Toronto Summer Music: Crow & Chiu. Bartok: Romanian Folk Dances for Violin and Piano (arr. Székely); Carmen Braden: New Work for Violin and Piano (World Première); Janáček: Sonata for Violin and Piano, JW VII/7; Grieg: Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 3 in C minor, Op. 45; Ravel: Tzigane, M. 76 . Jonathan Crow, violin; Philip Chiu, piano. July 28, 2025, Walter Hall.
The atmosphere at University of Toronto’s Walter Hall this July 28 might have been sombre as the capacity crowd waited for the final concert appearance of Philip Chiu and Jonathan Crow, two players who have come to exemplify the fellowship and musicianship of Toronto Summer Music (TSM).
Then, Chiu, the elegant pianist, appeared on stage with a self-effacing patter about his great enjoyment working with violinist and outgoing TSM director Crow, concluding with a humorous but heartfelt pitch to secure more donations for a festival that has come to define the summer for many Torontonians.
It perked up the crowd and set the stage for a memorable evening of music, curated by Crow to explore the influence of folk music on classical compositions, from the Romantics to today.
Concert: First Half
The program started appropriately with Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances for Violin and Piano, a piece in six movements, which allowed the duo to envelop the audience in music that ranges from lyrical to introspective while giving Chiu and Crow the opportunity to play with audience pleasing virtuosity.
While it hardly felt like fiddle music from the hills of Transylvania, the melodies were transcribed by Bartok in the early days of his career, when he helped to establish the now burgeoning field of ethnomusicology. Crow and Chiu transported the audience with music that moved from the lilting to mournful to the romantic — all rendered with a rhythmic sensibility that evoked popular dance.
For their second piece, the duo moved to the absolutely contemporary: the premiere of a work by Yellowknife composer Carmen Braden.
Entitled Switch and Spurs, the piece, which drew an ovation from the crowd, was intended by Braden, who composes effectively in the classical, jazz and pop idioms, to pay homage to Crow’s nine years at the helm of the TSM.
Braden was called on the stage before the piece was performed to introduce the work, and she surprised Crow by asking the audience to sing a lovely two line melodic verse that was its inspiration, “I dream of an Ocean, under a Prairie Sky.” Hesitantly, and then singing with gusto, they did as Braden requested — and then Crow and Chiu played her work, which was complex but relatable. It clearly had the melody as its inspiration.
As it happens, I sat next to Carmen Braden and was able to ask her about the composition. She had not been inspired by a folk song of the North — the composition is totally her own. And, the prairie sky in the piece isn’t about her native Yellowknife, but Medicine Hat, truly a town where one can see the heavens. As for the song, Braden is happy to claim it as folk music, since we’re all “volk,” meaning, in German, “the people” and she is one.
I couldn’t help but point out that she’s more gifted than most “volk,” to which she smiled and politely shrugged.
Jonathan Crow followed Braden’s premiere with a wonderful rendering of Janacek’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, one of the composer’s finest chamber music pieces, written in the summer of 1914, just before the beginning of the First World War.
Not only is Crow a fine violinist and festival coordinator, but he is also a marvellous recounter of history. He pointed out that Janacek was a nationalist Czech, who hoped that a war would bring a Russian invasion that would free his country from Austrian rule. Part of the music in the sonata shows a Russian influence — a tribute by Janacek to his imagined liberators. And, like Bartok and Dvorak, Janacek spent time exploring the folk music of his people and the Central European region, so filled with customs and traditions and mythology. So, the music of the Czechs appears in the Sonata.
As if that wasn’t enough history for most audiences, Crow went on to talk about a film that is iconic in Czech history. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, based on Milan Kundera’s acclaimed novel, was a huge critical and cultural hit starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche in 1988. It famously used a score based on Janacek’s chamber and piano music, including the sonata, two string quartets and the extraordinary piano pieces, “On an Overgrown Path.”
Crow found it ironic that Janacek’s pro-Russian sonata and other pieces by him were used to make a globally successful film, which criticized Russia (or more accurately the Soviet Union), a country Janacek had embraced during his lifetime.
Crow and Chiu’s final piece before Intermission was also in the folk mode and it, too, has a unique history. Ravel’s Tzigane may be a pastiche of true folk music, but it remains a compelling work. Inspired by two women, Ravel’s old friend Helene Jourdan-Morhange and the piece’s dedicatee Jelly d’Aranyi who premiered it on violin with Henri Gil-Marchex on piano, it demands virtuosity in its playing.
When done right — as it was by Crow — the violinist attracts the audience’s attention by the seemingly ecstatic playing of trills, runs and staccato notes. Although Tzigane, which means “gypsy” or more properly Roma, is inspired by d’Aranyi’s playing of Hungarian pieces to Ravel, it is not truly folk music — just a well-meaning parody by a brilliant Frenchman of another culture and style.
After Intermission
When Crow and Chiu returned after Intermission, they concluded the official program with a terrific rendition of Grieg’s Violin Sonata no. 3.
While Bartok, Janacek and Ravel had a problematic relationship to Romanticism, especially as their work matured, Grieg’s work embraces the designation. His work is passionately engaged with Norway and its historic roots, which can be heard especially in the concluding allegro movement of the sonata. As Chiu explained before he and Crow played the piece, this extraordinary sonata was so technically and melodically advanced that it helped to establish Grieg on the world stage.
Crow and Chiu’s performance of Grieg’s Violin Sonata enraptured the audience, which led to two encores: Gershwin’s “It Ain’t Necessarily So” from the arguably folkloric opera Porgy and Bess and a lyrical rendition of Elgar’s sentimental Salut d’Amour.
While the Gershwin fit into the evening’s exploration of folk music, the Elgar was performed because it had been played by the duo at their first concert at TSM nine years ago. As such, it represents a fitting conclusion to the performances of a pair who have become iconic over the years.
The names of Jonathan Crow and Philip Chiu will surely be remembered as the Toronto Summer Music festival continues, one hopes, for many years.
By Marc Glassman for Ludwig-Van.com
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