British Columbia’s Vancouver Symphony onstage at the Orpheum Theatre.
In Tuesday’s (9/26) Vancouver Sun (British Columbia), David Gordon Duke writes, “From time to time, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra has programmed music by American composers … The 2023/24 season looks about to significantly change that. In March, guest conductor Leonard Slatkin will introduce our audience to the music of Mason Bates, his eleven-movement Anthology of Fantastic Zoology. In April, there is the local premiere of John Adams’ electrifying Harmonielehre (1985), a symphony-weight composition that’s one of the California-based composer’s most impressive works…. This month, the VSO’s Musically Speaking and Symphony Sundays series start out with a program featuring violinist Karen Gomyo and guest conductor Gerard Schwarz in works by Brahms, Barber, and David Diamond…. Barber is represented by his 1939 Violin Concerto … [which has] become a VSO staple, in part because of the Grammy-winning recording made by James Ehnes and the late Bramwell Tovey … Diamond was prolific, with 11 symphonies and reams of other works, but in later career he became better known for his teaching … Diamond has had no greater advocate than Gerard Schwartz, for some 26 years music director of the Seattle Symphony. During his tenure, he recorded some 140 discs, a very generous number devoted to music by U.S. composers.”
