Storgårds & Bruckner

Principal Guest Conductor of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa and Chief Guest Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, John Storgårds has a dual career as a conductor and violin virtuoso and is widely recognized for his creative flair for programming.  As Artistic Director of the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, a title he has held for over 25 years, Storgårds earned global critical acclaim for the ensemble’s adventurous performances and award winning recordings. 

Internationally, Mr. Storgårds appears with such orchestras as the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Munich Philharmonic, Dresden Staatskapelle, WDR Symphony Orchestra in Cologne, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Vienna Radio Symphony and the London Philharmonic, as well as all of the major Scandinavian orchestras, including the Helsinki Philharmonic where he was Chief Conductor from 2008 to 2015.   In North America, he is a regular guest with the Boston and Chicago symphony orchestras, the orchestras of Toronto, Montreal, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Detroit, Dallas and the National Symphony in Washington DC, as well as with the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. 

Mr. Storgårds’ award winning discography includes not only recordings of works by Schumann, Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn, but also rarities by Holmboe and Vask, which feature him as violin soloist. Cycles of the complete symphonies of Sibelius (2014) and Nielsen (2015) with the BBC Philharmonic were released to critical acclaim by Chandos. His most recent recordings are a highly acclaimed recording on BIS of Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 with the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, completed and arranged for chamber orchestra by Michelle Castelletti, and Shostakovich’s monumental Symphony No. 11 “The Year 1905” with the BBC Philharmonic as part of an ongoing Shostakovich symphony cycle being recorded for Chandos. Additional recordings include discs of works by Nørgård, Korngold, Aho and Rautavaara, the latter receiving a Grammy nomination and a Gramophone Award in 2012.

Silver medalist and laureate of the Krystian Zimerman Prize at the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, Canadian pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin is standing out today as one of the most important musicians of his generation. In 2014, he also won the second prize at the Montreal International Musical Competition and the third prize at the Seoul International Music Competition in South Korea. Charles is the recipient of the Order of Arts and Letters of Quebec and the prestigious Career Development Award offered by the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto.

He has appeared in various prestigious festivals including La Roque d’Anthéron in France, the Prague Spring Festival, the “Chopin and his Europe” Festival in Warsaw and the Lanaudière Festival in Canada. As a soloist, he has performed with more than fifty ensembles including the main symphony orchestras of Canada (Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Métropolitain, Québec, Edmonton, Calgary…) as well as with the Warsaw Philharmonic, Sinfonia Varsovia, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, the Korean Symphony Orchestra, OFUNAM (Mexico), les Violons du Roy and I Musici de Montréal. He has played under the baton of renowned conductors such as Kent Nagano, Rafael Payare, Antoni Wit, Vasily Petrenko, Jacek Kaspszyk, Aziz Shokhakimov, Peter Oundjian, Jacques Lacombe, Fabien Gabel, Bernard Labadie, Carlo Rizzi, Alexander Prior, Giancarlo Guerrero, Christoph Campestrini, Lan Shui and Jean-Marie Zeitouni. Charles Richard-Hamelin is a graduate from McGill University, the Yale School of Music, the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal and has studied with Paul Surdulescu, Sara Laimon, Boris Berman, André Laplante et Jean Saulnier.

Charles Richard-Hamelin has recorded eight albums to this day, all published on the Analekta label. In 2015, he first recorded acclaimed performances of Chopin’s last works. Launched in 2016, his second album brings together works by Beethoven, Enescu and Chopin, recorded in concert at the Palais Montcalm in Québec City. His discography then was enriched by three more CDs, one devoted to the first part of a complete collection of Beethoven violin and piano sonatas, recorded with the solo violinist of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Andrew Wan. His second offering, devoted to Chopin’s two piano concertos, was recorded live in concert at Montréal’s Maison symphonique with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal under the direction of Kent Nagano. His most recent collaboration with Les Violons du Roy led to the release of a Mozart album (Piano Concertos Nos. 22 and 24) conducted by Jonathan Cohen. These albums received awards and enthusiastic reviews from the leading music critics.

More recently, the second volume of his complete Beethoven sonatas for violin and piano with Andrew Wan was released, as well as a new Chopin recital featuring the 24 Preludes, the Andante spianato and the Grande polonaise brillante, Op. 22.

(Born in 1985)

Outi Tarkianen was born in Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland, a place that has proved a constant source of inspiration for her. She has long been drawn to the expressive power of the human voice, but has written vocal, chamber, and solo instrumental works as well as works for orchestra and soloist. “I see music as a force of nature that can flood over a person and even change entire destinies,” she once said.

Outi has been commissioned by orchestras including the San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony, BBC Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestras, and her music has been taken up by the symphony orchestras of St Louis, Detroit, and Houston, among others. Her early work with jazz orchestras culminated in Into the Woodland Silence (2013), a score that combined the composer’s sense of natural mysticism with the distinctive textures of the jazz orchestra tradition. Major works since include an orchestral song cycle to texts by Sami poets The Earth, Spring’s Daughter (2015), the saxophone concerto Saivo (2016, nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize), and Midnight Sun Variations premiered at the BBC Proms in 2019 (nominated for the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco’s Musical Composition Prize). Her first full-length opera, A Room of One’s Own (2021), was commissioned and premiered by Theater Hagen in Germany.

