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Vancouver Chamber Players

Vancouver Chamber Players fosters community through innovative chamber music performances, blending classical and contemporary styles. They aim to inspire and engage audiences while supporting local musicians and promoting musical education.

Step into &ldquo;Devil&rsquo;s Trill,&rdquo; a spooky evening of Halloween-inspired music performed by Domyno Duo.&nbsp; Domagoj Ivanovic, violinNoel McRobbie, piano Program Notes Giuseppe Tartini &mdash; Devil&#39;s Trill SonataIn 1713, Tartini dreamed he handed the Devil his violin &mdash; and the Devil played something so impossibly beautiful that upon waking, Tartini wrote this sonata in a desperate attempt to recapture it. He considered it a pale shadow of what he had heard, yet it remains one of the most demanding and haunting works in the violin repertoire. The climactic fourth movement features the infamous &quot;devil&#39;s trill&quot; &mdash; sustained double-stop trills played simultaneously with a singing melody &mdash; a technically terrifying feat that feels genuinely supernatural. Niccol&ograve; Paganini &mdash; Caprice No. 13, &quot;Devil&#39;s Laughter&quot;Paganini himself was rumoured to have sold his soul for his terrifying virtuosity &mdash; and Caprice No. 13 does nothing to discourage that legend. Nicknamed Il riso del diavolo (The Devil&#39;s Laughter), it opens with eerily smooth double stops before exploding into a flurry of rapid runs and string crossings that seem to mock human limitation. Brief and diabolically efficient, it is a portrait of infernal wit &mdash; laughter that cuts. Pablo de Sarasate &mdash; Faust Fantasy, Op. 13Spanish virtuoso Sarasate was a master of the operatic concert fantasy &mdash; the 19th century&#39;s way of bringing beloved arias to the recital stage. His Faust Fantasy plunges into Gounod&#39;s tale of soul-selling: the pact with M&eacute;phistoph&eacute;l&egrave;s, the seduction of Marguerite, and the glittering waltz of damnation. Sarasate opens with suitably diabolical harmonies before weaving the opera&#39;s most irresistible melodies into a showpiece of lyrical brilliance and bravura fireworks. Eug&egrave;ne Ysa&yuml;e &mdash; Sonata No. 2, &quot;Obsession&quot;Written in a single inspired night in 1923, Ysa&yuml;e&#39;s six solo sonatas are among the most demanding works ever composed for unaccompanied violin. The second, dedicated to French violinist Jacques Thibaud, earns its subtitle from Thibaud&#39;s obsessive daily practice of Bach&#39;s E-major Partita &mdash; which Ysa&yuml;e quotes and then violently disrupts with the Dies irae, the medieval plainchant of death. These two forces &mdash; Bach&#39;s luminous counterpoint and the grim chant &mdash; battle throughout all four movements, creating a haunted, otherworldly drama. Franz Liszt - Mephisto WaltzLiszt&#39;s Mephisto Waltz No. 1 puts the piano itself in the role of tempter &mdash; conjuring a demonic village dance where Mephistopheles seizes a fiddle and drives the revelers into a frenzy of seduction and abandon. At the keyboard, that transformation demands everything: skittering chromatic runs that mimic the devil tuning his instrument, thundering octaves, and a central melody so seductive it seems to hypnotize both dancer and listener. Few works ask a pianist to be storyteller, orchestra, and sorcerer all at once &mdash; come hear the instrument conjure the devil himself. Camille Saint-Sa&euml;ns &mdash; Danse Macabre, Op. 40At midnight on Halloween, Death tunes his fiddle &mdash; and one of his strings is deliberately mistuned, producing the dissonant tritone known to medieval musicians as diabolus in musica (the devil in music). So opens Saint-Sa&euml;ns&#39;s 1874 tone poem, in which skeletons clamber from their graves and dance till dawn. The solo violin plays Death himself, the Dies irae chant appears in eerie disguise midway through, and the xylophone rattles like bones. When the rooster crows, the skeletons return to their graves &mdash; until next year. John Williams &mdash; Devil&#39;s Dance, from The Witches of EastwickWilliams&#39;s Oscar-nominated score for the 1987 film &mdash; in which Jack Nicholson plays a charming, all-powerful Devil &mdash; is one of his most gleefully devilish creations. The Devil&#39;s Dance, featured over the end credits, is Williams&#39;s own contribution to the great tradition of diabolical music: a tarantella-like showpiece in triple time, twisting harmonically and melodically like a malicious spirit.&nbsp; With fiddle-like open strings evoking the devil&#39;s own instrument, it closes tonight&#39;s programme with wit, fire, and a knowing wink from the dark side.

