Conductor William Rowson celebrates 10 years with Stratford Symphony Orchestra
By: Lisa Chester
It is not common for a city this size to be blessed with a symphony orchestra, and even more so for an orchestra with such longevity.
It is with great pleasure that the Stratford Symphony Orchestra (SSO) is recognizing ten years with conductor William (Bill) Rowson at the helm as music director. This is a great accomplishment given that industry average tops out at eight years max.
“It’s a huge accomplishment for Bill and it’s great for the orchestra that he wants to be with us for this long and continues to build the artistic direction. The musicians love working with him, the audience loves hearing him, and he’s able to build great programs,” said executive director AJ Ashley.
Together, Ashley and Rowson are launching the 22nd season with the opening concert of Enchanting Forest: Weber, Reinecke and Schumann on Sept. 26 at 7:30 p.m. at Avondale United Church in Stratford.
“I feel privileged to open our 22nd season and to celebrate ten years of music-making with the Stratford Symphony Orchestra. Together, the orchestra and our community have shared so many remarkable concerts, featuring fiery orchestral favourites like Scheherazade to joyous collaborations with outstanding groups like The Bookends, and so many more. This opening program, Enchanted Landscapes: Weber, Reineke and Schumann is a wonderful way to begin our next chapter together,” Rowson said in a release.
This exciting opening concert invites audiences on a musical journey filled with magic, lyricism and musical defiance. Carl Maria von Weber’s Overture to Oberon, is a sparkling, atmospheric work that captures the magic and adventure of the composer’s final opera.
The orchestra then welcomes acclaimed flutist, and principal flute of the SSO, Laurel Swinden as soloist in Carl Reinecke’s Concerto in D Major, Op. 23. Composed in 1908, this concerto remains a defiant and unapologetic time-capsule of the late-Romantic musical landscape.
Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 is famous for defying orthodox symphonic form. Radically ahead of his time, Schumann omits the traditional breaks between movements. This unbroken structure creates a powerful illusion of a single, continuous, and highly immersive journey in which the separate parts of the symphony bleed into one another to tell one continuous emotional story.
“When I look at my calendar, I put a big red circle around the Stratford dates because I really do love our players and our audiences. That reflects the challenge of the music that we play and the number of performances we can offer our audiences and we are in a place where we can offer the repertoire I dreamt of since I was young,” said Rowson.
The finale concert of the upcoming season is particularly exciting as it features a brand-new commission that Rowson is writing for the SSO which will be a world premiere piece celebrating Bill and his tenure with the symphony based on his time and experience in Stratford. Much like with Duke Ellington and his suite, Such Sweet Thunder, Stratford is the muse for the commission called Songs of Stratford: A Decade With William Rowson.
“It’s a theme in variation, the type of piece of music. Each variation features a different section of the orchestra; I know exactly who I’m writing for and it’s a look back at the history of the Stratford Symphony. The nice thing about writing little variations on a theme is that they can each be a different character or each be a different personality or shared memory. I remember going to see The Tempest with Christopher Plummer in my early days in Stratford and racing there and trying to park the car, hearing the fanfare playing and running up the hill to get up into the Festival Theatre. So, I made a little variation that you can hear the fanfare, and you can hear the scurrying, and then eventually you arrive for a great performance. Variations of things like that, things that have jumped out at me,” said Rowson.
For more information or to purchase tickets, visit stratfordsymphony.ca
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