Showcasing the talents of Shepherd School Concerto Competition Winner Jonathan Mak, Brahms’s formidable Piano Concerto No. 2 courses with thundering power and luminous poetry. Mak won the top prize at the first annual Sorel-Tracy International Piano Competition in Québec in October with the same concerto.
Music doesn’t get any more fun than Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, which follows a wily trickster as he upends the establishment and cavorts from one prank to the next. Based on a well-known tune by Paganini, Blacher’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini sparkle with sharp wit and dazzling invention.
Tickets required
Before the concert at 6:45pm, ticketholders are invited to Room 1133 in Alice Pratt Brown Hall to view the one-of-a-kind musical album of Max Kalbeck, the Viennese music critic and biographer of Brahms. The book's owner, Ronald Franklin, will share its significance and display the page containing Brahms' signature, circa 1874.
Repertoire
Blacher: Variations on a Theme of Paganini
Strauss: Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche
Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2
Artists
William Eddins is the Music Director Emeritus of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and a frequent guest conductor of major orchestras throughout the world.
Engagements have included the New York Philharmonic, St. Louis Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, the symphony orchestras of San Francisco, Boston Minnesota, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Detroit, Dallas, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Houston, as well as the Los Angeles and Buffalo Philharmonics.
Internationally, Eddins was Principal Guest Conductor of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra (Ireland).. He has also has conducted the Berlin Staatskapelle, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Welsh National Opera, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Bergen Philharmonic, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, and the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra.
Career highlights include taking the Edmonton Symphony Orchestras to Carnegie Hall in May of 2012, conducting RAI Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale on Italian television, and leading the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic on tour in South Africa with soprano Rene Fleming. Equally at home with opera, he conducted a full production of Porgy and Bess with Opera de Lyon both in France and the Edinburgh Festival and a revival of the production during the summer of 2010.
Mr. Eddins is an accomplished pianist and chamber musician. He regularly conducts from the piano in works by Mozart, Beethoven, Gershwin and Ravel. He has released a compact disc recording on his own label that includes Beethoven’s Hammer-Klavier Sonata and William Albright’s The Nightmare Fantasy Rag.
Mr. Eddins has performed at the Ravinia Festival with both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Ravinia Festival Orchestra. He has also conducted the orchestras of the Aspen Music Festival, the Hollywood Bowl, Chautauqua Festival, the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.
A native of Buffalo, NY, Mr. Eddins attended the Eastman School of Music, studying with David Effron and graduating at age eighteen. He also studied conducting with Daniel Lewis at the University of Southern California and was a founding member of the New World Symphony in Miami, FL.
Winner of the 2023 inaugural Bader & Overton Canadian Piano Competition, pianist Jonathan Mak made his orchestra debut at the age of 4. Since then, he has been a guest soloist with numerous orchestras, most notably the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in Bulgaria, Manchester Camerata, Orchestra Filarmonica di Udine, and Krakow Philharmonic Orchestra.
In addition to his win at the Bader competition, Jonathan’s recent accomplishments include the Grand Prize at the Plowman Chamber Music Competition with Trio Menil, and the third prize in the OSM competition. Jonathan received special prizes at the Ljubljana Festival International Piano Competition in Slovenia, and the Maj Lind International Piano Competition in Finland. He has also participated in the Van Cliburn and Dublin International Piano Competitions.
Named as one of CBC’s 30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30, Jonathan is a recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts-Michael Measures award. He is also the recipient of the 2021 and 2023 Sylva Gelber Music Foundation Award, along with the 2023 Walter Prsytawski Prize.
An advocate for community outreach, Jonathan is a member of DACAMERA’s Young Artist Program, a fellowship program for emerging professional instrumentalists, vocalists, and composers that serves the Houston community.
Jonathan is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts at Rice University with Jon Kimura Parker.
