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Peninsula previews Winter’s End

American composer, Edward Marcus, will share the conducting duties with Sidney Classical Orchestra’s leader Stephen Brown during the second concert of the season.
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Conductor Stephen Brown

American composer, Edward Marcus, will share the conducting duties with Sidney Classical Orchestra’s leader Stephen Brown during the second concert of the season.

The guest conductor will lead Grieg’s poetic Holberg Suite for string orchestra and the world premiere of Winter’s End, a work for solo cello and small orchestra. Joyce Ellwood will perform the cello solo. Winter’s End was written in 2009 as a gift for cellist Yali You, a professor of music at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, where Marcus also teaches.

The work was inspired by a conversation in which You described her upcoming trip to her childhood home in China to visit her aging father.

Marcus is a composer, conductor, and clarinetist. He holds a bachelor degree in clarinet performance, and a masters degree in conducting, both from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Marcus is a prolific composer of music for chamber ensembles, musical theatre, large wind ensemble, and orchestra, including several commissions.

The concert, The Magic of Strings and Flutes, will appropriately feature the special sound of stings combined with flutes.

Flautists Alberta Brown (daughter of conductor Brown) and Mary Byrne will join the orchestra performing two concertos, the Antonio Vivaldi Double Flute Concerto in C major, and the Johann Joachim Quantz Solo Flute Concerto in G major. The Quantz concerto will be performed by Alberta Brown who is completing her masters degree in flute performance at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, with the principal flute of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Mathieu Dufour. Dr. Mary Byrne, Woodwinds, Brass, and Percussion Department head at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, is a frequent performer with the Victoria Symphony and the Sidney Classical Orchestra. She performs as both a solo recitalist and in a wide variety of chamber ensembles on Vancouver Island’s stages.

Quantz (1697-1773) was one of the first professional flute players in 18th century Europe. He began as a town musician, trained to play all instruments, but after gaining a post as an oboist in the prestigious Dresden court ensemble, he began to specialize in the flute in 1719. He wrote about 300 flute concertos. The G major concerto is one of his gems.

Also on the program, featuring two flutes and strings, is the popular Fantasy on Greensleeves by Vaughn Williams and conductor Brown’s Black Eyed Susan. This work is an arrangement of the third movement of his Fife and Fiddle Suite. The suite is a four-movement piece based on Canadian fiddle tunes and was premiered by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

Rounding off the program will be Canadian composer Claude Champagne’s infectious Danse Villageoise, and the deeply moving Air in D major by J. S. Bach, also know as the Air on the G String.

The Magic of Strings and Flutes is the second concert of the Sidney Concert Society’s 2010-11 season. It will be held Friday, Jan. 28 at St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church, 10030 Third St. starting at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for youth, available from Tanner’s Books in Sidney, Russell Nursery in North Saanich, City Scribe in Brentwood Bay and at the door. Full details online at www.sidneyclassicalorchestra.ca.

reporter@peninsulanewsreview.com