Hi there, welcome to Notes from the Stage, a show from the musicians of the Calgary Philharmonic.
We're the people playing our hearts out on stage every week of the orchestra season.
I'm Adams in a telly.
Usually I'm playing first trumpet in the Calgary Philharmonic, but today I'm your host and I'm
here with Diana Cohen, concertmaster of the CPO.
Hi Diana.
Hi Adams, it's great to be here with you.
Thanks for sitting down with me today.
So this is the beginning of a new series.
This is the first real episode of this podcast that we're putting out and I'm really excited.
Congratulations for inaugurating it.
That's really exciting.
Yeah, so I thought you'd be the perfect person to sit down and talk with today to get things
started because you're the concertmaster of the orchestra.
Now like, I mean, basic question here for someone who, you know, isn't in the business,
what does that mean?
What is the concertmaster?
What is the role of the concertmaster?
It's a great question and I get asked that all the time.
One of our colleagues actually calls me the concert monster, which I particularly appreciate.
But no, so the role, it's multi-dimensional.
I would say the main role is to sort of be the liaison between the conductor and the
orchestra and especially the string section.
Of course, the leader of the first violins, in a way, the leader of the strings, integrate
orchestra, a concertmaster plays in a certain way and the string players follow suit in
terms of how they use their bow, where the phrasing is.
And like that happens in every section, right?
Like I play first trumpet.
Totally.
So I'm sort of the top voice of the brass section.
So I lead the trumpet section, but I also sort of lead the brass section, I guess.
And so people are taking their cues from me as far as how to play.
And the same is the case for you within the string section, right?
Yeah, right.
And also just where I'm physically placed, it's a very easy spot to communicate with
everyone across the orchestra, the principal strings, of course.
You for instance, we often make eye contact just across the stage.
Yeah, our visual contact is often very, very critical.
Very crucial.
And also my brother Alex, he's the principal timpanist.
I find that there are these key moments where a conductor can be very clear or less so,
but even the clearest of conductors isn't making a sound.
So when we put the bow on the string, you're going to hear a sound.
And when you blow through the trumpet, the same is true.
So my role is very much one of communication and leading musically.
Then there are all these other roles that aren't necessarily seen.
A lot of people in the audience think, oh, you're the one that tunes the orchestra.
So that's just sort of a...
So I tune the orchestra, which means relatively little.
I walk on stage by myself and then I turn around and the oboe plays an A. So that's
just sort of a way of officially welcoming the concert and opening it.
It doesn't take me much work to do that.
Another really large role that I play is as the person who does the bowings for the first
violins and then as a result, it impacts the rest of the string players.
I'm often looking at scores that are going to be performed many, many months in advance.
Often if we're playing a piece like a Schumann or a Brahms symphony, these are works that
have been bowed many, many times over.
So for a layperson, bowings means whether we're playing down bow or up bow.
If you go to an orchestra concert, you'll see that the string players are usually playing
in the same direction.
Yeah.
It looks like the whole string section or each section within the strings, they're all
on the same page and they're all sort of doing the same thing.
That's because of the work that's done in advance.
That doesn't happen by accident.
Right.
If you do a good job, you're taking into account all kinds of musical decisions.
What conductor are you playing with?
How much sound might they want?
What's their style?
What do you believe the composer wants?
If you don't know the conductor, of course you're using your instinct in terms of what
you think the composer would want there.
But sometimes if you know a conductor well, you might know, oh, they want things much
stronger, much more marked all the time.
Other conductors more flowy or legato.
Knowing those players can really help quite a bit.
So I spend a lot of time looking at scores, studying recordings, looking at what's been
done in the past.
So that's a very time consuming part of my job.
And also a really interesting one because I get to think of the sort of larger scope
of the works that we're going to be playing.
That's really interesting.
I mean, within say the brass section or the winds, it's one player on a part.
So we have more flexibility and I think it's easier for us to make changes on the fly.
Right.
And you're deciding when to breathe and stuff like that.
Yeah.
And you know, like deciding when to breathe, like that might play out differently one performance
to another.
So like, you know, Miranda's sitting next to me in the orchestra and I breathe in a
different place and she notices that and responds with me and adjusts accordingly.
