We welcome some returning guests as VS presents a special concert by the Nanaimo-based Vancouver Island Symphony. Cuban-born Cosette Justo Valdés has won the hearts of musicians and audiences on Vancouver Island. Now in her third season as music director of VIS, she mates the madcap musical high jinks of Rossini alongside the happy spirits...

Richard Strauss idolised Mozart – although “modernising” Idomeneo was, perhaps, a step too far! Strauss’s Oboe Concerto is a magical, late-in-life work, played here by VS Principal Michelle Feng. Christian Kluxen also shakes up a three-movement Symphony with a non-Mozartean minuet, and premieres a VS commission from Victoria’s own Anna Höstman.

Known for his ability to bring new audiences to the concert hall, the Calgary-born “disruptor-conductor” Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser leads a journey that touches on the beauty of nature and our need to care for our climate. The poetry of Wendy Jean MacLean is set by BC-based choral composer Nicholas Ryan Kelly in Earth, Beloved, a work that...

This program celebrates humor, ingenuity,and the blending of styles across three distinct musical voices. HK Gruber’s Manhattan Broadcasts sets the stage with its jazzy energy, and tongue-in-cheek playfulness, drawing on urban soundscapes. Haydn’s Symphony No. 60, “Il Distratto”, follows with its brilliant theatricality, weaving a lighthearted narrative full of wit and surprising turns. The evening culminates with Richard...

Heino Eller’s Dawn captures both the first light of day and the awakening of Estonian national identity after World War I. Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, lyrical and vast, reflects the mystery of the landscape that shaped him, here brought to life by the brilliant Canadian violinist Blake Pouliot. Dvořák’s New World Symphony, written during his stay in...

Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro was written in 1905 to showcase the virtuosity of the London Symphony Orchestra’s string players and its warmth and elegance remain irresistible today. Vaughan Williams’s beloved The Lark Ascending, performed by VS Concertmaster Terence Tam, floats with pastoral grace and quiet transcendence. The concert concludes with Schumann’s Symphony No. 2, a radiant...