Devil's Trill

Step into &ldquo;Devil&rsquo;s Trill,&rdquo; a spooky concert of Halloween-inspired music performed by Domyno Duo.&nbsp; Domagoj Ivanovic, violinNoel McRobbie, piano Program Notes Giuseppe Tartini &mdash; Devil&#39;s Trill SonataIn 1713, Tartini dreamed he handed the Devil his violin &mdash; and the Devil played something so impossibly beautiful that upon waking, Tartini wrote this sonata in a desperate attempt to recapture it. He considered it a pale shadow of what he had heard, yet it remains one of the most demanding and haunting works in the violin repertoire. The climactic fourth movement features the infamous &quot;devil&#39;s trill&quot; &mdash; sustained double-stop trills played simultaneously with a singing melody &mdash; a technically terrifying feat that feels genuinely supernatural. Niccol&ograve; Paganini &mdash; Caprice No. 13, &quot;Devil&#39;s Laughter&quot;Paganini himself was rumoured to have sold his soul for his terrifying virtuosity &mdash; and Caprice No. 13 does nothing to discourage that legend. Nicknamed Il riso del diavolo (The Devil&#39;s Laughter), it opens with eerily smooth double stops before exploding into a flurry of rapid runs and string crossings that seem to mock human limitation. Brief and diabolically efficient, it is a portrait of infernal wit &mdash; laughter that cuts. Pablo de Sarasate &mdash; Faust Fantasy, Op. 13Spanish virtuoso Sarasate was a master of the operatic concert fantasy &mdash; the 19th century&#39;s way of bringing beloved arias to the recital stage. His Faust Fantasy plunges into Gounod&#39;s tale of soul-selling: the pact with M&eacute;phistoph&eacute;l&egrave;s, the seduction of Marguerite, and the glittering waltz of damnation. Sarasate opens with suitably diabolical harmonies before weaving the opera&#39;s most irresistible melodies into a showpiece of lyrical brilliance and bravura fireworks. Eug&egrave;ne Ysa&yuml;e &mdash; Sonata No. 2, &quot;Obsession&quot;Written in a single inspired night in 1923, Ysa&yuml;e&#39;s six solo sonatas are among the most demanding works ever composed for unaccompanied violin. The second, dedicated to French violinist Jacques Thibaud, earns its subtitle from Thibaud&#39;s obsessive daily practice of Bach&#39;s E-major Partita &mdash; which Ysa&yuml;e quotes and then violently disrupts with the Dies irae, the medieval plainchant of death. These two forces &mdash; Bach&#39;s luminous counterpoint and the grim chant &mdash; battle throughout all four movements, creating a haunted, otherworldly drama. Franz Liszt - Mephisto WaltzLiszt&#39;s Mephisto Waltz No. 1 puts the piano itself in the role of tempter &mdash; conjuring a demonic village dance where Mephistopheles seizes a fiddle and drives the revelers into a frenzy of seduction and abandon. At the keyboard, that transformation demands everything: skittering chromatic runs that mimic the devil tuning his instrument, thundering octaves, and a central melody so seductive it seems to hypnotize both dancer and listener. Few works ask a pianist to be storyteller, orchestra, and sorcerer all at once &mdash; come hear the instrument conjure the devil himself. Camille Saint-Sa&euml;ns &mdash; Danse Macabre, Op. 40At midnight on Halloween, Death tunes his fiddle &mdash; and one of his strings is deliberately mistuned, producing the dissonant tritone known to medieval musicians as diabolus in musica (the devil in music). So opens Saint-Sa&euml;ns&#39;s 1874 tone poem, in which skeletons clamber from their graves and dance till dawn. The solo violin plays Death himself, the Dies irae chant appears in eerie disguise midway through, and the xylophone rattles like bones. When the rooster crows, the skeletons return to their graves &mdash; until next year. John Williams &mdash; Devil&#39;s Dance, from The Witches of EastwickWilliams&#39;s Oscar-nominated score for the 1987 film &mdash; in which Jack Nicholson plays a charming, all-powerful Devil &mdash; is one of his most gleefully devilish creations. The Devil&#39;s Dance, featured over the end credits, is Williams&#39;s own contribution to the great tradition of diabolical music: a tarantella-like showpiece in triple time, twisting harmonically and melodically like a malicious spirit.&nbsp; With fiddle-like open strings evoking the devil&#39;s own instrument, it closes tonight&#39;s programme with wit, fire, and a knowing wink from the dark side.

