloists and players, to end one of the best-programmed Scotia Festivals in its 34 years of annual spring chamber music concerts.<\/p>\n

Paradoxically, the Adams\u2019 violin concerto appeared to wander aimlessly, but with intent. It absolutely refused to let us stray from attentiveness. Which means that Fewer knew entirely what he was doing.<\/p>\n

Motion in music and even more so, momentum, is animated by repetition. In his concerto, Adams resorted, as he often seems inclined to do in his music, to this time-honoured solution to the problem, to make repetition basic and inevitable.<\/p>\n

In this concerto, the solo line is active, wide-ranging, often bizarrely original, but it is tied down by a familiar device, a chaconne figure, a bass line which is repeated.<\/p>\n

Fewer gave a remarkably assured and penetrating performance of this entirely new, yet also entirely familiar, music. Technically, though he played it without making it sound so, this concerto is fiendishly difficult.<\/p>\n

Novacek played the Mozart concerto with his typical habit of brilliantly nuanced finger work, each note expressive without exaggeration but making even the familiar sound new.<\/p>\n

For the finale, Denise Djokic gave a powerful performance of the Shostakovich concerto: strong, assured, expressive. Wood and the orchestra gave her space, acoustic space, for an ideal balance of soloist and ensemble.<\/p>\n

It has been two weeks of remarkable concerts in the Dunn at this year\u2019s Scotia Festival. For me, one of the most remarkable was the playing of Benjamin Britten\u2019s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, for strings, Op. 10, on Friday night.<\/p>\n

Somehow I have missed hearing this powerful work during long years of listening to classical music. Hearing it for the first time under the direction of so honest and intuitive a musician as Kenneth Woods was a shattering experience, leaving me speechless with awe and wonder.<\/p>\n

(spedersen@ns.sympatico.ca<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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