Last updated: March 24, 2023
Program
ESA-PEKKA SALONEN Homunculus for string quartet
ANDREW STANILAND Flute vs Flute for two flutes
KIMMO HAKOLA A même les échos I for solo violin
VALENTIN SILVESTROV Postlude for solo violin
FREYA WALEY-COHEN Snap Dragon for string quartet
Repertoire
Homunculus for string quartet
Esa-Pekka Salonen’s (b. 1958) restless innovation drives him constantly to reposition classical music in the 21st century. He is known as both a composer and conductor and is currently the Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony. He is Conductor Laureate for London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, where he was Principal Conductor & Artistic Advisor from 2008 until 2021; the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he was Music Director from 1992 until 2009; and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He is currently in the midst of Multiverse Esa-Pekka Salonen, a two-season residency as both composer and conductor, at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. Salonen co-founded—and from 2003 until 2018 served as the Artistic Director for—the annual Baltic Sea Festival. The recipient of many major awards, Esa-Pekka Salonen was most recently, in 2020, appointed an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE).
Homunculus is a short work for string quartet that Salonen had written during the autumn of 2007 for the Johannes Quartet. The ensemble performed the world premiere in 2008. In the composer’s words:
“I wanted to compose a piece that would be very compact in form and duration, but still contain many different characters and textures. In other words, a little piece that behaves like a big piece.
“In Homunculus, the four main characters (in order of appearance) are: “Scherzo”, irregularly pulsating, jagged music; “Slow movement”, a continuous metamorphosis of an easily identifiable slow phrase; “Main movement”, an intricate mid-tempo web of four voices densely woven together; and “Chorale”, a static, somewhat melancholy progression of chords. These characters, which in a traditional string quartet form would each form their own movement, are here interrupted by each other, and interspersed throughout the single movement of Homunculus. They keep developing and changing throughout the piece however, so when a character reappears it is rarely, if ever, an exact repetition of a previous appearance.
“At the end the “Scherzo” music brings the piece to a violent climax on a C major chord in an impossibly high register followed by a long glissando down. All the other characters appear one more time. Homunculus ends with a prolonged chorale which in my ears sounds somewhat sad and deeply nostalgic.
“The title of the piece refers to the arcane spermists’ theory, who held the belief that the sperm was in fact a “little man” (homunculus) that was placed inside a woman for growth into a child. This seemed, to them, to neatly explain many of the mysteries of conception.
“I decided to call my piece Homunculus despite the obvious weaknesses of the 17th century theory, as my goal was to write a small-scale piece that would nevertheless contain all the elements of a “fully grown” string quartet.”
Flute vs Flute for two flutes
Described as a “new music visionary” (National Arts Centre), composer Andrew Staniland (b. 1977) has established himself as one of Canada’s most important and innovative musical voices. His music is performed and broadcast internationally and has been described by Alex Ross in The New Yorker as “alternately beautiful and terrifying”. Important accolades include three JUNO nominations, an East Coast Music Association award, the 2016 Terra Nova Young Innovators Award, the National Grand Prize winner of EVOLUTION (presented in 2009 by CBC Radio 2 / Espace Musique and The Banff Centre), and was the recipient of the Karen Keiser Prize in Canadian Music in 2004. As a leading composer of his generation, Andrew has been recognized by election to the Inaugural Cohort of the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists Royal Society of Canada. He also performs as a guitarist and with new media (computers and electronics), and is currently on faculty at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where he founded MEARL (Memorial ElectroAcoustic Research Lab).
Staniland wrote Flute vs Flute in 2012. He describes it as a “capricious flute duet, or perhaps even a flute contest” and that it’s written to be “virtuosic, light, capricious, competitive, and fun, and meant to stand in contrast with the reams upon reams of contemporary art music that is perhaps too often devoid of these traits.” The flutes duel playfully with a range of traditional and extended playing techniques, the latter including key slaps and clicks, jet whistles, breathy sounds, and lip pops with key noises. It opens with a “theatrically competitive” section, after which there’s a “haunting and expressive” central episode, then closes with an “increasingly frantic” drive to the finish.
