A Beautifully Melancholic Piano Concerto and The Music Of A Tragic Love Story

The Kamloops Symphony’s next Noran Masterworks concert of the 2022/23 Season is Mozart’s Dark Side, taking place in Sagebrush Theatre on Saturday, February 4 at 7:30 pm. The programme features Mozart’s melancholic Piano Concerto in D minor, Jean Sibelius’ stirring incidental music for the tragic love triangle of Pelléas and Mélisande, and Canadian composer Kelly-Marie Murphy’s In the Time of Our Disbelieving, a powerful reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The concert begins with Kelly-Marie Murphy’s In the Time of Our Disbelieving. Well known in the Canadian music scene, her music has been described as breathtaking, imaginative, and expressive. Murphy’s music has been performed around the world in iconic concert halls such as Carnegie Hall in New York, The Mozarteum in Salzburg, and the National Concert Hall in Dublin, and has been broadcast on radio in over 20 countries. She started composing In the time of Our Disbelieving during the winter break at the end of 2019, just as we were starting to hear about the COVID-19 virus, and also the year of the intense wildfires in Australia followed by intense floods creating a large wildlife disaster. With all these things coming together, Murphy was reflecting on the notion that facts exist yet belief in these facts is becoming increasingly more optional. The music reflects her fear and anxiety about this, and her desire to be the person who will believe even the difficult to accept facts.

Next on the programme is Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D minor. Composed at the height of his popularity in Vienna, this work is a striking contrast to the energetic and joyful norms of his usual piano concerti, bringing the darker side of his creativity to the surface. These darker and more melancholic leanings made it a favourite piano concerto among the 19thcentury audiences and Romantic composers.

Joining the KSO on the Sagebrush Theatre stage to perform this concerto is Canadian pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin. An internationally renowned award winner, RichardHamelin stands out as one of the most important musicians of his generation. He has performed as a soloist with more than 50 ensembles, including orchestras all across Canada, throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.

KSO Music Director Dina Gilbert said of guest artist Richard-Hamelin, “We have been looking to showcase concert pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin to our Kamloops and Salmon Arm audiences for such a long time and are very excited to finally share the stage him. You won’t want to miss the performance of this Canadian pianist who is one of the most talented and awarded pianist of his generation.”

Concluding the concert is the orchestral suite for Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’ incidental music for Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas and Mélisande. Considered to be one of the high points of Sibelius’ incidental music, the music has rich, dark and menacing colours, with a mood of impending doom throughout, fitting for a play telling the story of a tragic love triangle.

Tickets for Mozart’s Dark Side are $49.99, $44.99 for Seniors, $10 for Youth (under 19), $25 for KSO Up Close seats (the front three rows of Sagebrush Theatre), $15 for KSOundcheck members (age 1934), and are available from Kamloops Live! Box Office from kamloopslive.ca or 250-374-5483.