Nick Anderson, hornDomagoj Ivanovic, violinTina Chang, piano Program Notes Charles Koechlin &mdash;&nbsp;Quatre Petites Pi&egrave;ces, Op. 32Charles Koechlin (1867&ndash;1950) was one of France&#39;s most prolific yet underappreciated composers. His Quatre Petites Pi&egrave;ces for violin, horn, and piano are miniature gems &mdash; intimate, lyrical, and coloured by the warm, distinctive blend of the three instruments. Moving from a gentle Andante through hushed moderation and a playful Allegro quasi andantino to a witty Scherzando, they showcase Koechlin&#39;s gift for elegant, understated expression. W. A. Mozart &mdash; Trio for violin, horn and piano, after the Quintet in E-flat Major, K. 407Mozart wrote the Horn Quintet K. 407 in 1782 for his friend and horn virtuoso Joseph Leutgeb, scoring it with two violas to complement the warm, mellow timbre of the horn. This trio arrangement distils that intimacy for just three voices, preserving the gentle interplay of horn and violin and the genial, song-like character of the original. The Rondo &ndash; Allegro finale brings it to a spirited close. Johannes Brahms &mdash; Trio for piano, violin and horn in E-flat Major, Op. 40Composed in 1865 following the death of his mother, Brahms&#39;s Horn Trio is one of the great works of the chamber music repertoire. Written for the natural (valveless) horn, whose woody, hunting-call resonance Brahms loved, it opens unusually with a slow, ruminative Andante &mdash; the only non-sonata first movement in his chamber output. A vigorous Scherzo, a deeply mournful Adagio mesto, and a driving, exhilarating finale complete this profoundly personal masterpiece.

Brahms Horn Trio

Celebrate Valentine&rsquo;s Day with an evening of intimate chamber music, shared with friends, partners, and fellow music lovers. 🎻❤️ By registering for the Valentine&#39;s Gala, you help the Vancouver Chamber Players bring high-quality live music to our community and create an inclusive space where audiences and musicians can connect up close. Reserve your seats using the form below so we can welcome you, tune the strings, and set the stage for a warm, memorable night.

Valentine's Gala

<span fr-original-style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;" style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; box-sizing: inherit;">Infinitus is a critically acclaimed beatboxing string trio known for their unique sound and upbeat performance style. With a repertoire featuring classical standards and original jazz/hip-hop arrangements and compositions, Infinitus is quickly becoming one of North America&rsquo;s premiere chamber groups.&nbsp;

Infinitus!

David Lakirovich, violinJi Eun Jenny Lim, violinIsabelle Roland, violaJoseph Elworthy, celloIan Parker, piano Program Notes Anton&iacute;n Dvoř&aacute;k &mdash; Bagatelles, Nos. 1 &amp; 5, Op. 47In May 1878, Dvoř&aacute;k was asked to write a piece for a friend&#39;s home music circle &mdash; but the household had no piano, only a harmonium. The result was a charming set of five Bagatelles for two violins, cello, and harmonium (here heard in its alternative scoring for piano quartet), composed in less than two weeks. Lighthearted and unpretentious, the Bagatelles draw on the spirit of Czech folk song, with the opening movement built from the tune &quot;Hr&aacute;ly dudy&quot; (&quot;The bagpipes were playing&quot;). Tonight&#39;s selection offers two contrasting glimpses of this delightful, domestic miniature world. Dmitri Shostakovich &mdash; Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57Composed in 1940 at the invitation of the Beethoven Quartet, who wanted a work they could perform alongside the composer himself at the piano, this quintet became an immediate sensation, earning Shostakovich the inaugural Stalin Prize. Its five movements trace a striking arc: a stately Prelude gives way to a contemplative Fugue, a mischievous Scherzo, a hauntingly Bach-like Intermezzo, and a Finale built partly on a tune from the Russian circus. Beneath its wit and clarity lies real depth &mdash; a hallmark balance of irony and sincerity typical of Shostakovich at his best. Anton&iacute;n Dvoř&aacute;k &mdash; Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major, Op. 81Written in just seven weeks in 1887, Dvoř&aacute;k&#39;s second piano quintet stands alongside those of Schumann and Brahms as one of the great works for this ensemble. The lyrical opening movement gives way to a soulful &quot;Dumka&quot; &mdash; a Slavic lament that alternates between melancholy and sudden bursts of vitality &mdash; followed by a whirling Furiant, a fiery Bohemian dance. The joyous Finale, cast in polka rhythm, closes the work with one of Dvoř&aacute;k&#39;s most exuberant and folk-infused conclusions.

