Vetta Chamber Music gets unabashedly romantic in Music of the Heart
The organization’s upcoming piano-focused concert is all about emotion
Talisa Blackman.
Vetta Chamber Music presents Concert 3: Music of the Heart on January 26 at 2 pm at West Point Grey United Church; January 27 at 7:30 pm at West Vancouver United Church; January 28 at 2 pm at Pyatt Hall; and January 29 at 2:30 pm at ArtSpring on Salt Spring Island.
VETTA CHAMBER MUSIC has dedicated its 2023-24 season to human emotion. Artistic director Joan Blackman describes its upcoming third concert, Music of the Heart, as “unabashedly romantic”.
“I thought in these times we needed to reaffirm our connection to music through feelings,” Blackman tells Stir. “We musicians need to love what we play. And hopefully, that translates into a performance that can be loved.”
Joining Blackman on violin are Talisa Blackman (her niece) on piano and Zoltan Rozsnyai on cello.
Joan Blackman.
Zoltan Rozsnyai.
Sergei Prokofiev’s 1935 Romeo and Juliet for Solo Piano is one of three pieces to be performed.
“It does not get more romantic in the theme of the story and in the way Prokofiev pulls out piquant and aching melodies with large, almost dissonant, leaps that make our hearts skip a beat,” Blackman says. “Talisa Blackman is based in Toronto and is a super musician, humble and nimble at the same time. She is the pianist with Toronto Symphony Orchestra. So it seemed the perfect thing in this set of concerts to invite her to play some solo movements from Romeo and Juliet and showcase her enormous talent and passionate piano playing.”
The artists will also perform Johann Brahms’s 1853 Trio in B major Opus 8. Blackman, who calls Brahms one of her “all-time faves”, describes the piece as the most optimistic of the three Brahms trios. “I just salivate thinking about the opening theme, a love duet between the violin and cello,” Blackman says. “And when I think about any work by Brahms, I think about warmth, generosity, heart. The construction may be classical, but it expresses an overarching feeling of connection between instruments, between performer and audience, and from movement to movement.”
Rounding out the program is Arno Babajanian’s 1952 Piano Trio in F sharp minor. The Armenian composer was not familiar to Blackman until a Russian cellist-friend suggested Vetta perform this work pre-pandemic. The time is now.
“Composed in the Soviet post-war era, I did not expect to hear an exquisite outpouring of grief, passion, and hope,” Blackman says. “The first time I heard it my ears glommed on to the middle movement, whose opening ripped me apart—in that good way. Now the more I study and listen as we prepare to rehearse together, the more I know it was the perfect choice to end our program, all uber Romantic-tinged with the exotic tang of Armenian folk melodies and dance rhythms… The full gamut of human emotions from hopeful longing to desolate pining to exuberant dancing for joy.”
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