That's really interesting.
But with a string section, any string section, like it's such a large battleship to steer,
these decisions have to be made way in advance and communicated to everyone in time for them
to practice the way that it's going to go.
And yeah, it's a totally, totally different operation.
Well, and if I'm really fair, I think that I love doing Bowings because it's such a creative
process, but I don't love making decisions because like you said, I love to be able to
do things on the fly.
Actually, historically, there have been some amazing conductors that didn't want to have
every string player playing the same Bowings.
They wanted to be free.
Interesting.
And that allows for a completely different sound.
And in particular sections, it can be the most successful free Bowing, but it's something
that I find very interesting outside my orchestra life.
You know, I play a lot of chamber music and I just had this really interesting conversation
with one of my friends who was in the Dover Quartet for years.
And she said, I just couldn't play in an orchestra because I could never make a decision about
Bowings.
You know, I want to be able to be off stage just before the concert and think, oh man,
this works so much better.
I think I'm going to change it.
So that I think that's probably my instinct too.
But to fit within the system that we have, decisions do have to be made.
And so I do my best in that moment and very often when I come back to a part, let's say
a Brahms symphony, something that we play often four or five years later, I have very
different ideas about what we should be doing.
And I'm sure it might drive some people absolutely crazy that would like things to fall into
a mold just to know what to expect.
But I think that music changes and as you change your feeling about the music changes.
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that.
And I think often that's a great indicator of high quality music is that like you come
back to it again, you know, you're a different person a few years later.
Yeah.
And you see new things in the music, both through your own growth as a musician and
simply revisiting these great pieces that have such depth.
Yeah.
That it takes so long for them to reveal themselves to you as a performer.
Absolutely.
In terms of other roles that I play as concertmaster, there are some things that are behind the
scenes.
I serve on the programming committee.
I serve on the artistic director search committee.
And I end up getting pulled into all kinds of other conversations that aren't necessarily
officially part of my role, but they become, you know, it sort of becomes a figurehead
role and also a communicator across parts of the organization.
So between parts of management, between management and musicians, it's a it's kind of an all
inclusive role and one that I really enjoy.
And I love the role of concertmaster because I do love orchestral music.
And I also love chamber music and I also love playing solo.
And it kind of encompasses all of those roles at the same time.
Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaking of chamber music outside of your work at the CPO, you run a festival, two festivals,
really.
Chamberfest Cleveland and Chamberfest West here in Calgary.
How did those go this summer?
I hear there was a great success down in Cleveland and I came to some of the concerts here in
Calgary this summer.
It was just so wonderful.
Tell us a little bit about those festivals.
Sure.
So Chamberfest Cleveland, I founded before I had this job here in Calgary with my father,
Franklin Cohen, who was long time principal clarinet of the Cleveland Orchestra.
As a kid, I was kind of a backstage rat.
I got to go to a lot of Cleveland Orchestra concerts, which was super fun.
But I really fell in love with chamber music or music more broadly when my parents would
take us to various chamber music festivals across the country and the world.
And I just loved the intimacy of music making in chamber music.
I loved getting to know the people behind the music.
I loved rehearsals.
There's so much laughter and so many ideas going back and forth.
So that really just made me want to be a musician to be part of these chamber music festivals.
And then as I started to become a professional musician, I said to my dad, Cleveland has
a world class orchestra and an art museum and all these other institutions.
Why shouldn't we have a great chamber music festival?
Why do people have to fly to Aspen or music at Menlo or Seattle to get their chamber music
fix?
So we started our festival 13 years ago and it's grown kind of beyond our wildest expectations.
We've had hundreds of the world's top musicians in Cleveland and it's very inspiring.
It's a wonderful time for the audience.
It's a wonderful time for me.
It's very inspiring for me.
I feel like I learn so much.
It's like having a three week master class every time I'm in Cleveland.
I'm also able to make some connections that I feel like ultimately help us here in Calgary
by bringing people to our auditions and having people get to know the Calgary Philharmonic
in a different way through me.
But it's a very special time.
The music making is very powerful and Cleveland has really been a labor of love.
Chamberfest Cleveland has been a labor of love.