Outi studied composition at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, the Guildhall School in London and at the University of Miami. She has been composer-in-residence at the Festival de Musique Classique d’Uzerche in France and was for four years co-artistic director of the Silence Festival in Lapland. 

By Andrew Mellor

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

(1756–1791)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian composer. He wrote prolifically in nearly all the musical genres of his day, including operas, concertos, symphonies (and other types of instrumental pieces), string quartets and other works for chamber ensembles of various instrumental combinations, sacred and secular vocal music, dance music, and solo keyboard pieces. Many of his most significant works continue to be frequently performed in today’s opera houses and concert halls. Beautiful melodies, elegant formal structures, and rich textures and harmonies combined with a rhetorical manner highly influenced by Italian opera are hallmarks of his mature style.

Mozart was born on January 27, 1756, in Salzburg. His father Leopold, a violinist and composer, recognized early on that his son had musical talent and devoted himself to his (and Wolfgang’s sister Nannerl’s) education in music and other subjects. Over the next decade, Leopold took them both on extensive tours across Europe, during which the young Mozart gave performances (including of his own music) on the harpsichord and violin in the homes of the nobility and at public concerts. After three years as “honorary” Konzertmeister at the Salzburg court, Mozart moved into paid employment status in 1772. In this position, he initially fulfilled his duties of providing music for the church and court eagerly; however, over time, his enthusiasm for the latter waned due the restrictions his employer, the Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo, had placed on the performance of instrumental music. Undeterred, he continued to compose instrumental and secular vocal music for private patrons. In 1777, Mozart petitioned Colloredo for release from employment but was instead dismissed by the archbishop, though he returned in 1779 as court organist, when he was unable to secure a permanent position elsewhere.

In June 1781, while in Vienna at Colloredo’s request, Mozart got his wish to be formally released from the archbishop’s service. He began to pursue a freelance career in the city as a teacher, keyboard performer, and composer. In August 1782, he married Constanze Weber; they went on to have six children, though four died in infancy. The period between 1784 and 1788 became the most productive and fruitful years of his life, during which he conducted performances; was in demand as a keyboard player for public and private concerts; created some of his most notable works (among them, 12 piano concertos, six string quartets dedicated to Haydn, the operas Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, and what would be his final three symphonies); and his music was widely published and performed. Despite this success, Mozart was later troubled by financial woes, due, in part, to the cost of maintaining his social status in Viennese society. In the last years of his life, he completed works such as the Clarinet Quintet, and the operas Die Zauberflöte and La clemenza di Tito. Mozart was working on a Requiem under secret commission by Count Walsegg-Stuppach, which he left incomplete when he succumbed to his final illness on December 5, 1791, in Vienna.

By Dr. Hannah Chan-Hartley

Anton Bruckner

(1824–1896)

Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer and teacher, as well as an internationally renowned organ virtuoso during his lifetime. His compositional catalogue includes works for organ, piano, and chamber ensemble (including a string quintet), large vocal pieces with instruments, choral works both sacred and secular, and nine symphonies for which, along with his sacred compositions, he is best known today. His symphonies, notably, synthesize the Classical-era formal traditions of Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert, albeit with an innovative slant, and the harmonic and orchestration techniques of Richard Wagner, one of his musical idols. His music in general is also shaped by his devout Catholic faith.

Born in Ansfelden, near Linz, on September 4, 1824, Bruckner was involved in his village’s musical activities from a young age and was sent by his parents to his cousin Johann Baptist Weiss for studies in violin, piano, and composition. Following the death of his father in 1837, he was admitted as a chorister at the Augustinian monastery of St. Florian, where for three years, alongside singing and his regular schooling, studied violin and organ and played piano for chamber concerts there. After working as a teacher in various villages from 1841, he returned to St. Florian in 1845, where he was employed for the next decade as assistant schoolteacher and singing instructor; in 1850, he became the monastery’s provisory organist. Amidst his busy schedule, he found time to compose, at this time mostly choral music and secular cantatas.

In 1855, Bruckner became the Dom-und-Stadtpfarrkirchen organist in Linz; he also embarked on an unusually dedicated period to the rigorous study of harmony and counterpoint with Viennese theorist Simon Sechter until 1861, during which he abstained from composing. From 1861 to 1863, he studied form and orchestration with Otto Kitzler, who introduced Bruckner to Wagner’s music dramas. He subsequently completed several substantial works, including his First Symphony in 1866.

Bruckner moved to Vienna in 1868 to teach at the city’s conservatory, where he remained on faculty until he retired in 1891. He also worked as an organist at the Hofkapelle, and garnered an international reputation as a virtuoso, with tours to Nancy and Paris in 1869 and London in 1871. As a composer, he focused on writing symphonies, completing Nos. 2 to 5 between 1871 and 1876. The premiere of his Third Symphony (dedicated to Wagner) was disastrous, having been caught up in the musical-political debate in which the conservative Viennese public and critical establishment viewed Bruckner’s music as “decadent” in its association with Wagner. Thereafter, he began the practice of revising his scores. By the mid-1880s, however, Bruckner found champions of his work in the young composers and musicians who were involved in groups such as the Viennese Academic Wagner Society, of which Gustav Mahler was a member. Performances of his Seventh Symphony, as well as the Third (including at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House) brought Bruckner renown as a composer. Suffering ill health in his final years, he died on October 11, 1896, while still working on the finale of his Ninth Symphony.

By Dr. Hannah Chan-Hartley