“Pinchas Zukerman’s 16th and last season at the helm of the National Arts Centre Orchestra fittingly begins with a festival celebrating the Romantic music of 19th-and early 20th-century Vienna and ends with an Ode to Joy and Beethoven’s great Ninth Symphony,” writes Peter Robb in Tuesday’s (3/4) Ottawa Citizen (Canada). “A major five-city tour of the United Kingdom, under the patronage of Prince Charles … will mark the 100th anniversary of the First World War … [featuring performances] of A Ballad of Canada by the late Malcolm Forsyth, the father of NACO cellist Amanda. The work uses the text of the poem ‘In Flanders Fields,’ by John McCrae.… Zukerman is rightly proud of the accomplishments of his time in Ottawa, from the Summer Music Institute, to the video training centre, to the successful tours including last fall’s massive tour of China…. ‘We’ve also grown into a much larger repertoire, offering constant meat and potatoes like Bruckner and Mahler—that’s become more of the main diet. It’s more Romantic, with the expanded number of strings. All of those aspects of growth I think have played very well into the orchestra growing in its capacity as a symphony orchestra. It’s really quite amazing,’ says Zukerman.”
Posted March 4, 2014
Photo of Pinchas Zukerman by Paul Labelle
