CMC Presents: E-Gré 2022 Winner’s Tour – DAVID POTVIN

Winner from the 45^th Eckhardt-Grammatté National Music Competition, Montréal based pianist David Potvin, performs music by Jacques Hétu, Jean Coulthard, Cris Derksen, Edward Enman and more. Part of the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition winner’s tour.

Ticket price:

General Admission. $15 Advance / $20 at the door
CMC Members and Arts Workers. $12 Advance / $15 at the door
Students. $10 anytime

Bio

Montréal based pianist David Potvin has received various performance awards, including prizes at the 2018 Shean and 2017 Stepping Stone competitions. In 2020 he received his Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Toronto, where he studied with acclaimed pedagogue Marietta Orlov and won the DMA recital competition.

David maintains an interest in a variety of repertoire. Recently, he organized a recital in collaboration with the Canadian Music Centre celebrating the works of Quebec composer Jacques Hétu. His 2021 recital with violinist Martin Beaver included the world premiere of Stewart Grant’s Violin Sonata. Currently, he is collaborating with composer Edward Enman on a recording of the composer’s four-hand piano pieces.

A passionate music educator, David teaches piano in both of Canada’s official languages and is a member of the Royal Conservatory of Music’s college of examiners. In his spare time, he enjoys watching soccer, cooking, and exploring Montréal.

Program Notes

Otto Joachim: L’Eclosion (1954)
Otto Joachim, originally from Germany, settled in Canada almost by accident. After moving to Singapore and then Shanghai to escape the Nazis, he obtained an immigrant’s visa to Brazil in 1949, which allowed him to visit Canada. He subsequently decided to settle in Montreal. Joachim lead a rich musical career, which included his position as principal viola of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and teaching posts at the McGill Conservatory and the Conservatoire de Montreal. His compositions were representative of the avant-garde style popular in Europe, and included serialist, aleotoric, and electoracoustic elements. He wrote only a handful of pieces for piano, among which L’Éclosion is his best example. Joachim presents the principle tone row of this serialist composition as a lyrical melody, though the piece quickly descends into disarray. Sudden outbursts, wandering arabesques, and pensive interludes are held together by the serial framework. The tension between this tightly controlled process of composition and its chaotic results in sound are obvious. Finally, the piece meanders, exhausted, into the depths of the piano to end with the second lowest note of the instrument. L’Éclosion literally means “the hatching” in French, and it serves to warm up the ears and whet the appetite for our tour of the eclectic world of Canadian piano music.

Jacques Hétu: Ballade, op. 30 (1978)
Jacques Hétu spent almost his entire career in Quebec. In 1961 he won several awards, among them the Prix d’Europe, which allowed him to pursue advanced training in composition with Henri Dutilleux and Olivier Messiaen in France. His work with Messiaen was of particular influence on Hétu’s compositions. Hétu described his music as incorporating “neo-classical forms and neo-romantic effects in a musical language using 20th-century techniques.” The Ballade, Op. 30 is exemplary of this style. The material of the entire piece is presented on the first page, to be later developed in cyclic transformation, typical of a Romantic era ballade. The maestoso theme is first presented, heavy and foreboding, and it is later reimagined as a haunting nocturne. Distant interjections which punctuate the theme are later transformed into obsessive torrents of sound, which give way to furious toccata sections. Hétu’s passion for musical drama is evident in the rich contrasts of mood and texture, and the overarching structure comes to a satisfying close, at once tragic and resolute.

Cris Derksen: A Growing Forgiveness (2022)
Juno nominated Cris Derksen is an internationally respected Indigenous cellist and Composer. Her website describes her music as braiding “the traditional and contemporary, weaving her classical background and her Indigenous ancestry together with new school electronics to create genre-defying music.” While Derksen is no stranger to writing for the piano, Growing forgiveness is Derksen’s first work for the pianist as a soloist. It was commissioned for the 45th Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition. The title is in response to the divisiveness in the face of COVID-19 pandemic. She explained she wanted to write a piece that explores “how we move forward and how we plant the seeds that keep our relationships going in a good way even though we don’t always agree on topics and politics and vaccinations…” Growing forgiveness is a study of contrasts. It opens with ponderous chords that build to an exciting rhythmic passage. While there are no electronics in this piece, Derksen describes some of the passage work as “synthesizer-esque.” The heart of the piece is the lyrical middle section, and its rising melody pleads for understanding. Another fast section follows, this one more substantial than the first, and it reworks the “synthesizer-esque.” theme from the beginning, building to a whirling climax before it runs out of steam and gently unravels. The melody of the middle section returns, soft and reflective, but it is unclear whether the tension worked out over its structure is ever truly resolved.

Jean Coulthard: Preludes for piano (1952-1972)
Jean Coulthard was the first composer from Canada’s West Coast to receive wide recognition. Her works experiment with elements of serialism, impressionism, and romanticism, though they are always deeply emotional. Her Preludes for piano were written over the span of over a decade while she was teaching at the University of British Columbia. In them, Coulthard demonstrates a mastery of the compact form. They are tightly composed, and over the course of only two or three pages each, Coulthard succeeds in exploring the depths of a single emotion – indicated as an accompanying title over each prelude. They also provide biographical interest, as each one is dedicated to someone important in her life. These works continue the tradition of prelude writing established by Chopin, and like the Chopin preludes, the scope of Couthlard’s preludes is vast, from the vulnerable Song, to the technically demanding tour de force Fury. They constitute a remarkable Canadian contribution to the genre.

Edward Enman: take a deep breath. (2020)
Edward Enman, originally from Nova Scotia, is based in Montreal. He leads a multi-faceted career as a pianist, musical theatre director and composer. Both his background as a chorister and his training in piano performance have influenced his output, which includes pieces published for choir, and a large number of pieces that feature the piano. His music explores improvisatory and minimalist musical ideas, and, like many of the composers of the piano’s canon repertoire, his musical ideas stem from free improvisation. Take a deep breath is based on the chord progression in another piece by Enman for piano and loop pedal called Savasana, named after the “corpse pose” in yoga, where one lies flat on the back, completely relaxed. Fundamental to the practice of Yoga is a conscious awareness of the breath, hence the name of the piece. He describes it as follows: “This piece came into being from a need for space and the dissipation of energy. Structurally, two contrasting musical ideas battle and build, then finally melt into each other for a calming, settling conclusion.”

Venue:

Canadian Music Centre
20 St. Joseph Street
Toronto, ON
M4Y 1J9
416-961-6601 x202

*The Canadian Music Centre is an accessible venue through a street level entrance to the right of the main entrance. The CMC has gender neutral washrooms. Contact info@cmccanada.org with any questions pertaining to accessibility.