The 2013 Stratford Festival will include a two-concert collaboration with the Royal Conservatory of Music’s ARC Ensemble, part of a series of multidisciplinary events during next summer’s run.
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“From the moment I learned of ARC’s presentations of music by Jewish composers lost during the Holocaust, I knew the ensemble could play an important role in The Forum – a festival inside the Stratford Festival, in which we present exceptional events to enrich the play-going experience,” said Strafrod Festival artistic director Antoni Cimolino in a press release.
One concert will explore the Russian-Jewish musical roots of Fiddler on the Roof, one of next summer’s mainstage productions. The other will examine music suppressed by fascist regimes, to inform Cimolino’s 2013 production of The Merchant of Venice, which will be set in 1930s Italy.
“It offers us the potential to broaden our audience while also creating truly bespoke programs that will both illuminate and explore Stratford’s main-stage themes and productions,” said ARC artistic director Simon Wynberg.
The Fiddler concert will include excerpts from Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye stories, complemented by the music of his Russian contemporaries –– composers who sought to integrate Jewish elements into the classical music tradition.
The other concert will include a rare performance of Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco’s Piano Quintet.
Tedesco, whose ancestors had lived in Italy for generations, fled Italy in 1938 and settled in Los Angeles. One of his students, John Williams, won his first Oscar for the adaptation of a theatrical score: the 1971 film version of Fiddler on the Roof.
Both weekend performances are part of the Stratford Festival’s innovative new Forum initiative, and take place on June 16 and Sept. 21, 2013. For more information on Forum and its many events, click here.
The ARC Ensemble, made up of the Royal Conservatory of Music’s finest performer-teachers, has been helping the organization build an international profile with recording and increasingly frequent touring. You can find more information on these wonderful musicians here.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
