ARC Ensemble | House Program | April 21, 2024

CLASSICAL / ENSEMBLE SERIES
ARC ENSEMBLE
APRIL 21 AT 2:30 PM
CLASSICAL / ENSEMBLE SERIES
ARC ENSEMBLE
APRIL 21 AT 2:30 PM
THIS PERFORMANCE IS DEDICATED TO
THE LATE DR. ALFRED BADER

ARC
ENSEMBLE
Erika Raum, violin*
Marie Bérard, violin
Steven Dann, viola
Thomas Wiebe, cello
Joaquin Valdepeñas, clarinet
Kevin Ahfat, piano
PROGRAM
FREDERICK BLOCK Suite for Clarinet and Piano, op. 73 [1944]
[1899-1945] I Spanish Prelude Vivace
II Pastoral Andante
III Gaiety Allegretto vivo
IV Orientale Andante
V Fugue
PAUL BEN-HAIM Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a [1941]
[1897-1984] I Molto Moderato
II Capriccio: Molto Vivo
III Tema con variazioni: Sostenuto e dolce
INTERMISSION
ERICH WOLFGANG Piano Quintet in E major, op. 15 [1921]
KORNGOLD I Mässiges Zeitmass, mit schwungvoll blühendem Ausdruck
[1897-1957] [Moderate tempo, with spirited, blooming expression]
II Adagio Mit grösster Ruhe, stets äusserst gebunden und ausdrucksvoll
[Adagio With the greatest of calm, always legato and expressively]
III Finale Gemessen, beinahe pathetisch
[Finale Measured, almost pitiful]

ABOUT TODAY’S PERFORMANCE
Frederick Block and his wife Ina arrived in New
York in June, 1940. They had married in London
having fled Vienna after Hitler’s annexation of
Austria. The only child of a well-to-do Jewish
couple, Frederick had been able to devote himself
entirely to music. Shortly after arriving in New
York, recurring premonitions of his imminent death
began to plague him. They proved accurate, and
Block succumbed to cancer on June 1, 1945. There
is an impressive strength and a deft originality to
the five fleeting movements of Block’s Suite for
Clarinet and Piano, op. 73, as well as a wonderful
conviction and concision in his development of the
musical material. The ARC Ensemble’s recording of
Block’s chamber music will be released this fall, the
first ever commercial recording of his sophisticated
and richly romantic music.
The young Munich composer Paul Ben Haim
(né Paul Frankenberger) was among the many
German Jews who fled Hitler in 1933. Before the
war’s end, he had re-established himself with a
new name, and soon thereafter set on a path that
would establish him as the founding father of
modern Israeli music. The 1941 Quintet for Clarinet
and Strings is one of Ben-Haim’s most popular
pieces. He wrote of the work: “[...] I was very
satisfied because I felt that I had at last succeeded
in consolidating a new style”. In the tradition of
the two cornerstones of the clarinet’s chamber
repertoire – the quintets by Brahms and Mozart –
Ben-Haim drew on standard European techniques
of thematic transformation; where melodies, or
fragments of melodies, are manipulated to create
new material that still retains a relationship with
the original.
Erich Korngold’s Piano Quintet, op. 15, completed
in 1921, demands virtuosic musical and technical
ability, and its entry into the canon has been
gradual at best. Elements of Korngold’s opera
Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City) which preceded
the quintet and enjoyed enormous success, infuse
the work. The Quintet’s outer movements reveal
Korngold at his most effusive, as well as at his
most particular; scarcely a bar goes by without
instructions regarding tempo or expression. The
quintet’s composition coincided with Korngold’s
courtship of the beautiful young actress Luzi
von Sonnenthal, whom Erich later married. The
quintet’s second movement and the refinement
and brilliance of its theme and variations, is
nothing less than a love letter to Luzi., waves of
angst heightened by ever-shifting time signatures.
The composer’s Vier Abschiedslieder, op. 14 (Four
Songs of Farewell) provide musical material here,
in particular the third Mond, So Gehst Du Wieder
Auf (Moon, You Rise Again) whose text includes
the lines:
“Teach, teach me not to yearn for her,
To make my blood run pale,
Not to suffer this sorrow,
Caused when two souls part.”
Todays’s performance is dedicated to the late Dr. Alfred
Bader, BSc’45, BA’46, Msc’47, LLD’86, commemorating what
would have been his 100th Birthday on Sunday, April 28,
2024. An Austrian Jew of Czech descent and committed arts
philanthropist, Alfred Bader, along with his late wife, Dr. Isabel
Bader, embraced an extraordinary vision for the arts and for
humanity. It is because of them that the magnificent Isabel
Bader Centre for the Performing Arts was created. With this
concert, the Isabel pays tribute to Dr. Alfred Bader and his
life and impact at Queen’s University.

