WINTER SONG

What a magnificent musical ride as we travel 200 years of music with Chants d’Auvergne – a collection of folk songs from the Auvergne region of France by Canteloube (1923) to Faure’s Pelléas et Mélisande (1898) to Beethoven’s 7th Symphony (1813) – a work he conducted and the audience demanded an encore of the famous “Allegretto” second movement. Then we skip forward 100 years to a premiere by Jennifer Butler with text by Tina Biello and performed by Marion Newman.

GUEST CONDUCTOR: Cosette Justo Valdés (ARTISTIC DIRECTOR CANDIDATE)

GUEST ARTIST: Marion Newman MEZZO-SOPRANO

Concert Programme

Joseph CANTELOUBE : Chants d’Auvergne (Songs from the Auvergne)
Series 5 (#2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

Jennifer BUTLER : This is Winter for Mezzo-Soprano and Strings *Premiere

Ludwig van BEETHOVEN: : Symphony No. 7, op. 92, A major

GUEST CONDUCTOR
Cosette Justo Valdés
(Artistic Director Candidate)

GUEST ARTIST
Marion Newman
mezzo-soprano

SID WILLIAMS THEATRE
FEB 12, 2023

CONCERT 2:00 PM

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SERIES SPONSOR

PERFORMANCE SPONSOR

With her “incisive presence on the podium,” “emotive in her conducting without being in any sense showy” (Edmonton Journal), Cuban-born and raised conductor Cosette Justo Valdés has garnered acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic and is a rising star on the world’s concert stage. She is presently Resident Conductor of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra (Canada) where she has won the hearts of musicians and audience alike. Recent highlights include a “mindblowing” (Ottawa Citizen) collaboration with Esperanza Spalding and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, and a celebrated Così fan tutte with the Edmonton Opera, conducted from the harpsichord.

Cosette maintains strong ties to her native Cuba, where she is celebrated as Honorary Director of the prestigious Orquesta Sinfónica de Oriente in Santiago, Cuba’s musical heartland, which she led for 9 years. During that time, seconded by an administrator and a librarian, she single-handedly managed and directed the 80-musician ensemble, developing an extensive repertoire of classical and contemporary music, jazz and pop, while championing both new and traditional Cuban music. A frequent guest conductor of the Orquesta Nacional de Cuba in La Habana, she premiered works by Cuba’s musical luminaries including Leo Brouwer, Alfredo Diez Nieto, Roberto Valera, and many more.

With the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Cosette is equally at ease leading programs from the Masters, Pops, or Kids series, garnering praise from critics, audience, and musicians alike for her “vivacity,” and “inspiring, precise, fiery” conducting (Edmonton Journal). Her position with the orchestra since 2019 as Assistant Conductor and since March 2022 as Resident Conductor, includes the role of Community Ambassador, through which she has developed an exceptionally warm and rewarding relationship with orchestra patrons as well as the city’s arts community. Cosette is also the Artistic Director of the Youth Orchestra of Northern Alberta, the ESO’s Sistema-based program that provides free music education to some 200 children from Edmonton’s priority neighborhoods and surrounding First Nations.

Cosette holds her bachelor’s degree in conducting, with Prof. Jorge López Marín, at the Instituto Superior de Arte (La Habana, Cuba) and her master’s degree, with Prof. Klaus Arp, at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst (Mannheim, Germany). She has assisted many conductors in Europe and the Americas, including Klaus Arp, Francesco Belli, Alexander Prior, Jean-Marie Zeitouni, Alexander Shelley, Mario Venzago and Michael Stern.

During her time in Europe, Cosette guest-conducted with dozens of orchestras in Germany and Eastern Europe, such as the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra, Theater und Orchester Heidelberg, Nationaltheater Mannheim and Plovdiv Philharmonic Orchestra in Bulgaria. In Cuba Cosette has been invited to conduct all the symphony orchestras plus several chamber ensembles. In Canada she has guest conducted iMusici de Montréal, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra, an ensemble from the Red Deer Symphony Orchestra and the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa).

