Volume 27 Issue 8 | July 1 - September 20, 2022

CLASSICAL AND BEYOND
Canadian Brass
A PIANO-LOVER’S
FEAST AT
PARRY SOUND
AND LANAUDIÈRE
PAUL ENNIS
NINAYOSHIDA NELSEN
As live music venues open up, summer music festivals
get ready to party like it was 2019. Here, I am going
to focus on just two of them, in no small part based
on my own lifelong predilection for the piano.
Festival of the Sound
The roots of this venerable attraction extend back to the summer
of 1979 when renowned pianist Anton Kuerti purchased a summer
home near Parry Sound and organized three concerts by outstanding
Canadian musicians. The enthusiastic response to these programs
inspired him to propose an annual concert series, and the 1980
Festival of the Sound became Ontario’s first annual international
summer classical music festival. In 1985, James Campbell began his
tenure as the Festival’s second artistic director, a position he still
holds today.
This year’s festival is not all about the piano, though. It opens
Sunday night, July 17, with a joyous celebration of choral music by
the Elmer Iseler Singers; July 18’s sold-out evening concert marks
the 50th anniversary of the Canadian Brass. Then, after clarinetist
Campbell and the Rolston String Quartet perform Brahms’ Clarinet
Quintet, among other works on the afternoon of July 19, the festival
takes an unusual pianistic turn, hanging its musical summer hat on
a piano festival featuring some of
Canada’s finest keyboard artists,
with 20 concerts underpinning
a cleverly designed series of
connected recitals. Jazz, personified
by Dave Young, Heather Bambrick,
Campbell himself, and others, then
takes over the last weekend of July.
Pianofest Week 1
The feast of piano music that
caught my attention begins on
the evening of July 19 with the
doyenne of her generation, Janina
Fialkowska, famous as Arthur
Rubinstein’s last pupil (1974-
1982) and a Chopin expert in her
Janina Fialkowska
own right, with a representative
Chopin program: a nocturne, a scherzo, a polonaise, waltzes, a
ballade, preludes and berceuse. With masterclasses almost as much of
a passion for me as the piano, the next morning is proof that one can
have one’s cake and eat it too: Fialkowska participates in a masterclass
as mentor to 25-year-old Xiaoyu Bruce Liu, the 2021 Chopin
JULIEN FAUGERE
18 | July 1 - September 20, 2022 thewholenote.com