 YI-JIA SUSANNE HOU
Internationally celebrated violinist Yi-Jia Susanne Hou is the first violinist ever to capture 3 Gold Medals with unanimous decisions at international violin competitions: Concours International Long-Thibaud (France, 1999), Lipizer International Violin Competition (Italy, 1999) and Sarasate International Violin Competition (Spain, 1997). Hou is also the first and only musician to win the Canada Council for the Arts Instrument Bank Competition for 2 consecutive terms; Ms. Hou would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts and the anonymous donor for their support through the loan of the 1729 "ex-Heath" Guarneri del Gesù fine stringed instrument. This $5 million instrument is coupled with a priceless bow made by her father, Alec Hou.
Hou has collaborated with world-renowned Artists such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Pinchas Zukerman, Alan Gilbert, Vladimir Spivakov, Cho Liang Lin, Marcello Viotti, Marek Janowski, Lan Shui, Robert McDuffie, Ralph Kirschbaum, Lawrence Dutton, Joseph Kalichstein, Alain Trudel, Bernhard Gueller, Gregory Vajda, Ling Tung, Li Xin Cao, Jamie Parker and Boris Brott, among others.
She can be heard on the silver screen performing the violin solos in the 2008 Atom Egoyan film "Adoration" which won the Ecumenical Jury Prize at Festival de Cannes 2008, featuring music composed by Mychael Danna. Hou was the subject of CBC's 'The National' Documentary: "Shanghai Sensation", revisiting her childhood in Shanghai, with her father, Alec Hou, a renowned violin pedagogue in China. Hou has also been seen on PBS, Bravo! and the TODAY SHOW with BOWFIRE.
Hou has traveled the world, touring in Canada with Debut Atlantic & Prairie Debut, and throughout the United States, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, China, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, and Hong Kong. Her numerous solo appearances include the London Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre Nationale de l'Île de France, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, SWR Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, WDR Cologne, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Toronto Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Chicago Sinfonietta, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic, Osaka-Kansai Philharmonic, Shanghai Broadcasting Orchestra, Czech National Orchestra, and Slovenia Radio-Television Orchestra. Festival appearances include the Aspen Music Festival, La Jolla Music Society, Grand Teton Music Festival, Rome Chamber Music Festival, Bordeaux Musique en Graves, and Amis de Mozart, among others.
At 17, Hou performed the most challenging pieces ever written for the violin: Paganini's Twenty-four Caprices for Solo Violin, in live recitals in Toronto and
Aspen. Ms. Hou has also performed all 10 of Beethoven's Piano and Violin Sonatas in New York as well as the complete collection of Brahms Violin and Piano Sonatas and Piano Trios. Born into a musical family, Ms. Hou had music surrounding her all her life. Both her mother and father are violinists, and thus at the tender age of 4, Hou began studying violin with her father, Alec Hou. Less than a year later, she gave her first public performance and was received with a standing ovation. At nine, the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto invited her as a scholarship student. Since then, Hou has had scholarships and fellowships at the Aspen Music Festival for nine summers, as well as The Juilliard School where she received her Bachelor of music as a student of Dorothy DeLay and Naoko Tanaka in 2000. She then went on to do a 1-year Masters program, and completed the highly acclaimed Artist Diploma Program in Juilliard with Cho Liang Lin and Naoko Tanaka. Hou is an active advocate of cultural exchange and musical education.
"She's absolutely phenomenal..." -Lord Yehudi Menuhin "I was overwhelmed by the sensitivity of her playing...she is an extraordinary artist. The violin plays a huge part in the soundtrack of the film, and her detailed and highly charged performance is full of emotional nuance." -Atom Egoyan, Director of 'Adoration'
"In "Adoration," a profound and provocative exploration of cultural inheritance, communications technology and the roots and morality of terrorism, the Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan nimbly wades into an ideological minefield without detonating an explosion...
