As a part of the group’s twenty fifth Anniversary Season, Stratford Summer time Music is presenting Make Mine a Double: Miller + Mendelssohn on October 22. The night shall be hosted by broadcaster, author and musician Tom Allen, and have works that span two centuries of music.
Stratford Summer time Music Creative Director Mark Fewer and a crew of string gamers will carry out music by Canadian composer Jared Miller, together with Felix Mendelssohn’s beloved Octet in E-flat Main.
Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat Main, Op. 20
Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat Main, Op. 20, marks its two hundredth anniversary in 2025.
Felix wrote his groundbreaking String Octet on the age of 16, with the primary model accomplished on October 15, 1825. He devoted the music to violinist Eduard Rietz, a buddy who was marking his twenty third birthday. It’s believed that the piece premiered at a house live performance on the Mendelssohn family.
Mendelssohn composed the work for 4 violins, two violas, and two cellos, and primarily created a brand new chamber music style with the piece. It was progressive in an period when the string quartet dominated chamber music composition.
The octet makes use of every of the eight devices another way, creating contrasts inside a coherent musical soundscape. It ranges from the elegant opening allegro to a extra meditative second motion. The third motion, a scherzo, was impressed by verses from Goethe’s Faust,
Wisps of cloud and mist
Are lit from above
Breeze within the foliage and wind within the reeds
And all is scattered.
“…the entire piece is to be performed staccato and pianissimo… the trills passing away with the quickness of lightning… one feels so close to to the world of spirits, carried away within the air, half inclined to grab up a broomstick and comply with the aerial procession… and on the finish, …all has vanished.”
The Octet ends in a fugue. It’s no secret that Mendelssohn was a fan of Bach, and had studied him extensively, even by his mid-teens. General, in model, it edges extra in direction of Romanticism than the Classical ideas he was finding out on the time.
Whereas the work was accomplished in 1825 initially, he revised it earlier than its eventual publication in 1832.
Jared Miller
Canadian/American composer and pianist Jared Miller earned a bachelor’s diploma in composition and piano from the College of British Columbia, adopted by a Grasp’s and Doctoral diploma in Composition from The Juilliard Faculty. After incomes his D.M.A., he took a place as Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Concept, and subsequently Head of Composition Division, at Dalhousie College from 2020 till 2022.
In 2017, on the age of 25, he was named Composer in Residence for the Victoria Symphony Orchestra, and held the place for 4 years. He was named the Composer-in-Residence for the Lansing Symphony Orchestra in Michigan from 2023-2026.
In the present day, he’s Assistant Professor of Composition within the Faculty of Music on the College of North Carolina Faculty of the Arts.
Miller’s music has been recorded by the Ensemble Paramirabo, Exponential Ensemble, and others, and carried out by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Nashville Symphony, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Victoria Symphony, l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, the symphony orchestras of Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Edmonton, and different ensembles. He’s labored with soloists reminiscent of pianists Sara Davis Buechner, Jani Parsons, Robert Fleitz and Imri Talgam, harpist Parker Ramsay, and violinist Francisco Fullana.
He has been nominated for a JUNO Award for Below Sea, Above Sky, commissioned and recorded by the Nationwide Youth Orchestra of Canada, and received the SOCAN Jan V. Matejcek Award for New Classical Composition.
Miller’s new octet was commissioned by architect Robert Lemon in reminiscence of his late companion, internationally acknowledged inside designer Robert Ledingham. The music celebrates his private legacy, in addition to the continued success of Stratford Summer time Music.
The Live performance
Make Mine a Double: Miller + Mendelssohn takes locations on October 22, 2025 at Lazaridis Corridor — Tom Patterson Theatre. You should purchase tickets to the live performance alone, or add on entrance to the Meet the Artists Reception.
- Discover tickets and particulars [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. Beforehand, she was a contract author with a specialty in tradition and journey for 3 many years, and a inventive writing teacher for Ontariolearn.