It was during the pandemic, my husband, Roman Rabinovich is a wonderful pianist and of course
all of his tours were shut down.
I was on mat leave and then without work for many, many months.
We just felt like we were sitting at home doing relatively little except for raising
a child, which I guess is not little.
But musically we felt like we were just waiting.
And I thought Calgary really, really has a hole in the summer in terms of music and it
certainly has nothing that resembles a chamber music festival.
And I thought this is a perfect time to start it.
So we went on many, many walks with potential donors and told them what we were dreaming
of.
We created what has become an excellent board, really super duper in terms of their work
ethic and commitment to what we're doing.
And lo and behold, we created an organization that has really flourished.
We've had three seasons now and almost everything we do sells out.
We've brought some wonderful musicians who had never been to Calgary before.
Some who have, some who have soloed with us in the past with the CPO, some who will be
soloists in the future.
For us, it makes Calgary feel even more like home because it feels like we're able to contribute
something really meaningful to the musical ecosystem.
And I really hope that, I'm so glad that you came to some concerts.
I've always hoped that musicians would feel, that musicians in our community would feel
like they wanted to come to these concerts and also be inspired the way I feel every
year.
That's so wonderful.
And thank you for making this happen for Calgary's music scene.
Music and the art scene within any city, it's not a zero sum game.
When something new comes onto the scene like this chamber music festival, it's great for
everyone.
Yeah, for sure.
Because people can hear more great performances.
And the thing I think about music is that the more you listen, the more you enjoy it
and the more you understand what's happening and the more, it builds this sense of wonder
about the whole thing.
Absolutely.
So like the more the better.
Absolutely.
We have many, many friends who actually started to enjoy music through what we did these little
porch concerts in our, during the pandemic, Roman and I, and we would play for just our
neighbors and every, we would play every Sunday.
And eventually we got, you know, sometimes a few hundred people on our street waiting
for us to play concerts on Sunday.
And it was a wonderful way to connect with people.
Many of them weren't music lovers.
Many were.
Many of those who didn't know much about music, who showed up to our porch every Sunday, then
said like, oh, I want to go to the CPO.
And they started buying tickets every week or then they'd come to our festival.
And it's interesting because some people think they are orchestra people.
Oh, I don't know much about chamber music.
I'm not sure I'm into that.
And vice versa.
And I think everyone is surprised when they realize that it's just all music.
And if it's presented well, it can be really exciting.
So yeah, that's been really fun for us to see that community grow.
We even have a friend who got so into music that she started taking lessons.
Oh, wow.
That's so nice.
And then she decided to buy a beautiful piano and then the piano wouldn't fit in her home.
So she's building a beautiful home for the piano.
And it's just really, I don't know, it's wonderful to see somebody get so jazzed about music,
how it can change their life.
Absolutely.
So Chamberfest West will be continuing operations next summer, I presume.
Do you know, do you have any expectation of when an announcement of next summer season
will be coming?
Yeah, it should be any day now.
If you check our website, those dates will be there.
Fantastic.
And what that website is?
Oh, sorry.
It's chamberfestwest.com.
Our dates are usually sandwiched in between Stampede and Folkfest.
So you can expect that week to be filled with music.
And we're all over town.
Wonderful.
I can't wait to see what you've got in store for us.
So you were saying you grew up in Cleveland and you were saying that your brother is here
in the orchestra as well, our timpanist Alex Cohen, who's a great friend of mine and a
wonderful musician.
So many people come from all over to play in the Calgary Philharmonic.
This is just sort of a reality of our industry, right?
The way if you want to play in an orchestra, who knows where you're going to land.
So what was it like coming to Calgary?
I know Alex was here before you, so you had a little bit of a sneak preview of what you
were getting into.
Yeah.
Well, and I probably wouldn't have ended up here without Alex.
So as a timpanist, you really rely on the back of the International Musician magazine
every month to see where that next audition is going to be happening.
And every orchestra has one timpanist.
So if folks who have jobs stick around, there's basically one audition for timpanist every
generation.
So when Alex saw an ad for the Calgary Philharmonic, he was going to be here.
He got this job.
I was so happy for him.
