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After 37 years, a changing of the guard is about to occur within the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.
The ensemble’s final concerts of the 2024-2025 season are a tribute to one of the biggest changes: the retirement of Gwen Hoebig after 37 years as the WSO’s concertmaster.
One would think that after all of these years, nerves wouldn’t get the best of the celebrated violinist. This concert obviously has some extra weight to it, given the circumstances, but it will be made even more special for Hoebig by the presence of her family on the stage alongside her.
“I feel an enormous amount of responsibility for my family because I sort of put them in this position,” Hoebig said in an interview on Morning Light.
Listen to Gwen Hoebig's full conversation with Nolan Kehler here.
Her family – cellist daughter Juliana Moroz, violist son Alexander Moroz, and pianist husband David Moroz – will join her in a program that includes Richard Strauss’s “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks”, Claude Debussy’s “La mer”, and two pieces by W.A. Mozart.
“It’s something I’ve looked forward to for a very long time,” Hoebig smiles, gushing about her children’s accomplishments even as questions are asked about her and her career.
That career trajectory began back in her home city of Vancouver, where she was brought up in a prodigious musical family. That’s where the first notions of being a high-level ensemble player first seeded themselves in her mind, and it rooted there as she earned her degrees at the Juilliard School in the early 1980’s.
“I knew when I left school after getting my degrees in New York that I really wanted to be part of an ensemble,” Hoebig remembers. “I did not want to be travelling around the world on my own. That’s just not who I am.”
Indeed, Hoebig found herself with a choice of ensembles that were in need of a concertmaster early on in her professional career, one of which was the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. It was a match made in heaven when she won the position, as her then-boyfriend Moroz – who she met at Juilliard – was a Winnipegger himself.
“I think it’s really important to have a very strong base,” Hoebig says, noting that this is something that spills over into her approach to teaching, which she will continue to do after she steps down from the concertmaster chair.
Despite having that rooted nature in the community, Hoebig still found it difficult in the early years of her tenure to gain ground and authority within the orchestra ranks. “There was still very much, especially immediately around, men who were rather senior in their careers and were not terribly supportive right off the bat. It was a very steep learning curve for me.”
Hoebig soon found a champion in music director Bramwell Tovey, who she credits as being her biggest supporter in setting the tone as a musical leader in the orchestra. This was the beginning of a fruitful partnership that produced what many consider a career highlight for Hoebig: the recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending”. Tovey, who also founded the Winnipeg New Music Festival, also provided Hoebig with the chance to play the piece that she remembers most fondly: the violin concerto of Grammy Award winner Christopher Rouse.
While Hoebig is stepping aside from the concertmaster role, it certainly won’t be a permanent goodbye for Winnipeg music fans. She notes that audiences will likely see her in the WSO’s ranks from time to time, although this time, it will be towards the back of the violin section. She will also be performing concerts with the Winnipeg Chamber Music Society alongside incoming concertmaster Karl Stobbe and cellist Yuri Hooker, who will also be stepping down from the orchestra.
As she relinquishes duties where she needs to set the tone, Hoebig is growing into more duties where she gets to support the tone. She’s looking forward to travelling to visit her children (Alexander has just won a position with Symphony Nova Scotia and Juliana is taking on a yet-to-be-announced project in Toronto). She’s also anticipating having more time to devote to her violin students. “Often, it’s like I teach my students in between an afternoon rehearsal and an evening rehearsal, so I come home, start teaching immediately,” she says. “I have to stop on time because I quickly grabbed something to eat.”
She smiles, knowing that what she’s about to say likely won’t come to pass, and for the better. “I think hopefully, it’ll be a little bit more relaxed.”
The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s tribute to their longtime concertmaster Celebrating Gwen Hoebig takes the Centennial Concert Hall stage on May 10 at 7:30 p.m. and on May 11 at 2 p.m. Tickets and more information can be found at the WSO’s website.