ABOUT ARC ENSEMBLE
The ARC Ensemble (Artists of The Royal
Conservatory) was established in 2003 as The
Conservatory’s ensemble-in-residence and is
now among Canada’s most distinguished cultural
ambassadors, with Juno, OPUS Klassik, and
multiple Grammy nominations as well as glowing
international reviews.
ARC‘s repertoire is largely dedicated to music
suppressed and marginalized under the 20th
century’s repressive regimes. ARC believes that
there is a moral obligation to recover works that
have been forgotten because of political or racial
discrimination, and that their omission sustains the
aims of perpetrators, and leaves us with a distorted
appreciation of cultural history. A growing number
of extraordinary works are joining the repertoire as
a result of ARC’s work.
The ARC Ensemble has appeared at major festivals
and series, including the Budapest Spring Festival,
the George Enescu Festival (Bucharest), New
York’s Lincoln Center Festival, Canada’s Stratford
Festival, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, London’s
Wigmore and Cadogan Halls, and Washington’s
Kennedy Center. The ARC Ensemble’s “Music
in Exile” series has been presented in Tel Aviv,
Warsaw, Toronto, New York, and London, and its
performances and recordings (on Sony’s RCA
Red Seal and Chandos labels) continue to earn
unanimous critical acclaim and frequent broadcasts
on stations around the world.
Comprised of senior faculty of The Royal
Conservatory’s Glenn Gould School, with special
guests drawn from the organization’s most
accomplished students and alumni, the ARC
Ensemble’s core group consists of piano, string
quartet and clarinet with additional disciplines
as repertoire demands. The ARC Ensemble has
collaborated with a range of artists, including the
late pianist Leon Fleisher, the novelist Yann Martel,
actors Saul Rubinek and R.H. Thompson, and
composers R. Murray Schafer, Omar Daniel and
Vincent Ho.
EXIT: MUSIC, a documentary exploring the
ensemble’s work, premiered in November 2016 at
Toronto’s Hot Docs Cinema. Subsequent screenings
at international festivals led to distribution deals
with First Run Features for the USA and EuroArts
for the rest of the world.
James Conlon, Music Director of the Los
Angeles Opera and a pioneer in the recovery
of lost twentieth-century repertoire, is the ARC
Ensemble’s Honorary Chairman. ARC’s core
members are Erika Raum and Marie Bérard, violins;
Steven Dann, viola; Tom Wiebe, cello; Joaquin
Valdepeñas, clarinet and Kevin Ahfat, piano.
ARC’s Artistic Director is Simon Wynberg and its
General Manager is Jessica Wright.
SPECIAL
EVENT!
BADER & OVERTON CANADIAN PIANO COMPETITION WINNER
Jonathan Mak, piano
Tues, May 21, 2024 at 7:30pm
Winner of the 2023 inaugural Bader & Overton
Canadian Piano Competition and one of CBC’s
30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30,
Jonathan Mak has already made his mark on the
world stage as a guest soloist with numerous
orchestras. Mak will take the Isabel stage
performing a program of repertoire by Bach,
Schumann, and Prokofiev.
TICKETS: General Public $30+ / Faculty/Staff $27+ / Student $10
queensu.ca/theisabel