In Friday’s (5/16) Globe and Mail (Canada), Robert Harris writes that when musicians in the Toronto-based orchestra Group of 27 perform the final concert of the season this week, “They won’t know what pieces they’re going to be playing. On their music stands will be the copies of four complete symphonies they’ve all played before at one time or another—one by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. The Group will be playing one movement of each—but exactly which movement will be decided by the audience then and there in the hall. The audience picks the first movement of the Beethoven, let’s say, the second movement of the Haydn, the third of the Schubert, and the finale of the Mozart.… It’s not just a gimmick. The Group of 27 is a serious music ensemble. ‘These are immensely talented musicians,’ music director [Eric] Paetkau, the former resident conductor of Quebec’s Les Violons du Roy, tells me.… Begun as a pickup band on a per-occasion basis in 2007, [Group of 27] slowly developed until it started presenting a four-concert season last year. This season, it has added chamber recitals.”
Posted May 16, 2014
