Bramwell Tovey, Yefim Bronfman perform Beethoven with the VSO, November 12 and 13
The Grammy-winning artists join forces for a program that also includes Tchaikovsky and Balfour
Yefim Bronfman. Photo by Todd Rosenberg
Bramwell Tovey.
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra presents Bronfman, Tovey and Beethoven on November 12 and 13 at 8 pm at the Orpheum Theatre.
A POWERHOUSE TEAM joins Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at its upcoming live concerts.
Bramwell Tovey hardly needs an introduction: the Grammy- and Juno-winning conductor and composer is VSO’s music director emeritus, having held the baton here from 2000 to 2018. He founded the VSO's state of the art School of Music downtown, which was renamed the Tovey Centre for Music in his honour in 2018. Now based in London, England, Tovey is principal conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra and also acts as artistic advisor of the Rhode Island Philharmonic. As a guest conductor, he works all over the globe with esteemed groups such as the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Boston, Chicago, Melbourne, and Sydney Symphonies. A celebrated composer, he’s currently writing a violin concerto for James Ehnes for the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa.
Yefim Bronfman is a star is his own right. Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, he and his family immigrated to Israel, where he studied with the head of the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University. Upon moving to the United States, he studied at the Juilliard School, Marlboro School of Music, and the Curtis Institute of Music. Bronfman is considered one of the most skilled piano virtuosos performing today, with a Grammy award and several nominations to his name along with acclaimed solo, chamber, and orchestral recordings.
Bronfman will perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor. When it premiered in 1803, it was apparently still a work in progress, Beethoven performing as soloist with a second-string orchestra. Ignaz von Seyfried, one of the master’s students who was appointed to be his page-turner, later reported: “I saw empty pages with here and there what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs, unintelligible to me, scribbled to serve as clues for him. He played most of his part from memory, since, obviously, he had put so little on paper. So, whenever he reached the end of some invisible passage, he gave me a surreptitious nod and I turned the page. My anxiety not to miss such a nod amused him greatly and the recollection of it at our convivial dinner after the concert sent him into gales of laughter.”
It's now considered one of Beethoven’s most beautiful works.
Also on the program are Andrew Balfour’s Pyotr’s Dream and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.
For more information, see the VSO.
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