2:00 pm

The Kruspe family has been performing together since Emily and Jamie were very young. They both began violin lessons with Cathie at a young age, and continued under her guidance until shortly before their entrance into the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music, when they began studying with their present teachers, Jacques Israelievitch (Jamie) and Erika Raum (Emily).

Jamie is in his graduating year of the Performance program at the Faculty of Music. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, and was recently chosen as this year’s winner of the prestigious Orford String Quartet Scholarship in chamber music. He was a member of the trio that was awarded this year’s Galimir chamber music prize; they were invited to participate in the spring session at the Banff School of Fine Arts, where the previous summer Jamie also was selected for the master class program. For three summers he has been a scholarship student at the Chautauqua Institute in New York, where Mr. Israelievitch is the director of the string program.

Emily is in her second year of the Faculty of Music Performance program. Her string quartet finished as runners-up in the Galimir competition, and performed together with Jamie’s trio in a concert in the Edward Johnson Building in April. Emily was selected for the master class program in Banff this summer, and was also a participant in its orchestral training session. She has been a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, and was also a member of the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra for several years, on both violin and clarinet. This past winter she participated in the Toronto Kiwanis Festival, and was awarded the President’s Trophy for most outstanding performance overall.

Cathie studied with Lorand Fenyves while she was a student at the Faculty of Music; she also holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Toronto. She performs regularly as an orchestral and chamber musician, and is a section leader in the Koffler Chamber Orchestra. She maintains a private teaching studio in her home, where Jamie and Emily were among her first students.

John hails from Brantford, where he studied with Mary O’Grady. He was a soloist with the Brantford Symphony Orchestra in 1969, and has been a performer in Music Club concerts on two previous occasions. At the University of Toronto he studied with Douglas Bodle and Anton Kuerti, and has been a member of the Theory and Composition division at the Faculty of Music there since 1973. He has given many solo and chamber concerts, most recently an all-Chopin recital in September.

Brandon Wilkie grew up in Pembroke, Ontario, where he spent much of his time helping out at his dad's music store. His first instrument was the guitar, and it wasn't until he was 14 that Brandon began playing cello. Since then, he has performed several concertos with community orchestras and has participated in master classes with renowned cellists such as Aldo Parisot and Janos Starker. Brandon was the recipient of the Laura Kinton Muir Scholarship for cello performance and is in his final year of his bachelor's degree, studying with Shauna Rolston.

The Music:

Antonin Dvorák opens our program with a lovely chestnut: one of his best-known melodies, from the set of orchestral pieces which more than any other of his works established the international reputation which led to the momentous invitation to direct the National Conservatory in New York.

Friedrich Hermann was a violinist and composer who spent much of his life in Leipzig. In 1843 he entered the Leipzig Conservatory, which had just been founded by Felix Mendelssohn, and became a violin student of Ferdinand David and a composition student of Mendelssohn himself. He later joined the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and was appointed Professor of Violin at the Conservatory in 1848. The works on tonight’s program – for three unaccompanied violins – are unusual for that very reason: the repertoire for such a combination is very limited. They are well-written, technically challenging, witty and very listener-friendly.

Eugčne Ysa˙e was one of the most famous and successful violinists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Belgian by birth, he was later awarded a professorship at the Brussels Conservatoire. His teaching career there could hardly match his reputation as a performer: he was known internationally as the the “King of the Violin” - the Franck Sonata, for example, was dedicated to him, and the Ysa˙e Quartet, which he founded, premiered Debussy’s String Quartet. Nevertheless he is also well-known as the teacher of many important violinists of the 20th century, such as Josef Gingold, William Primrose, and Nathan Milstein. In addition, he was remarkably gifted as a composer: his six solo sonatas, op.27, each dedicated to a well-known violinist and written in a corresponding style, number among the peaks of the violin repertoire. The two being performed tonight are dedicated to Georges Enescu (#3) and Fritz Kreisler (#4). Richard Addinsell was a British composer who enjoyed a successful career writing for Broadway musicals and television, but is best known for his film music, and primarily his Warsaw Concerto, composed for the 1941 film Dangerous Moonlight. The makers of the film wanted music in the style of famed Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, but were unable to persuade Rachmaninoff himself to take on the assignment.

Robert Schumann was born in 1810, and the Quintet, one of his most often-performed works, is our recognition of this bicentenary. Written in 1842 along with his string quartets, piano trio and piano quartet, it is buoyant and optimistic despite a funeral march in the slow movement. The soaring opening theme leaps up from the home key’s tonic E flat to a D flat, and the off-beat resolution of that D flat to C provides not only the choice of key (C minor) for the funeral march and for the last movement theme, but also the syncopated rhythms of all four movements. The home key reasserts itself in a double fugue at the quintet’s close, in which are combined the main themes of both the first and last movements.

Michael McLean is a composer based in Utah whose popularity derives as much from his many recordings as from his printed music. Csardas is typical of his output: upbeat, easy listening that draws upon various traditional cultures.