In addition to her duties with the Edmonton Symphony, Cosette has upcoming engagements from coast to coast in Canada, as well as across the Americas. She recently had her debut with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra and the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra, and will be again visiting both to conduct Händel’s Messiah this December. She also conducted the National Arts Centre’s Annual Gala last November and will be there again in January. She will work for the first time in Toronto, in a collaboration with Against the Grain Theatre.

Cosette was recently appointed Music Director of the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra (US) and is a finalist for the position of Artistic Director of the Vancouver Island Symphony Orchestra (Canada). She was also been nominated for the Heinz Unger Award 2022 by the Ontario Arts Council in Canada.

Marie-Joseph Canteloube de Malaret (21 October 1879 – 4 November 1957) was a French composer, musicologist, and author best known for his collections of orchestrated folksongs from the Auvergne region, Chants d’Auvergne.

Canteloube was born in Annonay, Ardèche, into a family with deep roots in the Auvergne region of France. He studied piano from the age of six with Amélie Doetzer, a friend of Frédéric Chopin. After earning his baccalauréat, he worked at a bank in Bordeaux. He returned to his family home in Malaret (Annonay) upon his father’s death in 1896, remaining there until his mother’s death in 1899 and then beyond as sole owner of the estate. After a period of silence and mourning, in 1901 Canteloube married Charlotte Marthe Calaret, who gave birth to twins Pierre and Guy in 1903.

He began studying with Vincent d’Indy via correspondence in 1901, reluctant to leave Malaret. Upon d’Indy’s constant urging, he finally entered the Schola Cantorum in 1907 in Paris, where he remained until the beginning of World War I in 1914. At the Schola, Canteloube became close friends with fellow composer and student Déodat de Séverac.

In 1907, he wrote a suite in four movements for piano and violin entitled Dans la montagne, which was played at the Société Nationale. Other significant works followed, including Colloque sentimental for voice and string quartet (1908); Eglogue d’Automne for orchestra (1910); Vers la Princesse lointaine, a symphonic poem (1912); Aù printemps for voice and orchestra; and L’Arada (The Earth), a song cycle of six mélodies (1922).

Canteloube composed his first opera, Le mas (“The Farmstead” in Occitan language), to his own libretto from 1910 to 1925 (its composition delayed during the war years). The three-act work won the Prix Heugel in 1925, and was awarded the prize of 100,000 francs. However, the reaction to this composition by the leaders of the Opéra-Comique in Paris was far less enthusiastic than the jury. After pressure from the publisher, it finally premiered on 3 April 1929, but it was never revived. His second opera, Vercingétorix, in four acts, was inspired by a libretto by Étienne Clémentel, mayor of Riom (Puy-de-Dôme) and Hervé Louwyck on the Gauls‘ defeat by Julius Caesar. The Paris Opéra gave the first performance on 22 June 1933, but it was accused of lacking theatricality.

In 1925, Canteloube founded a group called La Bourrée with several young Auvergnats in Paris who were eager to publicize the folklore and the beauty of their home region. Canteloube himself believed that “peasant songs often rise to the level of purest art in terms of feeling and expression, if not in form” (les chants paysans s’élèvent bien souvent au niveau de l’art le plus pur, par le sentiment et l’expression, sinon par la forme). He composed several song collections, which include Chants de Haute-Auvergne, albums of songs of Rouergue, Limousin, and Quercy, regional religious songs (Chants religieux d’Auvergne), and L’Hymne des Gaules based on a poem by Philius Lebesque. He also participated in the creation of the Bardic College of Gaul.

In 1941, he joined the government in Vichy France during the Nazi occupation, and wrote in the monarchist newspaper Action Française. He participated in numerous radio broadcasts of French folklore with his “Songs of France” with the tenor Christian Selva. The radio was an ideal vehicle for disseminating regional popular music.

Alongside his career as a composer, Canteloube worked as a musicologist, collecting traditional French folksongs, which were published by Didier and Heugel. He also wrote biographies of Vincent d’Indy (1949) and of his friend Déodat de Séverac (1950).

Canteloube took more than thirty years (1924 to 1955) to complete the compilation of his most admired and famous collection of songs, Chants d’Auvergne. These passionate songs reflect the landscapes of the Auvergne in lush orchestral colors and have enabled French folklore and rustic melodies to become better known.

He died in Grigny, Essonne, in 1957, aged 78.

Read more on Wikipedia.org…