And he moved here not knowing a lot about the orchestra or the city, but just it was
a job and he was really super excited about that.
And I think he was here maybe a year or maybe even only a half a year before he called me
and said, hey, we have a concertmaster opening.
I had just gotten a job as concertmaster of the Richmond Symphony in Virginia, which was
a really wonderful orchestra.
I was loving life there.
I had just started when Alex called me to say, hey, we have this opening.
And I thought, oh my God, I just took my stuff off the moving truck.
So I was at that time a little ambivalent, but he said, just take the audition.
So I came and there was a trial process.
So I didn't know until the end of the year that that job would be mine if I wanted to
take it.
And don't worry, Alex was not on that panel.
No, no.
He had no part in that hiring process.
So when I got this job, my brother and I both realized what an amazing opportunity this
could be to be in the same city and to be in a wonderful orchestra and a wonderful organization.
And it's very hard to plan to be with family if you're a musician.
So it was quite a stroke of luck and planning, I guess.
We've both just been so thrilled to be in the same city.
My husband and I have a four-year-old daughter and it's just so wonderful to have uncle Alex
just around the corner.
And I love playing music with him.
As you said, he's a wonderful musician, very sensitive.
And it's always really special to share the stage with family.
And especially if you trust and love their playing as much as I do with my...
Yeah, it's funny.
I've got a nice little perch at the back of the stage.
So sometimes when in a moment when we need to be communicating across the orchestra,
often I'll see you and Alex exchange a knowing look and I'm like, oh, there's history there.
It is fun.
Sometimes he's a little behind and the conductor may not have said anything to him yet.
So I could just give him a little hand signal and he's like, oh, okay.
It's nice to be able to trust one another and not be offended by comments.
I really love getting feedback from colleagues and friends and family.
And I feel like with family, it's the most unfiltered.
And I like that.
Sure.
I mean, and yeah, like that's not just for you two though, right?
You and I, we often, we'll make little hand signals.
Yeah, totally.
And then often we'll be like, at a break or at the end of rehearsal, we'll touch base
and be like, is that cool?
Sorry if I didn't...
We're all on the same team.
We're all trying to do the same stuff.
Yeah.
But I think as a colleague, everyone tries to be careful with colleagues that will be
their colleagues forever.
And I think that's a very good thing.
But I think it's also really wonderful when you get to a point with a colleague where
you can just say what you hear is happening and there's not an emotional barrier there.
When the personal and the musical doesn't get intertwined, you can just say things as
they are and that person trusts you enough to take that and vice versa.
I really appreciate that.
Sure.
Yeah, I mean, every one of us on stage has a relationship with every other person on
stage.
So like, oh, you know, there are 66 players in the orchestra.
So like, oh gosh, I couldn't run the numbers.
So there's a lot of that as a play.
And we cultivate those relationships through our career to develop trust and intuitive
understanding of each other's musicianship.
And I think that's one of the real joys of playing with the same core group of people
week in, week out for decades.
Right.
So one other family relationship that I wanted to ask you about.
Last season, your husband Roman played with us as a soloist at the CPO.
He played the Lutaswowski Piano Concerto.
How was that for you sitting there leading the orchestra with Roman just at arm's reach
away from you?
Oh, it's wonderful.
I know he's playing so well, so I feel like I can react better to him than to many.
Also, it's a very complicated piece and he knew it like the back of his hand, but I got
to study it quite a bit in detail.
We would play the orchestra part and his part at the same time in the weeks leading up to
it because it was his first performance too.
And he wanted to make it feel like he owned it, which I think he really did.
But that was really a wonderful process for me to get to know that piece in a deep way.
I always love playing with Roman.
He's not always easy because he's my greatest supporter and my biggest critic, and I love
both of those sides.
I feel like I've grown as a result of being married to him, not only in our marriage,
but musically.
Fantastic.
That's just so wonderful.
So, as a musician, we spend so much time practicing, performing, rehearsing, and all these things,
but practicing as well.
We're alone in the practice room or whatever, but we're always in the company of something
very special to us, and that's our instrument.
Tell me about your violin.
Yeah.
