Shelley Conducts Strauss

Start: 2023-11-23T20:00-0500
End: 2023-11-23T22:00-0500
Location: Southam Hall

& Felix Klieser Plays Mozart

https://nac-cna.ca/en/event/33723

In-person event

Richard Strauss’s tone poems (one-movement symphonic works that tell a story) depict epic tales and ask life’s big questions. Contemporary Canadian composers Kelly-Marie Murphy and Kevin Lau reply with fresh companion pieces to two of Strauss’s best-known tone poems. Concert-level mastery of a work like Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4 takes patience, talent, and determination, and guest guest horn player Felix Klieser, a musical prodigy who was born with no arms, has worked...

November 22 - 23, 2023

November 2023

Nov 22 2023

Wednesday
8:00pm
Nov 23 2023

Thursday
8:00pm

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Southam Hall 1 Elgin Street Ottawa Canada

Tickets

Shelley Conducts Strauss

Nov 22 - 23, 2023

Southam Hall

Music Classical music Masterworks

Kelly-Marie Murphy Dark Nights, Bright Stars, Vast Universe (World premiere, NACO commission)
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RICHARD STRAUSS Don Juan, Op. 20
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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Horn Concerto No. 4 in E-flat major, K. 495
Kevin Lau The Infinite Reaches (World premiere, NACO commission)
RICHARD STRAUSS Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), Op. 24

Featured artists

In-person event

Richard Strauss’s tone poems (one-movement symphonic works that tell a story) depict epic tales and ask life’s big questions. Contemporary Canadian composers Kelly-Marie Murphy and Kevin Lau reply with fresh companion pieces to two of Strauss’s best-known tone poems.

Concert-level mastery of a work like Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4 takes patience, talent, and determination, and guest guest horn player Felix Klieser, a musical prodigy who was born with no arms, has worked since childhood to reach that pinnacle, learning to play the horn with his left foot.

Richard Strauss’s tone poem Don Juan follows the legendary and heartless womanizer through days and nights of wicked promiscuity and debauchery, through romance after ardent romance, until the infamous philanderer succumbs to a fiery and mournful end. Canadian composer Kelly-Marie Murphy took inspiration for her first NAC commission, which premieres tonight, from the other events taking place when Strauss wrote Don Juan, including Van Gogh’s painting Starry Night, and the extraordinary life of Scottish astronomer, Williamina Fleming, one of the founding members of the “Harvard Computers”.

Strauss was 25 years old when he composed another of his tone poems, Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), a “cosmic musical drama, concerned with the twilight of life,” (thelistenersclub.com). The piece asks lofty questions: What is the nature of life and what lies on the other side? Canadian composer Kevin Lau answers with his transcendent NACO commission entitled The Infinite Reaches, also making its world premiere in Southam Hall.

Learn more in the program notes ›

Artists

Conductor Alexander Shelley
Conductor Alexander Shelley

Alexander Shelley succeeded Pinchas Zukerman as Music Director of Canada’s NAC Orchestra in September 2015. The ensemble has since been praised as being “transformed... hungry, bold, and unleashed” (Ottawa Citizen) and Shelley’s programming credited for turning the orchestra into “one of the more audacious in North America” (Maclean’s).

Shelley is a champion of Canadian creation; recent hallmarks include the multimedia projects Life Reflected and UNDISRUPTED,and three major new ballets in partnership with NAC Dance for Encount3rs. He is passionate about arts education and nurturing the next generation of musicians. He is an Ambassador for Ottawa’s OrKidstra, a charitable social development program that teaches children life skills through making music together.

Alexander Shelley is also the Principal Associate Conductor of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and, starting with the 2024–2025 season, Artistic and Music Director of Artis-Naples and the Naples Philharmonic in Florida, USA. In the spring of 2019, he led the NAC Orchestra on its critically acclaimed 50th Anniversary European tour, and in 2017, he led the Orchestra in a tour across Canada, celebrating Canada’s 150th anniversary. Most recently, he led the Orchestra in its first performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 30 years.

He has made seven recordings with the NAC Orchestra, including the JUNO-nominated New Worlds, Life Reflected, ENCOUNT3RS, The Bounds of Our Dreams, and the acclaimed Clara, Robert, Johannes four-album series, all with Canadian label Analekta.

The Music Director role is supported by Elinor Gill Ratcliffe, C.M., O.N.L., LL.D. (hc)
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Horn Felix Klieser

Horn Felix Klieser

Felix Klieser is an exceptional artist in several aspects. At the age of five he took his first horn lessons, and at the age of 13 he enrolled as a junior student at the University of Music and Theatre in Hannover. In 2014 he received the ECHO Klassik Young Artist of the Year award as well as the Music Award of the Association of German Concert Directors. In the same year, Patmos Verlag published his life story Footnotes – A horn player without arms conquers the world. In 2016 he received the prestigious Leonard Bernstein Award of the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival. Highlights from Felix Klieser’s program for the 2023–2024 season include his debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London and at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. He also appears for the first time with the NAC Orchestra, conducted by Alexander Shelley. Another debut awaits him with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under the baton of John Butt. Klieser will also perform in renowned concert halls such as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Cologne Philharmonie, and the Vienna Konzerthaus.

