2008-2009 Masterworks Series

  • Masterworks 1

    Sat. Sept. 13, 2008

    (7:30 pm - Hamilton Place)

    Stairway to Heaven

    James Sommerville opens the 2008-09 HPO Season with a concert both spiritual and spectacular. Nathalie Paulin, one of Canada's finest young sopranos, appears in Gustav Mahler's radiant Fourth Symphony. One of Mozart's last symphonies (No. 39) adds a familiar beauty to the programme, which opens with an energetic showpiece by rising young Canadian composer Kelly-Marie Murphy, "And so be changed to lightning in the end".
    - Program -

    K. M. Murphy - "And so be changed to lightning in the end"
    Mozart - Symphony No. 39, K.543 E-flat major
    Mahler - Symphony No. 4, G major

    Featuring:
    • Nathalie Paulin, soprano
    • Conductor: James Sommerville

  • Masterworks 2

    Thurs. Oct 9, 2008

    (7:30 pm - Hamilton Place)

    Fate

    Hamilton's annual Great Romantics Festival joins the HPO again for a concert that presents the works of Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky, three titans of the Romantic style. Festival guest conductor Horst Foerster returns from Leipzig to lead the orchestra in a programme that showcases a breathtaking young Canadian talent, cellist Kaori Yamagami.
    - Program -

    Mendelssohn - Ruy Blas, op.95: Overture
    Schumann - Cello Concerto, op.129, A minor
    Tchaikovsky - Symphony No.4, op.36 F minor

    Featuring:
    • Kaori Yamagami, cello
    • Conductor: Horst Foerster

  • Masterworks 3

    Concert Sponsor

    Turkstra Lumber

    Sat. Nov. 8, 2008

    (7:30 pm - Hamilton Place)

    Passions

    All great works of art are forged in passion, and the best of them touch us deeply and memorably. Dvorak's love for his homeland and culture brought us his astonishing Symphony #7, steeped in the colours and rhythms of the Czechs. Brahms lived a life of great desires, thwarted and rewarded, whose dramas are echoed in one of his greatest masterworks, the Violin Concerto (performed by the incredible Scott St. John). Canadian Brian Current's "Symphonies in Slanted Time" evokes the passionate energies of youth and play.
    - Program -

    Brian Current - Symphonies in Slanted Time
    Dvorak - Symphony No.7, op.70, D minor
    Brahms - Violin Concerto, op.77, D major

    Featuring:
    • Scott St. John, violin
    • Conductor: James Sommerville

  • Masterworks 4

    Sat. Jan. 10, 2009

    (7:30 pm - Hamilton Place)

    Kuertissimo!

    Pianist Anton Kuerti is one of our great cultural resources, respected and admired by audiences across Canada and around the world. Now Julian Kuerti, associate conductor of the Boston Symphony, leads father Anton in Mendelssohn’s Rondo Brillant and G minor Piano Concerto, to begin our celebration of that great composer's bicentennial year. In Julian's premiere appearance with the HPO, he also leads Bartok's fiery Hungarian Sketches and Beethoven’s electric Symphony No.8.
    - Program -

    Bartok - Hungarian Sketches
    Mendelssohn - Piano Concerto No.1, op.25, G minor
    Mendelssohn - Rondo brillant, op.29
    Beethoven - Symphony No.8, op.93, F major

    Featuring:
    • Anton Kuerti, piano
    • Conductor: Julian Kuerti

  • Masterworks 5

    Sat. Mar. 28, 2009

    (7:30 pm - Hamilton Place)

    Summer Nights

    Our Mendelssohn bicentennial continues: his effervescent incidental music to Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream shimmers with ethereal fantasies. The call of languid summer nights resounds through Hector Berlioz's Nuits d'été and Melissa Hui's Night on Earth. Two outstanding Canadian sopranos, Joni Henson and Michèle Bogdanowicz, along with Hamilton's own Bach-Elgar Choir, lend their sparkling voices to this wonderful programme.
    - Program -

    Melissa Hui - Night on Earth
    Berlioz - Les nuits d’été, op.7
    Mendelssohn - A Midsummer Night’s Dream, op. 21 & 61

    Featuring:
    • Michèle Bogdanowicz, soprano
    • Joni Henson, soprano
    • Conductor: James Sommerville