A même les échos I for solo violin
Finnish composer Kimmo Hakola (b. 1958) studied at the Sibelius Academy under Einojuhani Rautavaara and Eero Hämeenniemi. He entered the limelight at the end of the 1980s after winning the international Rostrum Prize in 1987 with his String Quartet, and again in 1991 for his Capriole for bass clarinet and cello. His music, so far, encompasses six operas, a wide range of orchestral works including several concertos for various solo instruments (clarinet, oboe, flute, electric kantele, guitar, violin), two oratorios, vocal and choral music, and chamber works (four string quartets, a clarinet quintet, a wind quintet, among others). Hakola’s music has been performed at several major music events and festivals, such as the Stockholm International Composer’s Festival in 2008, and portrait concerts of his works have been held in Los Angeles (Monday Evening Concerts) and in New York (Miller Theatre, Broadway).
Hakola has said his music is “pluralistic”, encompassing the “totality” of the tradition he grew up in, which “contains everything from Renaissance music to more recent music.” As Finnish music publisher Fennica Gehrman describes further, Hakola’s music “is known for its exciting dramaturgy and imagination since he views the world with an endlessly curious attitude. There are sudden and unexpected shifts in his musical landscapes as well as occasional surprises that act as additional dimensions for raising the music as an experience to a new and unpredictable level.” Notably, “Connections to musicians whose art has deeply spoken to Hakola have resulted in several works which are examples of his communicative style.”
Violinist John Storgårds is one of those musicians for whom Hakola has created works, such as this A même les echos I, which Storgårds originally premiered in April 1988. The piece unfolds with ferocity and blistering intensity, as the violinist performs virtuosic musical feats of Paganini-esque daring, playing traditional and extended techniques (including noises beyond the instrument, such as foot stamping) to create, says the composer, a “very wild and complex” musical experience.
Postlude for solo violin
Ukraine-born Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1937) is among today’s distinguished composers. During the 1960s, he was one of the leading representatives of the “Kiev avant-garde”, whose music had been ferociously criticized by the conservative Soviet establishment. His works were then rarely played in his native city but a small and dedicated group of proponents insured they were performed, when possible, in Russia or in the West. Circumstances eventually shifted and the composer and his music became an established presence in his home country as well as at numerous international festivals. In 2017, Silvestrov celebrated his 80th birthday with many concerts across the world featuring his works spanning a broad range of genres, including nine symphonies (to date), and many concertos, chamber works, and choral pieces. In March 2022, he fled to Germany, where he currently lives, due to the (still on-going) Russian war on Ukraine.
Silvestrov has come to call his compositional style “meta-music”, declaring that, “I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists.” This perspective applies to his thinking about the coda—the closing section of a musical work—as an echo or allusion to what has already been said before. Thus, more than just being the end, Silvestrov considers the coda to be “one of the most important parts of a composition, or at least just as important as the other sections,” as music critic and Silvestrov specialist Tatjana Frumkis has explained. She further notes, “His cantatas and symphonies all have lengthy codas, and so do his songs, in which postludes sometimes seem to take on a life of their own. These lingering ‘postludes’ subsequently evolved to form a new genre.”
This Postlude for solo violin (1981) is the second of a triptych of postludes for various instruments that Silvestrov composed in 1981 and 1982. Muted throughout, the violin plays a lyrical Baroque-style improvisation, cycling twice through a theme that proceeds in fragments, like an eroded echo of the original melody. The theme becomes its own postlude after which the violin bursts into a virtuosic toccata, featuring quicksilver runs and arpeggios and its own insistent melodic motif. Later, the lyrical music returns, but this time, its progress is intermittently interrupted by the dazzling elements of the toccata.
Snap Dragon for string quartet
Described as “at once intimate and visionary,” British-American composer Freya Waley-Cohen’s music is characterized by contrasts between earthy rhythmic play and fragility, luminous spaces, and a sense of the otherworldly. Many of her recent works play with myths, magic, and the occult as lenses through which to look at the contemporary world. Waley-Cohen’s music has been commissioned by institutions and ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Proms, Wigmore Hall, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, The King’s Singers, The Hermes Experiment, and the Royal Academy of Music, as well as the Aldeburgh, Presteigne, Santa Fe, and Cheltenham festivals, and has been released on the Signum, Nimbus, Nonclassical, Delphian, and NMC recording labels.