In the field of chamber music, he is about to embark on an extensive tour in which he will present his septet program together with renowned musicians Sebastian Manz (clarinet), Dag Jensen (bassoon), Franziska Hölscher (violin), Wen-Xiao Zheng (viola), Lionel Martin (violoncello), and Dominik Wagner (double bass). This tour will take them to Innsbruck and Munich, among other places.

Felix Klieser will also return to established stages, including the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra as well as the Robert Schumann Philharmonic Orchestra, where he will perform Soundscape by Rolf Martinsson, which is dedicated to him.

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Composer Kelly-Marie Murphy
Composer Kelly-Marie Murphy

With music described as “breathtaking” (Kitchener-Waterloo Record), “imaginative and expressive” (The National Post), “a pulse-pounding barrage on the senses” (The Globe and Mail), and “Bartok on steroids” (Birmingham News), Kelly-Marie Murphy’s voice is well known on the Canadian music scene. She has created a number of memorable works for some of Canada’s leading performers and ensembles, including the Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras, The Gryphon Trio, James Campbell, Shauna Rolston, the Cecilia and Afiara String Quartets, and Judy Loman.

Kelly-Marie Murphy was born on a NATO base in Sardegna, Italy, and grew up on Canadian Armed Forces bases all across Canada. She began her studies in composition at the University of Calgary with William Jordan and Allan Bell, and later received a Ph.D. in composition from the University of Leeds, England, where she studied with Philip Wilby. After living and working for many years in the Washington D.C. area where she was designated "an alien of extraordinary ability" by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, she is now based in Ottawa, quietly pursuing a career as a freelance composer.
NAC media featuring Kelly-Marie Murphy
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Composer Kevin Lau
Composer Kevin Lau

One of Canada’s most versatile and sought-after young composers, Kevin Lau (b. 1982) has been commissioned by some of Canada’s most prominent artists and ensembles, and his work has been performed internationally in the USA, France, Denmark, Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. A prolific composer of orchestral, chamber, ballet, opera, and film music, he served as Affiliate Composer of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra from 2012 to 2015; to date, he has produced seven works for the TSO. Shortly after, he was commissioned to write two ballets with choreographer Guillaume Côté: a full-length ballet (Le Petit Prince) for the National Ballet of Canada and a half-hour ballet (Dark Angels) for the National Arts Centre Orchestra. He served as composer in residence for the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra from 2021 to 2023.
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Featuring NAC Orchestra
Featuring NAC Orchestra

Since its debut in 1969, the National Arts Centre (NAC) Orchestra has been praised for the passion and clarity of its performances, its visionary educational programs, and its prominent role in nurturing Canadian creativity. Under the leadership of Music Director Alexander Shelley, the NAC Orchestra reflects the fabric and values of Canada, reaching and representing the diverse communities we live in with daring programming, powerful storytelling, inspiring artistry, and innovative partnerships.

Alexander Shelley began his tenure as Music Director in 2015, following Pinchas Zukerman’s 16 seasons at the helm. Principal Associate Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and former Chief Conductor of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra (2009–2017), he has been in demand around the world, conducting the Rotterdam Philharmonic, DSO Berlin, Leipzig Gewandhaus, and Stockholm Philharmonic, among others, and maintains a regular relationship with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie and the German National Youth Orchestra.

Each season, the NAC Orchestra features world-class artists such as the newly appointed Artist-in-Residence James Ehnes, Angela Hewitt, Joshua Bell, Xian Zhang, Gabriela Montero, Stewart Goodyear, Jan Lisiecki, and Principal Guest Conductor John Storgårds. As one of the most accessible, inclusive, and collaborative orchestras in the world, the NAC Orchestra uses music as a universal language to communicate the deepest of human emotions and connect people through shared experiences.
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Stage Manager Laurie Champagne

Stage Manager Laurie Champagne

Laurie began her stage management career with English Theatre and Jean Roberts’s company at the National Arts Centre. Since then she has been honoured to work with NAC English Theatre, NAC Indigenous Theatre, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, and NAC Presents (now Popular Music and Variety). Laurie has been Production Stage Manager for the Shaw Festival and Theatre Calgary, and Stage Manager for, amongst others, Arts Club Theatre Company, The Globe Theatre, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Mirvish Productions, Stratford Festival, Great Canadian Theatre Company, Grand Theatre, Theatre New Brunswick, and Neptune Theatre.

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