The Valley Concert Society is pleased to welcome pianist Jarred Dunn to the Matsqui Centennial Auditorium on Friday, February 21, at 7:30 p.m.
Dunn is a Canadian musician currently based in Montreal. He has performed extensively in North America and Europe as well as other worldwide locations. He won first prize and Concerto Award at the 7th International Chopin Competition of Lithuania in 2018.
Jarred has been described as “a piano sound-colour magician”. This is a quality that will serve well for the repertoire he has chosen to play in Abbotsford—three works from the Early Romantic period and one much later piece which hearkens back to that time.
Dunn will open his programme with Franz Schubert’s Sonata in A major. Schubert composed nearly 30 sonatas or parts of sonatas for solo piano, including two in the key of A major. Jarred has chosen the one catalogued as D. 664 for us.
This sonata is the shortest of those that Schubert completed, but it is one of his most popular and may be his most beautiful. He most likely composed it in the summer of 1819 while vacationing in Steyr in Upper Austria. He described the countryside as “unimaginably lovely”.
Schubert dedicated the work to Josephine von Koller, an eighteen-year-old living in Steyr. He considered her “very pretty” and “a good pianist”. All this enthusiasm evokes the image of a young man in love. He was, after all, only twenty-two at the time.
The music that arose from these two beautiful inspirations was, fittingly, beautiful in its own right. Rhythm is a fairly prominent feature throughout the piece. The gracious melodies of the first movement give way to a sentimental second movement. The finale sparkles with energy and delight.
Tickets to this concert are available online at www.valleyconcertsociety.com at $32 for adults/seniors and $20 for students. For more information call 604-289-3377.
John Wiebe - President
The Valley Concert Society