Commissioned by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Waley-Cohen (b. 1989) composed Snap Dragon for string quartet in 2017 and the Flux Quartet performed the world premiere in August of that year at the New Mexico Museum of Art. As she explains, the name of the work comes from the “vibrantly coloured and somewhat toxic flower named for looking a little like a dragon’s face.” Musically, the piece “plays with the idea of lively conversations between close friends as a starting point for musical structure; often playful, sometimes switching between topics unexpectedly in the excitement of shared ideas, sometimes heating up in debate, and easily diffused by a friendly joke. This string quartet brings out the interplay between the individual performers as soloists and as an ensemble in this piece, allowing moments where the individuals can pull apart from each other before coming back together.”
Program notes compiled and written by Hannah Chan-Hartley, PhD
Artists
Canadian violinist of German and Lebanese ancestry, Jessica Linnebach, has established herself as an accomplished artist with a thriving multi-faceted career encompassing solo, chamber, and orchestral performances.
Known for her “burnt caramel sound, utterly fearless virtuosity . . . and romantic lyricism” (ARTSFILE), Jessica has performed as a soloist with orchestras around the world. A passionate chamber musician, Jessica is a member of the Ironwood String Quartet along with her NAC Orchestra colleagues Emily Kruspe, Carissa Klopoushak, and Rachel Mercer. They are frequent performers at chamber music series and festivals, including the NAC’s WolfGANG and Music for a Sunday Afternoon series and Ottawa Chamberfest, Pontiac Enchanté, Ritornello, and Classical Unbound festivals. As part of a commitment to reaching broader audiences, Jessica is one of the artistic directors of the Classical Unbound Festival, a chamber music festival in Prince Edward County, Ontario.
Accepted to the world-renowned Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia at age ten, Jessica remains one of the youngest-ever Bachelor of Music graduates in the school’s history. While there, Jessica’s primary teachers were Aaron Rosand, Jaime Laredo, and Ida Kavafian. At age 18, she received her Master of Music from the Manhattan School of Music in New York City, where she studied with Pinchas Zukerman and Patinka Kopec.
Jessica resides in Ottawa, where she has been Associate Concertmaster with the NAC Orchestra since 2010. A natural leader, Jessica has performed numerous times as guest concertmaster with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.
Jessica plays a circa 1840 Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume (Guarnerius del Gésu 1737) violin. Her bows are crafted by Ron Forrester and Michael Vann.
Carissa Klopoushak has made a name for herself as a curious, creative, and versatile musician. She leads a multifaceted musical life as a violinist, violist, chamber musician, orchestral player, and curator. A charismatic and engaging performer, Carissa’s playing has been described as “the complete package of sensitive musicianship and effortless technique” (E-Gré Competition). Based in Ottawa, Canada, she is a proud violinist with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and the Ironwood Quartet and serves as Artistic Director of Ottawa Chamberfest.
A passionate collaborator, Carissa has been featured at many chamber music festivals across Canada and has toured the country extensively in recitals for Debut Atlantic and as the winner of the 2009 Eckhardt-Grammatté National Music Competition. Carissa joined the Australian Chamber Orchestra for a series of tours, residencies, and recordings in the 2013/2014 season and has shared the stage with acclaimed artists such as Lara St. John, Jon Kimura Parker, Inon Barnatan, Gryphon Trio, Cecilia Quartet, Mark Fewer, Martin Beaver, John Storgårds, Branford Marsalis, Miloš Karadaglić, and Richard Reed Parry. Since 2014, Carissa has been a member of the Ironwood Quartet, made up of friends and NACO colleagues Jessica Linnebach, Emily Kruspe, and Rachel Mercer.
Carissa’s love of chamber music extends into creation and curation, where she continuously strives to bring the concert experience into the 21st century through fresh and innovative programming and presentation. Named Artistic Director of Ottawa Chamberfest in 2020, Carissa programs and oversees a two-week summer festival (amongst the world’s largest), a fall-winter concert series, and a suite of community engagement and education initiatives. She cut her teeth as a curator, co-founder, and co-director of the Ritornello Chamber Music Festival in her hometown, Saskatoon, and as co-director of Classical Unbound in wine-loving Prince Edward County with Ironwood.