So, the violin that I play most here in Calgary and in general is a modern instrument made
by a wonderful living luthier, Joseph Curtin, who lives in Ann Arbor.
He's Canadian originally, and he built this beautiful instrument about five years ago.
I have an adult student who really wanted to buy me this violin or commission a violin
rather.
And at the time, I wasn't super excited about it because I have a beautiful old Italian
violin as well, a Montegazza, which is a wonderful instrument.
And I wasn't sure that I wanted to play on a new violin of Joseph Curtin, but he made
it and I really loved it.
And I actually find it suits me well for what I'm doing here playing concertmaster.
It has a sound that I feel sort of has a core to it.
And especially when I have to play a solo, it feels like I can spin the sound out easily.
And it's nice to have an instrument where you can kind of feel your sound.
It's hard to talk about sound, but it's just a feeling.
Sometimes you'll have an instrument that blends in really well with the section, but you can't
sort of feel yourself.
And so I like this because it has both of those elements.
I have some beautiful bows by a modern maker, Benoit Roland, who is one of the greatest
living bow makers.
He sort of follows the tradition of the old French masters.
I find it hard to let go of instruments because I get attached to them.
Even if I don't want to play them, I find that I have personal attachments to each of
them that are related to the music I played on them or moments in my life when I bought
them.
It's kind of a weird thing, but I'm sure when I'm old and need to unload all these, I might
regret my decision.
But it's nice to hold onto instruments.
Yeah, but you develop a really personal, very direct connection to these objects that really
have a voice of their own.
Totally.
It's hard to let go sometimes.
And I find, I think everyone is different in their relationship to instruments, but
in the best moments, I forget about the actual instrument and I'm working on my playing.
But if your instrument is sick, like for instance, in the middle of the winter in Calgary, it's
brutal conditions for string instruments.
And often it just feels not good for a few weeks and you have to get things adjusted
or put new strings on or put more humidity.
It's really quite a balance, like taking care of a person.
But yeah, I like it when you get to the point where you just forget thinking about the instrument.
It just becomes your tool and your voice and you work on what you want to say through it.
So here we are at the beginning of a new orchestra season, Diana.
It's exciting.
It's always exciting to come back from our summer break and get back to business.
So I wanted to ask you, what are you looking forward to this season?
There's so much.
I'm really looking forward to a concert that we're doing in late September with the conductor
Ramon Tibar.
The orchestra has worked with him once in the past and we had a really wonderful chemistry
that week.
I agree.
So whenever we have a musician that really feels like they're making something special
happen with the orchestra, that's very exciting to me.
So Ramon is coming at the end of September.
The concerts of his will be on the 27th and 28th.
And we're playing Beethoven Emperor Concerto, which I just love, with Jonathan Biss and
Brahms Fourth Symphony, another wonderful piece.
We're also playing a short work by Katy Agos and I'm really looking forward to getting
to know that work.
Her music is, I've always wanted to get to know her music.
And so this will be my first interaction playing.
I've never played anything of hers either.
I'm looking forward to it.
Yeah.
Jonathan Biss is an old, old family friend.
My parents and his parents were friends.
My husband, Roman and Jonathan are friends and colleagues.
In fact, it's Jonathan's parents who are responsible for me meeting Roman.
So there's a lot of deep connections there and I really love his playing.
So I'm looking forward to that collaboration as well.
One thing that's relatively early in the season that I'm looking forward to is playing Anton
Bruckner's Eighth Symphony, which I've never played before.
And this is sort of the big one of Bruckner.
I mean, four, seven and maybe nine are sort of the most famous, but eight to me has always
felt like kind of the real mountain to climb.
It's a huge piece, just monolithic.
As a brass player, Bruckner is always a challenge and a joy to play because he writes so well
for our instruments.
And you were saying you're from Cleveland.
I briefly studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
I did part of a master's degree there before I won my audition here in Calgary.
And the Cleveland Orchestra is known for its performances of Bruckner.
So whenever we play Bruckner, I really think back to my time in Cleveland studying with
Mike Sacks and listening to that orchestra play this music in such a special way.
Yeah, that's awesome.
But as a kid, I just remember being seeped in that sound and it's quite a sound.
