Duo Concertante (Nancy Dahn, violin & Timothy Steeves, piano) is celebrating almost three many years of worldwide touring and performing with a brand new launch. Maier Franck Schumann: Violin Sonatas can be launched on the Delphian Information label on August 22.
The repertoire focuses on the Romantic sonata and its expressive potentialities.
Robert Schumann wrote his Sonata No. 1 in a mere 4 days in 1851. The work pushes the envelope in terms of notions of Classical restraint propriety. The emotional depth of the Sonata would show inspirational to generations of future composers.
Amanda Maier’s B minor Sonata was composed in 1874, and gained a prize from the Swedish Artwork Music Society. César Franck’s a lot beloved A significant Sonata rounds out the album.
Duo Concertante (Nancy Dahn, violin & Timothy Steeves, piano): The Interview
They’ve been a private {and professional} duo for many years. “I assume 1998,” says Dahn. “That’s a very long time in the past.” It’s once they formally turned Duo Concertante, performing ensemble.
“On the very starting, we thought we’d begin out by studying the Beethoven Kreutzer Sonata. Why not begin with essentially the most troublesome?” she laughs.
Definitely, toughing it out over a troublesome piece generally is a precursor to an excellent working relationship. As they started to tour and carry out collectively frequently, they agreed on a twin concentrate on normal repertoire and new music.
“It’s been a very wealthy expertise specializing in each,” Nancy provides.
The Duo has commissioned greater than 65 authentic works from Canadian and worldwide composers over their profession as an ensemble, together with Chan Ka Nin, R. Murray Schafer, Kati Agócs, Andrew Staniland, Kelly-Marie Murphy, Alice Ho, Omar Daniel, Linda Bouchard, and Jean Lesage, amongst many others.
The Tuckamore Competition
The couple based the Tuckamore Chamber Music Competition, primarily based in St. John’s Newfoundland, in 2001. The 2025 version happened from June 23 to July 6. This system included 25 concert events unfold throughout 25 venues within the area.
“This 12 months, we celebrated our twenty fifth competition. That was sort of thrilling, 25 years,” Steven says.
They’ve expanded on their typical summer time programming to incorporate just a few extra concert events all through the season. “We’ve an enormous instructional competition as effectively,” Steeves says. This 12 months’s cohort included 23 younger string gamers and pianists who labored with seasoned artists. He experiences that a few of these budding musical partnerships will end in excursions and performances later this 12 months.
“This 12 months, for the twenty fifth 12 months competition, we actually went loopy,” Nancy provides. That included a further 37 concert events throughout your entire province, incorporating Labrador, and so far as Hopedale. “These actually distant communities,” she says. “Newfoundland is large. Simply attending to the opposite aspect is 10 hours in your automotive. It was an effective way to have a good time 25 years.”
A lot of these concert events had been essentially held in smaller venues, however they had been routinely filled with appreciative audiences.
“The audiences had been actually hungry to listen to classical,” Dahn says.
The Repertoire
The music on the album is available in half from their historical past of performing collectively.
“We’ve performed a few of these lots,” Nancy notes. “The Franck Sonata — it’s been a pillar of our repertoire.”
“We’ve been enjoying the Schumann for about 20 or 25 years,” Steeves says.
“For me personally, I didn’t respect the genius of Schumann till later in life,” Nancy provides. “It took me some time dwelling along with his work to acknowledge his uniqueness.”
The variations captured on the album are interpreted with years of expertise. Maier’s Sonata is the outlier.
“Maier could be very recent,” Timothy says. “Terrific piece. She was a wonderful violinist and an incredible composer.” As he factors out, and customary for the time, as soon as Amanda married and had kids, any skilled aspirations had been put aside. The Swedish violinist and composer died on the younger age of 41 in 1894.
Her work suits neatly between Schumann and Franck.
“It enhances the Schumann,” Timothy says.
Nancy notes that the work of the uncared for composer first got here to her consideration by way of a thesis that had been written on Maier. One in every of her violin college students at Memorial College discovered the Sonata.
“I stated to Tim, , it is a actually, actually nice piece,” Dahn remembers. “We play it lots now.”
“It’s a very nice piano piece too,” Steeves provides. “The 2 devices work collectively actually, rather well. It’s actually thrilling to hearken to and lots of enjoyable to play.”
“She wrote this piece when she was 23. It’s simply astounding,” says Nancy. “There’s already a very particular person voice there, a character.”
It’s one other of the growing variety of works which were rediscovered and/or revived after generally centuries of neglect in terms of illustration within the conventional canon of classical music.
“It’s probably not true, the best way we expect, that the items we’ve ended up at the moment are actually the best items, as a result of it hasn’t been an excellent enjoying discipline in any respect,” Dahn states.
From a 2023 efficiency:
Beloved Franck
“I feel the Franck particularly — we’ve journeyed by means of the Franck.” As he factors out, César Franck’s Violin Sonata in A Main was written as a marriage current for virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe in 1886.
The music is commonly interpreted as describing a long run relationship from early ardour to disillusionment to studying to stay collectively in concord.
“It’s all within the piece,” Nancy says.
It’s all the time been on their listing of works to file, however it offered some distinctive challenges.
“I feel that we’ve simply come to grasp it higher over time,” Kahn says. “It was arduous to seek out the correct match with different items. It’s a masterpiece by itself.”
For the ensemble, the recording represents an opportunity to work on music they had been enthusiastic about.
“All through your profession, persons are usually suggesting, oh why don’t you file this,” he says. There’s usually an emphasis on what’s new and attention-grabbing “After 30 years, I do know that Franck is a very well-liked piece, and the Schumann is a well-known piece, however we’re not getting any youthful,” he laughs. “The Franck’s been on that listing for a very long time.”
Recording in Edinburgh
“The precise recording course of, we recorded it in Edinburgh and it was fabulous,” Steeves says.
The recording had been captured in Greyfriars Kirk, a Church of Scotland cathedral based in 1620. On the recording day, there was a throng of vacationers on the road. “What we discovered was, JK Rowling had written Harry Potter throughout the road,” he says.
Delphian, their file firm, made certain the added road noise didn’t make it into the recording.
“They’re fabulous to work with,” Timothy provides.
The Scottish recording firm connection stems from his research in Germany. A trainer retired to Scotland and recorded with Delphian. A merely inquiry from Timothy was all it took to be signed with the Edinburgh-based firm.
“Edinburgh is such an unimaginable place,” Nancy says.
Their recording Maier Franck Schumann can be out there on Amazon on August 22, 2025 [HERE] and by way of Delphian Information [HERE].
Are you trying to promote an event? Have a news tip? Must know the most effective events occurring this weekend? Ship us a note.
#LUDWIGVAN
Get the each day arts information straight to your inbox.
Join the Ludwig Van Toronto e-Blast! — native classical music and opera information straight to your inbox HERE.
Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. Beforehand, she was a contract author with a specialty in tradition and journey for 3 many years, and a inventive writing teacher for Ontariolearn.