The binding ingredient of "Adoration" is its rich, violin-soaked musical soundtrack by Mychael Danna. Its mood of sorrowful sensuality evokes the troubled histories of flesh-and-blood people whose complicated personal stories, if we knew them, might or might not provide reasons for heinous crimes against humanity."
-The NY Times
"Hou is remarkable, her playing an idealistic dream of perfection, her sound full of humanity, sweetness and musical understanding and projected on her superb Guarneri del Gesu violin with heart-stopping purity in her uppermost register and a richly resonant sound on the lowest strings.
Playing such as this, flawless, filled with light and meaning, makes you feel shy, as if you were witnessing a miracle, something for which there is no explanation, only highly sensitized awareness."
-Stephen Pedersen, Chronicle Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
"From the very first phrase, Hou demonstrated that she is the possessor of a gigantic sound, a perfectly centered tone, and a deep understanding of musical structure. She showed absolute confidence and mastery in every respect of her program, which extended from Beethoven to Kreisler, and easily exuded the star quality that has put her in the spotlight as a lead violinist..."
-Greg Stepanich, Palm Beach Arts Paper, Florida
 NORMA BEECROFT
Composer
Norma Marian Beecroft was born in Oshawa, Ontario, on 11 April 1934. Her parents were both active in the artistic field, her father, Julian Balfour Beecroft, was a musician and inventor, and was a pioneer in the development of magnetic tape. Her mother, Eleanor Beecroft Stewart, was trained in music and dance, and enjoyed a successful career as an actress. The second of five offspring, Norma has enjoyed an active life in music, as a composer, producer, broadcaster and administrator. Some of her siblings have pursued occupations in the arts and/or technology, Jane (b. 1932) was a poet and painter, Eric (b.1935) was active in film, and Charles Andrew Stuart (b. 1942) is a noted documentarist in the field of natural sciences.
 Norma Beecroft's early musical studies began with the piano, taking piano lessons from Aladar Ecsedy (1950-52), then between 1952-58 with Gordon Hallett and Weldon Kilburn. At the same time she studied composition with John Weinzweig. The recipient of a bursary from the Royal Conservatory of Music in 1957-58, she began flute studies with Keith Girard as well. She continued her composition studies on scholarship at the Berkshire Music Center, Tanglewood, with Aaron Copland and Lukas Foss, and in 1959 was accepted into the Corso di Perfezionamento at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome, under Goffredo Petrassi, where she graduated in 1961. The same year she was the recipient of an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs scholarship. During her three years in Europe she attended lectures given by Bruno Maderna at Darmstadt, Germany, and at the Dartington School of Music in England, and she continued her flute studies with Severino Gazzelloni. Upon her return to Canada, she attended the electronic music classes of Myron Schaeffer at the University of Toronto, and in 1964 spent the summer working with Mario Davidovsky at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, New York.
 Concurrent with her composing life, Beecroft has enjoyed a long association with the world of broadcasting. She was first attracted to the then-new world of television and joined the CBC in 1954 as a script assistant for music programs, and later music consultant. After her European studies, she returned to CBC, working as a script assistant 1962-3, then successively as talent relations officer 1963-4, national program organizer for radio 1964-6, and producer 1966-9. In 1969 she resigned from CBC, and began a freelance career as producer and commentator on contemporary music. She was the host of the weekly series "Music of Today" for many years, and her freelance productions included many documentaries commissioned by the CBC on major Canadian composers of the latter 20th Century, including John Weinzweig, Harry Somers, Harry Freedman, Barbara Pentland, Jean Coulthard-Adams, Bruce Mather, Gilles Tremblay, etc. In 1976 her documentary "The Computer in Music" received a Major Armstrong Award for excellence in FM broadcasting. Among her numerous freelance projects was the preparation in 1975 of 13 broadcast records "Music Canada" from tapes in the libraries of RCI and CAPAC, and she contributed numerous documentaries on her Canadian colleagues for the Anthology of Canadian Composers series. Beecroft produced electronic music for the Stratford Festival productions of Macbeth (1982) and Midsummer Night's Dream (1983), and incidental music for the TVO series "Fish On".