Also on that concert, we have the Bernstein Serenade that Karen Gomio is going to be playing.
And the Bernstein is a really cool work.
And I love Karen's playing.
I always enjoy her return to Calgary.
She comes every few years.
So that should be a great one.
That's October 18th and 19th.
So what's next?
What are you looking forward to?
Just a few weeks later, we're playing on November 1st, we'll be playing a really beautiful program
with Jeffrey Kehane, who's a wonderful musician.
He's a conductor and a pianist.
This program consists of the Ravel Concerto in G major for piano and orchestra.
What a great concerto.
Amazing concerto.
I love accompanying that work.
Anna Klein wrote a piece called Within Her Arms, which I'm very much looking forward
to getting to know.
And I love playing Schumann.
So we're playing the B-flat symphony, number one.
Schumann is just always so, well, that one has so much nobility and so much inner interest.
I always feel like Schumann has a lot inside.
I'm very much looking forward to that.
Yeah.
And historically, Schumann is exactly within the Calgary Philharmonic's wheelhouse.
Those recordings with Mario Bernardi from his time as music director of the orchestra,
I still hear them played on CBC radio.
And they still sound great.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
The CPO is really well suited to this music.
And even though there's been a lot of personnel change since those recordings, the tradition
lives on, I think.
Yeah, absolutely.
And our orchestra is just about the right size for Schumann.
Yeah, that'll be a great performance.
So one of the next things that's up after that is Scheherazade, which is a big one for
you.
I'm sure you've got that week circled in your calendar.
But I love playing Scheherazade.
I think it's a great piece.
It's great fun.
And it's been a few years.
It's been a little while since we've done Scheherazade.
It's actually been quite a while.
I think maybe even seven years.
Pre-pandemic, huh?
Definitely pre-pandemic.
I love playing Scheherazade.
The concertmaster solo that keeps coming back gets a little bit more involved each time
and a little bit more pleading.
And it's one of those pieces that makes me feel like an actor to perform.
And I love that.
So it's...
Everyone loves Scheherazade.
It's Rimsky-Korsakov's ability to orchestrate.
Oh, it's spectacular.
It's just quite, quite amazing.
And it's just beautiful music.
It's thrilling.
It's gorgeous.
It's tender.
It's everything you want.
I'm also super duper looking forward to hearing our new principal percussionist, Chris Sighs,
play all the great, great, great snare drum stuff in here.
Yes, yes.
So Scheherazade and the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto are on November 15th and 16th
this season.
And the week after that is something that I have been warned about as principal trumpet.
I have gotten a big red flag that a Muppet Christmas Carol is like a trumpet concerto.
It's like lots of happy-dappy piccolo trumpet.
It's apparently a real killer of a part.
And I haven't managed to get my hands on a copy of that part yet.
So I can't wait to hear you play it.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that one's definitely circled in my calendar.
But then the week after that, James Ennis is in town to play the bronze concerto.
Yeah, that's going to be great.
Everyone in Canada who loves music knows James Ennis.
He's such a classy player, thoughtful musician.
Did you know that his father was the trumpet prof at Brandon University?
I did know that, yes.
Yeah, he's a great guy and I'm very much looking forward to hearing him play the Brahms concerto.
Also on that program with Rune Bergman conducting is Sibelius First Symphony.
What a great symphony.
I think Rune feels a very deep connection with these Nordic composers.
Sure, yep.
And that's on Saturday, November 30th.
And on January 25th, we're playing an all Mozart program, including the Coronation Mass.
And one of the soloists for that will be Mireille Aslan, who I went to school with at the Glenn
Gold School in Toronto.
She's an old friend of mine, so it'll be great to see her and hear her sing again.
Last time she was here was for a Mahler 8 some years back.
And you know what?
One other thing that I'm really looking forward to in February is the Calgary Opera production
of Don Pasquale, because I'm Italian, maybe I'm a little bit biased.
I love Bel Canto opera.
Now I often don't really love playing it because the trumpet parts really aren't very interesting
most of the time, but that's not the point of the music.
Except in Don Pasquale, there's a huge trumpet solo.
Speaking of Act Two, there's this very, very self-pitying aria from the tenor Ernesto.