As a dynamic and fluid musician never limited by genre, Carissa thrives in the richness of various musical experiences. She is the lead singer, violinist, and arranger for the Ukrainian turbo-folk band Тут і Там (pronounced Toot-ee-tahm). The band has recorded four full-length albums and performed at major Ukrainian festivals across Canada, Sydney, Australia, and Ukraine. In her multidimensional world, she has co-composed and recorded a ballet score for Edmonton’s Ukrainian Shumka Dancers’ production Ancestors & Elders, performed the Canadian premiere of Vivian Fung’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra, and toured Canada, China, and Europe with the National Arts Centre Orchestra.
Carissa strongly advocates for more inclusion in classical music, programming and performing new music, female composers, and giving a platform to underrepresented voices. Her artistic evolution is guided by music’s universality—its power to connect people and its ability to build communities. As a musician and presenter, she aims to bring people closer together. The pursuit of meaningful and honest connection, combined with a healthy dose of curiosity, drives her artistic voice. She brings a versatile skill set, a unique voice, warm energy, and vigorous dedication to any musical pursuit.
Carissa holds a doctorate in violin performance from McGill University, where she focused on the little-known classical violin repertoire of Ukrainian composers. A two-time laureate of the Canada Council for the Arts Musical Instrument Bank Competition, Carissa performed on two Vuillaume violins from the collection, most recently a beautiful Maggini model from 1851.
Carissa currently performs on a 2009 instrument by Mark Schnurr of Flesherton, Ontario, and a Denis Cormier viola. Her debut recording, SOUNDWORLDS, was released in 2016 with Canadian pianist Philip Chiu. When not making music, you can find Carissa spinning vinyl, spending time with her partner, Emily, and their cats, Fig and Rosie, or expanding her love of coffee in some little café somewhere.
Described as a "pure chamber musician" (The Globe and Mail) creating "moments of pure magic" (Toronto Star), Canadian cellist Rachel Mercer has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician across five continents.
Grand prize winner of the 2001 Vriendenkrans Competition in Amsterdam, Rachel is Principal Cello of the NAC Orchestra in Ottawa and Co-Artistic Director of the "5 at the First" Chamber Music Series in Hamilton and Orleans, Ontario. Rachel plays with the Mercer-Park Duo, the St. John-Mercer-Park Trio and the Ironwood Quartet, and was cellist of the JUNO award-winning piano quartet Ensemble Made In Canada (2008-2020), the AYR Trio (2010-2020), and the Aviv Quartet (2002-2010). She has given masterclasses across North America, South Africa and Israel and talks on performance and careers in music.
An advocate for new Canadian music, Rachel has commissioned and premiered over 30 works, including cello concerti by Stewart Goodyear and Kevin Lau, as well as solo and chamber works by Vivian Fung, Andrew Downing, Alice Ho, David Braid, Kelly Marie-Murphy, John Burge, and Jocelyn Morlock. Recent chamber and solo albums include Kevin Lau: Under A Veil of Stars (Leaf Music), Our Strength, Our Song (Centrediscs), John Burge: One Sail (Naxos), Alice Ho: Mascarada (Centrediscs), and from 2012, the complete Bach Suites (Pipistrelle) with the 1696 Bonjour Stradivarius Cello from the Canada Council for the Arts Musical Instrument Bank. Rachel currently plays a 17th-century cello from Northern Italy.
Stephanie Morin joined the NAC Orchestra as Second Flute and Piccolo in 2020 and is currently on faculty at the University of Ottawa. In addition to her teaching at uOttawa, Stephanie has been a guest speaker and teacher at programs such as OAcademy, Fluture Music Studio and Flute On The Edge. She is also an active chamber musician and has performed in NAC chamber music concerts and at Ottawa Chamberfest.
Before her tenure at the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Stephanie was Assistant Principal Flute with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and Principal Flute of the Laval and Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean orchestras. She has also performed with ensembles such as Les Violons du Roy, the Orchestre Métropolitain, and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal.