Most of Beecroft's compositions have been commissioned by organizations and individuals (see list), and many combine electronically produced or altered sounds together with live instruments. She regards her particular use of electronic music as an extension of vocal and/or instrumental sounds rather than a contrast of timbres. From Dreams of Brass (1963-4) is the first example of this technique, and her large scale work, the ballet Hedda (1982), is a later illustration. Her musical aesthetic was first influenced by the music of Debussy, then later by her teachers- Weinzweig, Petrassi and Maderna, and during her European years, she was impressed by the work of Karlheinz Stockhausen, one of the first composers to combine electronic music with live instruments.
 Beecroft has long been active in the promotion of Canadian and contemporary music in addition to her broadcasting and composing career. She was President in 1956-7 of Canadian Music Associates (the Toronto concert committee of the Canadian League of Composers), and in 1965-8 President of Ten Centuries Concerts. In 1971, she co-founded (with Robert Aitken) New Music Concerts, and was its President and General Manager until 1989. For her service to Canadian music, in 1996 she was awarded a Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, from York University, Toronto.
Norma Beecroft is a member of the Canadian League of Composers and an associate of the Canadian Music Centre. In 2002, she was awarded an Honorary Membership in the Canadian Electro-acoustic Community.
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
Wedding Day at Troldhaugen Opus 65 No.6
There is no question that Edvard Grieg is the musical choice for Norwegian nationalism. His principle works, notably a major piano concerto, a cello sonata and a symphony, are outstanding in their arrangement and grandeur. But the emblematic centre of his output as a composer lies in his miniatures—the 66 short works written between 1867 and 1901 that make up the Lyric Pieces. In them, delicate pastels, harmonies and abrupt shades of light and dark make up an astonishing realm of tonal coloration, a lasting romantic tribute to Norwegian folk music. By age 23 he had already composed many works based on Norwegian and old Norse legends, among them the incidental music written for Ibsen’s Peer Gynt—some of the best and most popular music ever written by a Norwegian composer. So connected is Grieg’s music to the sights and smells of Norwegian folklore, it once prompted him to remark, “My music has a taste of codfish in it.”
Wedding Day at Troldhaugen (originally a piano solo) was composed in 1892 and presented to his wife Nina as a 25th wedding anniversary gift. As the title indicates the music is an interpretation of wedding celebrations—in all likelihood those of the composer himself. Five years later it appeared in published form in the eighth book of the Lyric Pieces. Years later, commenting on the Pieces, Grieg remarked to his biographer: “The realm of harmony has always been my dream world…I have understood the secret depths that one finds in our folk songs is owing to the richness of their untold harmonic possibilities…”
Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Violin Concerto in D major, op. 35
Following its completion in 1878, Tchaikovsky proudly presented his violin concerto to Leopold Auer, the eminent violinist of his day, entrusting the musician with the work’s premiere. Auer promptly declined the honour, declaring the work “unplayable.”—perhaps an unpredictable tribute to its eventual greatness. The honour went instead to Adolf Brodsky who practiced the work for two years before presenting it for its first public performance to a Viennese audience.
Prior to the creation of the D major violin concerto, Tchaikovsky already stood alone at the forefront of Russian composers. Completed were his first three symphonies; the music for Romeo and Juliet; the brilliant Piano Concerto No. 1 (also declared “unplayable” by pianist Nikolai Rubenstein); three remarkable string quartets; and the inspired three-act lyric opera Eugene Onegin. Is it any wonder that this musically skilled genius had produced a work for violin and orchestra that would define a genre and defy the critics.
The entire work is filled with melodies in such quantity that only a few of them are revisited throughout its 35 minute length—a comparison, according to some critics, to the music of Frederic Chopin.
The first movement, marked alternately molto moderato and molto espressivo, makes technical, urgent demands on the soloist ending in a difficult and flashy solo cadenza.
By contrast, the slow movement is elegiac, almost sacred, a musical form that Tchaikovsky was often accused of lapsing into due to his frequent bouts of anxiety.