Basically the trumpet plays the whole aria.
So I get to play this big, juicy, juicy, juicy Bel Canto solo.
That's awesome.
Which, you know, it makes my Italian heart sing.
That's fantastic.
And also, Jonathan Brandani, who has not fairly recently taken over the Calgary Opera, has
done such wonderful things with the opera.
And I think every production I've really looked forward to in its own way.
Yeah, that's right.
And Jonathan is conducting the first and last productions at the opera this year.
Jacques Lacombe is conducting Don Pasquale.
Awesome.
That'll be fun.
On Friday, February 28th and Saturday, March 1st, Diana, you are our featured soloist.
Yes, I am very much looking forward to that concert.
Prokofiev's Second Concerto is a concerto that I've lived with for many years and really
adore.
The second movement is maybe one of the most sublime musical moments that I know.
It's been many years since I've played it and I'm thrilled to be playing it with Kensho
Watanabe, who I've heard really excellent things about.
And you know, it's I think one of the great joys in our job is not knowing a musician
or a conductor who's coming in.
And just when you have that wonderful chemistry, it's like, ah, that made that week so fun.
Yeah, that sense of discovery is exhilarating.
Yeah.
And I am excited to work with Kensho and I believe it might be one of those weeks.
Playing concertos is always really satisfying for me.
It sort of tests a different side of my chops.
And it's one of those situations that I think really helps me become a better leader.
Because when you play a concerto, you know, you have time.
It's not like the week in week out of preparing orchestral programs, but you have time to
consider every bar and every little musical twist and turn.
And you want to own a piece like that if you're going to stand up there and be soloist.
You want to do that in the orchestra, too.
But it's a little bit different because of the speed at which the orchestral music comes
to you when you're going week by week in the season.
You're absolutely right.
And this is your only chance this season to hear a member of the Calgary Philharmonic
up playing a concerto with the orchestra.
So don't miss it.
Of course, one of the concerts that I think is the most exciting for our entire community
and for me for sure is our classic special featuring Bruna Bergman and the incredible
Yo-Yo Ma on cello.
Yo-Yo is he's just the greatest.
You know, everywhere he shows up to play, every person who's playing with him that week
feels like this is the best day of his year.
He really makes everyone feel so special and so included musically.
And I really have always loved playing with him.
He's communicating with the orchestra.
He's leaning into the sections he's playing with.
He's just making music a joy.
And I think that's what we all want music to be.
So I'm really thrilled that he's coming back.
In fact, after he came last time, we had a magazine cover.
The prelude cover had his face on it.
And I put it in the backseat of my car because I just thought, what a great reminder of the
type of person you want to be when you're a musician to bring music to life, but also
to connect with people.
He actually said to me, I really didn't think I wanted to be a musician.
I just wanted to connect with people, but I realized that the easiest way for me to
do that was through my music.
Yeah, he's a very special performer.
And yeah, I mean, there are a lot of great cellists out there, but he has a way of elevating
everyone else around him that's incredibly special.
It's very amazing.
Actually, I have a little anecdote about Yo-Yo Ma.
When I was a kid, so my parents have known him for many, many years.
They went to the Marlboro Music Festival with him.
And so when he came through and played at the Cleveland Orchestra as soloist many years
ago, my parents had lunch with him.
And at that time, the Cleveland Orchestra would shuttle their soloists around the limousine.
So I guess my parents and Yo-Yo got caught up in conversation and totally forgot to pick
up their kid who was in second grade or something.
That was me.
And so Yo-Yo said, oh, no problem.
We'll just go pick her up at her school in my limousine.
So this white limo came through the pickup line.
And who is this guy?
It was Yo-Yo Ma picking me up from school.
It's kind of fun.
That's hilarious.
On Friday, May 9, Saturday, May 10, I'm really looking forward to playing one of my favorite
pieces of orchestral music, La Mer by Debussy.
It's such a special, special piece.
Every corner of that piece is like a fully realized world.
His world of color is just something otherworldly.
And also on that program, I'm super looking forward to playing something for the first
time, Escal by Jacques Iber.
What a fantastic piece.
Do you know this piece, Diana?
