This Sunday afternoon, November 17th at The Winnipeg Art Gallery’s Muriel Richardson Auditorium at 3pm, Virtuosi Concerts in collaboration with the Women's Musical Club of Winnipeg and Prairie Debut will be presenting two sons of the prairie.
Called A Love Letter to the Prairies, this concert will feature Cellist David Liam Roberts and pianist Godwin Friesen performing music by Rachmaninov, Poulenc, Joni Mitchell, and music composed by Friesen himself.
Manitoban David Liam Roberts has performed on stages both here in Winnipeg and around the world. He was the 2021 Winner of the Michael Measures Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts, he was also the Grand Prize Winner at the 2018 National Music Festival of Canada. He has performed as a soloist with our Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and this past September he performed in Cornwall, UK and in Trondheim, Norway.
Pianist Godwin Friesen is from Saskatchewan. In 2022 he took first place at the OSM Competition and took a first-place award at the National Music Festival in 2015. He also won the Glenn Gould School’s prestigious Concerto Competition.
Both musicians are very much up and comers on the Canadian classical music landscape.
Although both from the prairies, Friesen and Roberts met while studying at the Glenn Gould School in Toronto. “As soon as we met, we knew that we were kindred spirits in many ways,” says Roberts.
Sunday’s concert is the first of many concerts that Roberts and Godwin will be doing across Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta this year. Prairie Debut is an organization that promotes young musicians embarking on music careers while connecting communities through music. The tour they have lined up for Roberts and Friesen consists of 25 concerts. Starting in Winnipeg, the duo will also perform in such communities as Souris, Moose Jaw, Biggar, Regina, Kindersley, Saskatoon, and Canmore, amongst many others.
The program for Sunday’s concert here in Winnipeg consists of two major works for cello and piano., Rachmaninov’s robust, virtuosic, and gorgeous Cello Sonata, and Poulenc’s humorous, charming, and elegant Cello Sonata. The Rachmaninov and the Poulenc are very contrasting, and this is something that Roberts thinks about while performing the two works. “With the Poulenc, you have to be able to change characters on a dime. That is special thing about his music, he will introduce this one character, and then right away introduce another character. There is no intermission or transition to the next character...which is kind of what we see in Rachmaninov.”
The duo will also be performing music written by Godwin Friesen. His piece is inspired by Psalm 133. In three sections the piece explores the duality of conflict and unity that exists between brothers. Whether it be actual brothers, or close friends who become like brothers. Roberts describes the piece from a performer's standpoint, “The cello part is hard. It is very well written...I think it very evenly balanced. We both have these equal parts, and it works really well together.”
The name of the concert is A Love Letter to the Prairies. With this in mind, Roberts and Friesen will also be performing songs written by an artist who is synonymous with the Candian Prairie. They have chosen a couple of tunes by Joni Mitchell. The duo will be performing their take on Both Sides Now and Big Yellow Taxi. “We were thinking, ‘what is close to the hearts of prairie people,’ so obviously Joni Mitchell came to mind. She is such an icon of the prairies, and her songs have meant so much to so many people.
David Liam Roberts and Godwin Friesen’s concert A Love Letter to the Prairies as presented by Virtuosi, the Women's Musical Club of Winnipeg, and Prairie Debut, is sure to be fantastic! Let these two prairie sons (suns) shine and spread their warmth of what it means to be from the heart of the continent.
Virtuosi, the Women's Musical Club of Winnipeg, and Prairie Debut’s presentation of Love Letter to the Prairies takes place this Sunday afternoon, November 17th at The Winnipeg Art Gallery’s Muriel Richardson Auditorium at 3pm.