The third movement can be described as nothing short of explosive. Like a missile leaving a launch tube it rockets into a dazzling display of pyrotechnics. No composer before or since Tchaikovsky has ended a concerto with such flair.
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, op. 82
In September, 1914, Sibelius wrote in his ever-present notebook:
In a deep valley again. But I already begin to see dimly the mountain I shall surely ascend…God opens His door for a moment and His orchestra plays the Fifth Symphony.
The words refer to the creation of a work that gave the composer
more trouble than any other of his compositions. During the next five years he worked at an increasingly higher level of self-criticism, refining and rewriting the symphony’s musical ideas until it became an all-consuming war-years’ project. In a letter dated May 20, 1918 he wrote, “…the Fifth Symphony in a new form…practically composed anew—I work at it daily.” The next month he declared the symphony finished, but even that announcement was premature. Finally in November, 1919 Sibelius introduced the work as we know it today, a journey that began as a mere note in his diary as early as 1912.
The form of the first movement is cleverly woven with the surrounding material quietly and leisurely unfolding to a steadily faster pace, an accelerando culminating in a thrilling and forceful climax.
The middle section, a set of variations, takes its head from a repetitious rhythmic pattern of two groups of quarter notes introduced in the strings. There are several different melodies in this collection.
The finale begins as an imposing and often bodily romp, like a firestorm racing through the firmament. Eventually the speeding tangle of melodies slows, lapsing into complete silence followed by six large chords, each completely isolated from the one before, each prophesizing an inevitable ending.
Two other major orchestrations, heavily influenced by the development of the Fifth, followed it: the Sixth in 1923 and the Seventh in 1924.
Then…a thirty-year silence ending with the composer’s death in 1957. Like the alluring final chords that end the Fifth Symphony, Sibelius found his place as Finland’s greatest composer.
Norma Beecroft (b. 1934)
Capriccio Canadese
Born in Oshawa in 1934, Norma Beecroft has enjoyed an active life in music as a producer, broadcaster, administrator, and composer. Along with piano and flute studies between 1950 and 1958, she studied composition with John Weinzweig and later with Aaron Copland and Lukas Foss at the Berkshire Music Centre, Tanglewood. Ms Beecroft spent three years in Europe continuing her flute and composition studies, and graduated from the Academia di Santa Cecilia in Rome in 1961. She returned to Canada shortly after to take up duties as a CBC script assistant for music programs, talent relations officer, and finally as a producer at CBC Radio from 1966-1969.
Many CBC listeners will remember her popular weekly series “Music of Today” and her CBC commissioned documentaries on major Canadian composers of the 20th Century. In 1976 her documentary “The Computer in Music” received a Major Armstrong Award for excellence in FM broadcasting. Included in her electronic compositions are music for the Stratford Festivals productions of “Macbeth”, “Midsummer Night’s Dream”, and incidental music for the TVO series “Fish On”.
Most of Ms Beecroft’s compositions combine electronically produced or altered sounds together with live instruments. “From Dreams of Brass” (1963) is the first example of this technique, and a large scale work, the ballet “Hedda” (1982) is a later illustration. For her service to Canadian music, Norma Beecroft was awarded Doctor of Letters from York University in 1996.
Capriccio Canadese, a 2009 Canadian premiere commissioned by Maestro Marco Parisotto and the Ontario Philharmonic, is a ten-minute music lesson on how “O Canada” might have been conceived in the Baroque and Romantic periods. “The idea intrigued me,” she writes,“…even though I felt that national anthems are almost sacred icons and perhaps should not be tampered with, I questioned if we were not mature enough as a country to take our national symbols and poke a bit of fun at ourselves.”
The work’s title was chosen for its capricious nature and because of the composer’s enduring affiliation with Italy, a country whose culture has had a lasting influence on her life.
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Canadian sensation Yi-Jia Susanne Hou performs Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in an evening of exhilarating Nordic musical impressions.