I always love Iber.
Iber is just so, so fun and so quirky.
And I don't know this piece yet, although I'm sure I will very soon.
But I've loved all the Iber that I've ever played.
Yeah, no, this piece really, really rocks.
It's really wonderful piece.
You're going to love it.
And our season wraps up on May 30 and 31 with probably one of the greatest symphonies ever
written, Mahler 2, The Resurrection, which I think everyone who hears this piece loves
it.
I mean, do you know anyone who doesn't love Mahler 2?
I'm not sure that I do.
It's such an experience to go through that work as a listener, as a player.
It's like living a life, I think.
Yeah, for sure.
And for me, Mahler 2 is one of the biggest trumpet parts in the repertoire.
And every time I come back to it, I find new things in it.
We were talking earlier about in great music how there's untold depth.
And for me, Mahler 2 is really something where every time I come back to it, I find a whole
new array of things.
There's a totally new world available to me every time I play this piece.
It's just stunning.
And Diana, you've also got a lot of non-CPO stuff going on this season.
Can you tell me maybe a few highlights of that?
Sure.
So I'm actually starting the season by playing a concerto for violin and piano and string
quartet in Scotland, which I'm really, really thrilled about.
It's a piece that I really love, this Chanson Concerto.
It's also a wonderful melodrama through music.
And we're playing at a beautiful festival called the Lemmonmore Festival.
Like Lucia.
Like Lucia, yeah.
I have several recitals lined up with my husband Roman all over the place, Nelson, BC, Calgary,
Sarasota, Florida.
And we're playing a program that's extremely dear to my heart that includes the Schubert
Fantasy, one of the greatest works ever written for violin and piano.
So it'll be nice to play that recital many times.
There's also a project that I'm looking forward to called the Four Concertmasters Project.
I'm playing with Robert Uchida, the concertmaster of Edmonton, and Andrew Wan, the concertmaster
of Montreal, and Jonathan Crowe, concertmaster of Toronto.
And we're bringing this program to a series in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
And also we'll be at the Montreal Chamber Music Festival next summer.
So that should be fun.
Wonderful.
You're keeping busy.
You can all go to our website at calgaryfilmmusicians.ca and look at the concert calendar.
And Diana, I'll have all these events up there so anyone can see what you're up to.
And if they're in town for any of those places, you can go hear Diana play and tell your hearder
on this podcast.
So getting back to work, it's great to see our colleagues again and start playing with
these people again every week.
We hear each other play so much on stage and we talk about our playing, we talk about our
practicing, our goals in our playing, things we're working on, all these sorts of things.
And that's one of the great joys of working in a group like the CPO.
I wanted to ask you, who's a player in the orchestra who's playing you admire?
Oh man, there are so many.
Really there are so many.
I mean, I love playing with you and I feel like you always know what you want to say,
which I really appreciate.
I love playing with my brother.
I hate to single people out because there are really so many musicians that I adore
in the orchestra.
Pick one.
I'm making you do it.
Blame me.
Okay.
I've always loved playing with Jesse Morrison.
I find that he's a very natural player and he thinks a lot about what he's doing.
And what I love about Jesse is that even though Jesse's in the section and Jesse plays viola
and Jesse plays viola, I feel like it's really easy to communicate with him across the stage
at any moment.
He's got his sort of antenna up and I love that in a musician.
Oh, that's so great to hear.
That's so wonderful.
Yeah, we've got so many great colleagues.
Well, Diana, I wanted to thank you so much for your time.
Thanks for sitting down with me and thanks for talking about the season.
I'm really looking forward to it.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you.
Notes from the Stage is an independent production of the Calgary Philharmonic Players Association.
The opinions expressed here are our own and do not reflect those of the Calgary Philharmonic
Orchestra.
Our thanks to Nathan Chandler for his technical expertise.
Let us know what you think of the show and check out our concert calendar at calgaryfilmmusicians.ca
to see what we're all up to outside of our regular performances at the CPO.
On our next episode in two weeks, I'll be talking with Maria van der Sloot, section
first violinist in the CPO and member of Calgary's own critically acclaimed Lands End ensemble.
Talk to you soon.