Stephanie pursued her music studies in Montreal, first at Marianopolis College with Carolyn Christie, then at McGill University with Denis Bluteau, and finally at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal, where she completed a Master's in Flute Performance with Marie-Andrée Benny.
Stephanie is a prize-winner at the OSM Competition, the Canadian Music Competition, the Prix d'Europe, and the Orchestra Toronto Concerto Competition.
Named one of 2020’s “Rising Stars” by BBC Music Magazine, flutist Lara Deutsch is a versatile soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player known for her engaging warmth and ability to connect with audiences. Recipient of the $125,000 Prix Goyer for 2019-2020, Lara was also a first prize winner of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal’s 2014 Manulife Competition, at which she was awarded a total of seven prizes. Additionally, she was the Grand Prize Winner of both the National Arts Centre Orchestra Bursary Competition (2014) and the Canadian Music Competition (2010), as well as a laureate of the Concours Prix d’Europe (2016).
An avid chamber musician, Lara’s recent performance highlights include recitals for the New Classical FM’s Zoomer Hall series, the National Arts Centre (NAC) & Facebook’s #CanadaPerforms initiative, Newport Classical (Rhode Island, USA), the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal’s Virée Classique, Ottawa’s Music & Beyond Festival, and the Allegra Chamber Music series, of which she was Artist-in-Residence for the 2019-2020 season. Among her favourite collaborators are pianists Philip Chiu and Frédéric Lacroix, guitarist Adam Cicchillitti, and harpist Emily Belvedere, with whom she founded Duo Kalysta. She has recorded two chamber music albums on the Leaf Music Label: Origins (2019, Duo Kalysta) and Night Light (2022, with Philip Chiu), both of which were named to Top 20 lists for their respective years by CBC Music.
Lara is currently based in the Ottawa-Montreal area, where she has performed extensively with the NAC Orchestra, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, and the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, she has performed with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (of which she acted as Assistant Principal Flute & Piccolo for the 2016-17 season), the symphony orchestras of Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Kingston, and the McGill Symphony Orchestra, among others.
Whenever possible, Lara enjoys performing for young audiences through educational outreach concerts, principally as a member of the NAC’s Ayorama Wind Quintet. She is similarly dedicated to sharing her transformative experiences working with Olympic mental performance coach Jean-François Ménard, having hosted workshops internationally for performers of all ages. In November of 2020, she joined the music faculty at Carleton University as a performance instructor.
Lara performs on a 14k gold Haynes flute, generously loaned by Canimex Inc. of Drummondville, Québec.
She is incredibly grateful for the support of Mécénat Musica, the Canada Council for the Arts, and FACTOR in her ongoing projects, as well as for the years of invaluable guidance from her principal teachers and mentors: Denis Bluteau, Tim Hutchins, Camille Churchfield, and Cathy Baerg. She is represented by Latitude 45 Arts.
Principal Guest Conductor of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa and Chief Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, John Storgårds has a dual career as a conductor and violin virtuoso and is widely recognized for his creative flair for programming and rousing yet refined performances. 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, Storgårds appears with such orchestras as the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Munich Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de France, the Vienna Radio Symphony, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as all of the major Nordic orchestras, including the Helsinki Philharmonic, where he was Chief Conductor from 2008 to 2015. He also regularly returns to the Münchener Kammerorchester, where he was Artistic Partner from 2016 to 2019. Further afield, he appears with the Sydney, Melbourne, Yomiuri Nippon, and NHK symphony orchestras and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic.
Storgårds’s 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 Orchestra were released to critical acclaim by Chandos. November 2019 saw the release of the third and final volume of works by American avant-garde composer George Antheil. Their latest project, recording the late symphonies of Shostakovich, commenced in April 2020 with the release of Symphony No. 11. In 2023, Storgårds and the BBC Philharmonic were nominated for Gramophone magazine’s Orchestra of the Year Award.
Storgårds studied violin with Chaim Taub and conducting with Jorma Panula and Eri Klas. He received the Finnish State Prize for Music in 2002 and the Pro Finlandia Prize in 2012.