INON BARNATEN, PIANO, VSO/ BRAMWELL TOVEY

One cannot accuse Bramwell Tovey and the VSO of starting its 96th season timidly, as two very demanding, large scale works are featured in its opener: Brahms First Piano Concerto and Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra. Young pianist Inon Barnaten makes his third Vancouver appearance, fresh off his appointment as the New York Philharmonic’s first-ever ‘Artist-in Association’.  Young pianists tend to shy away from performing the Brahms concertos, so that fact alone makes this performance of great interest.  Strauss’ tone poem is of course one of the great orchestral blockbusters and, while occasionally flirting with banality, certainly can be a riveting, majestic experience when the highest level of orchestral execution is present.  We also get to see Kelly-Marie Murphy’s A Thousand Natural Shocks, a short work in fact commissioned for the occasion of Bramwell Tovey’s very first concert as Music Director of the VSO. 

SEPT 27/29, 8PM, ORPHEUM