Dvorak and Shostakovich Quintets

Vancouver Cello Quartet Ashton Lim, Luke Kim, Kevin Park, Lee Duckles Arrangements of music by Popper, Mozart, Bloch, and others

Vancouver Cello Quartet

Donna Song, pianoJennie Press, violinLee Duckles. Cello Program Notes This morning&rsquo;s program traces three very different relationships between violin, cello, and piano: Mozart&#39;s effortless equality among the three voices, Hatzis&#39;s headlong collision of nostalgia and passion, and Arensky&#39;s elegy transformed into tribute. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756&ndash;1791)Piano Trio in C major, K. 548Mozart wrote this trio in July 1788, during the same extraordinarily fertile summer that produced his final three symphonies. It was, by contrast, a difficult season at home &mdash; debts were mounting, his wife Constanze was unwell, and the family had just moved to cheaper lodgings on the outskirts of Vienna &mdash; yet little of that strain surfaces in the music itself. K. 548 opens with confident, assertive octaves, answered by delicate, questioning replies from the piano, before flamboyant scales sweep the mood toward something sunnier. The central Andante cantabile, in F major, is warm and lyrical, while the closing Allegro restores the high spirits of the opening. Throughout, piano and strings trade material as true equals &mdash; a hallmark of Mozart&#39;s late chamber writing, and a quiet rebuttal to the troubles of that particular summer. Christos Hatzis (b. 1953)&quot;Old Photographs&quot;&quot;Old Photographs&quot; began life as a movement within Constantinople, Canadian composer Christos Hatzis&#39;s sprawling multimedia music-theatre work for soprano, Middle Eastern vocalist, piano trio, and electronics. Where much of that larger piece weaves together medieval chant, urban gospel, Sufi song, and Cretan folk music, &quot;Old Photographs&quot; stands apart: it is built entirely from Western idioms, opening with an introspective piano theme reminiscent of Schumann before sliding, almost without warning, into a wild, Piazzolla-style tango. That collision of tender nostalgia and untamed passion has made it the best-known excerpt from Constantinople &mdash; closely associated with the Gryphon Trio, who recorded the complete work, and taken up since by ensembles including the NZTrio. It now holds a life of its own as a staple of the piano trio repertoire. Anton Arensky (1861&ndash;1906)Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 32Arensky composed this trio in 1894 as a tribute to the cellist Karl Davydov, former director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, who had died five years earlier. Cast in four movements, it opens with a richly Romantic Allegro moderato built on three contrasting themes, music that owes an audible debt to Arensky&#39;s friend and mentor Tchaikovsky. A buoyant Scherzo follows, its central trio offering one of the graceful, Slavic-flavored waltzes for which Arensky was known. The slow third movement, &quot;Elegia,&quot; is the emotional core of the work: a muted, sorrowful melody passed quietly between cello, violin, and piano in memory of Davydov. The Finale opens with the trio&#39;s most dramatic material before recalling themes from the earlier movements on its way to a turbulent close. First performed in Russia by the end of 1894, with Arensky himself at the piano, the trio was an immediate success and has remained one of the best-loved works in the piano trio repertoire ever since.

Mozart, Hatzis and Arensky

Ashton Lim, celloJanelle Nadeau, harp Debussy, Saint-Saens, Villa-LobosLa fille au cheveux de lin- Claude DebussyLa vie en rose - Edith PiafPromenade &agrave; l&#39;autumn - Marcel TournierReverie - Claude DebussyMeditation - Charles GounodIntermezzo from &quot;Cavalleria Rusticana&quot; - Pietro MascagniEleanor Plunkett- TraditionalStar of the County Down - Traditional&nbsp;Tam Lin - TraditionalWaiting - Dorothy ChangSong of the Birds - Pablo CasalsLe Cygne - Camille Saint-Sa&euml;nsO Canto do cisne negro - Heitor Villa- LobosApr&egrave;s un r&ecirc;ve - Gabriel Faur&eacute;Regret - Mildred PlantBaroque Flamenco - Deborah Henson-ConantI Vow to Thee - Gustav HolstCan&#39;t Help Falling in Love - Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, George David Weiss Ashton Lim and Janelle Nadeau perform an intimate concert for cello and harp centered on music of exceptional beauty that invites listeners into a rich world of colour and atmosphere. Featuring primarily French composers alongside contemporary works and Celtic traditions, the program explores the natural affinity between cello and harp.The result is a seamless and immersive program&mdash;music that moves fluidly between impressionistic landscapes, heartfelt song, and vibrant traditional melodies.

