The concert that will be presented by the Valley Concert Society on Friday, March 21, at 7:30 p.m. in the Matsqui Centennial Auditorium has been promoted as featuring the violinist Johan Dalene. An equally important part of the evening is pianist Sahun Sam Hong.
Sahun is his name in formal settings. Informally he goes by Sam. At the keyboard, he goes by “artist of enormous prowess,” according to the Verbier Festival Newsletter. Verbier is the site in Switzerland of a prestigious music festival where he was winner of the Vendome Prize in 2017.
Sam grew up in the US, graduating magna cum laude from Texas Christian University at the age of sixteen. He has been featured as a soloist with orchestras across the US. He is much in demand as a collaborator in duo and chamber performances, as he does here in Abbotsford. A Steinway Artist, Hong also arranges a great deal of music for chamber and orchestral musicians.
To open the second half of the program, Hong and Dalene will perform the Partita for Violin and Piano by Witold Lutoslawski, a 20th century Polish composer. Witold studied with Karol Szymanowski, a composer whose preludes were performed by Jarred Dunn in our latest concert.
Lutoslawski composed this work in five movements in 1984 for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota for a performance by Pinchas Zukerman and Marc Neikrug. In it he employs an aleatoric technique. Based on the Latin word alea, a game of dice, this technique introduces elements of chance into the music. He uses aleatory in the very short second and fourth movements. The partita is played through with hardly a break between the five movements.
The second half will close with a charming sonata by the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. Tickets for 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