Debussy, Saint-Saens and Villa-Lobos

AK Coope, clarinetDomagoj Ivanovic, violinNoel McRobbie, piano Ives: Largo (for violin, clarinet, and piano) Charles Ives wrote this brief, lyrical movement around 1901&ndash;02, reworking material from an early violin sonata he&#39;d begun as a student. It speaks in a late-Romantic voice closer to Brahms or Dvoř&aacute;k than to the dissonant, tune-quoting Ives of his later fame: a single unbroken arc that opens and closes quietly, the violin spinning out a wide-ranging melody over a gentle piano ostinato before the clarinet enters and the music swells to real expressive warmth. It went unpublished until 1953, the year before the composer&#39;s death. Stravinsky: L&#39;Histoire du soldat (The Soldier&#39;s Tale) Written in Switzerland in 1918, when wartime shortages ruled out anything like a full orchestra, Stravinsky&#39;s theater piece was scored for a small touring troupe: narrator, dancers, and just seven instruments (violin, bass, clarinet, bassoon, cornet, trombone, percussion). With writer C. F. Ramuz, he adapted a Russian folk tale about a soldier who trades his violin &mdash; and with it his soul &mdash; to the Devil for a book that predicts the future, growing rich but losing all capacity for joy. The score is a sly cabinet of borrowed popular dances &mdash; tango, waltz, ragtime, march &mdash; refracted through Stravinsky&#39;s new, spiky neoclassical rhythm. Schoenfield: Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano Paul Schoenfield composed this high-spirited trio in 1990, answering a request clarinetist David Shifrin had made four years earlier. Schoenfield wanted music equally at home in a concert hall or a Hasidic celebration, and its four movements &mdash; Freylakh, March, Nigun, and Kozatske &mdash; each draw on a different Eastern European Jewish dance or song form, swinging between exuberant virtuosity and passages of plaintive, improvisatory lyricism.

Soldier's Tale

Academy Chamber PlayersDomagoj Ivanovic, violinEsther Hwang, violinIsabelle Roland, violaTawnya Popoff, violaJoseph Elworthy, cello Program Notes Boccherini &mdash; String Quintet in E major, Op. 11, No. 5Luigi Boccherini, an Italian cellist-composer who spent most of his career in Spain, wrote nearly a hundred string quintets and essentially invented the two-violin, viola, two-cello format. This quintet owes its fame to its third movement, the &quot;Minuetto&quot; &mdash; an elegant, courtly dance that has become one of the most recognizable tunes in classical music. The outer movements show off Boccherini&#39;s lyrical ease and his idiomatic feel for the cello, the instrument he himself played with great virtuosity. Puccini &mdash; CrisantemiPuccini wrote Crisantemi (&quot;Chrysanthemums&quot;) for string quartet in a single night in January 1890, mourning the sudden death of Amedeo, Duke of Aosta. Brief but heartfelt, the piece unfolds a single mournful theme with the same melodic instinct that would soon make Puccini opera&#39;s reigning master of feeling. He later reused this material in the final act of Manon Lescaut, carrying the chrysanthemum&#39;s traditional association with mourning from the concert hall onto the opera stage. Wolf &mdash; Italian SerenadeBest known as a song composer, Hugo Wolf showed a lighter, more playful side in his Italian Serenade (1887), written for string quartet and later arranged for small orchestra. Inspired by Joseph von Eichendorff&#39;s novella about a carefree, wandering hero, the single-movement work bounds along with bright tunes, abrupt mood swings, and a wink of mock drama &mdash; one of Wolf&#39;s most charming and accessible instrumental scores. Tchaikovsky &mdash; Souvenir de FlorenceComposed in 1890 for string sextet, Souvenir de Florence, Op. 70, grew out of Tchaikovsky&#39;s stay in Florence, where he also began sketching his opera The Queen of Spades. Rather than a literal travel postcard, it&#39;s a showcase for his own melodic generosity, with Italian warmth and dance rhythms filtered through a distinctly Russian sensibility. The four movements move from songful lyricism to a dazzling, folk-flavored finale, and the work remains a cornerstone of the string sextet repertoire.

Vancouver Chamber Players

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Dvorak and Shostakovich Quintets

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Vancouver Cello Quartet

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Mozart, Hatzis and Arensky

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Debussy, Saint-Saens and Villa-Lobos

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Soldier's Tale

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Souvenir de Florence

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Dvorak and Shostakovich Quintets

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Vancouver Cello Quartet

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Mozart, Hatzis and Arensky

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Debussy, Saint-Saens and Villa-Lobos

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Soldier's Tale

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Souvenir de Florence

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