Friday, April 10, 2026, 7:30 pm, Jane Mallett Theatre, 27 Front St. E.
SERENADE | Romance Rules
Pianist Anya Alexeyev returns for the majestic César Franck Piano Quintet in a lush orchestral version and guest maestro Giovanni Pompeo conducts the glorious melodies of a Tchaikovsky favourite
SINFONIA TORONTO / GIOVANNI POMPEO Conductor
ANYA ALEXEYEV Pianist
FRANCK Piano Quintet orchestra version
TCHAIKOVSKY Serenade
Adult $44.25; Senior (60+) $35.40; Student $20
PERFORMER BIOGRAPHIES
Anya Alexeyev, Pianist Born in Moscow into a family of musicians, Anya Alexeyev started studying at the Gnessin Music School at the age of five, and in 1989 entered Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory to become a student of the renowned professor Dmitri Bashkirov. The following year she was awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London, where she studied with Irina Zaritskaya. During her student years, Anya Alexeyev won numerous prizes including the John Hopkinson Gold Medal (Royal College of Music), Elizabeth, The Queen Mother’s Award for ” the most outstanding contribution to the Royal College of Music”, the First prize at the Newport International Piano Competition, Young Concert Artists Trust, and The Capital Radio/Anna Instone Memorial Prize.
Alexeyev has performed extensively in many countries across Europe (Britain, France, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Russia, Finland, Ireland, Greece, Germany, and Macedonia), as well as in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Malaysia, and South Africa.
She has performed as a soloist on numerous occasions in all of London’s major concert halls – Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elisabeth Hall, and Barbican Hall. Throughout her career, she has also appeared in such venues as Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Konzerthaus, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Herodes Atticus Theatre at the Acropolis in Athens, Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, Great Hall in Moscow Conservatory, Philharmonia Hall in St. Petersburg, Birmingham Symphony Hall, Usher Hall in Edinburgh, Johannesburg Symphony Hall, Dewan Filarmonik in Kuala Lumpur, Palais Montcalm in Quebec City, Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, and Bargemusic in New York.
She has performed concertos with many distinguished orchestras, including the Royal Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, Moscow State Symphony, Vienna Chamber, The Philharmonia, Royal Scottish National, Deutschland Radio, City of Birmingham Symphony, Bournemouth Symphony and Sinfonietta, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, London Mozart Players, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, English Chamber, Belgian National Symphony, Sinfonia Toronto and Quebec Symphony, collaborating with such conductors as Temirkanov, Simonov, Oramo, Bakels, Judd.
Alexeyev has an extensive solo repertoire, ranging from baroque to cutting-edge contemporary music. In addition to enjoying playing standard concert repertoire,she has been following her passion for discovering lesser-known music, which resulted in performances and recordings of rarely played works and premieres. As a collaborative musician, she has participated in many chamber music festivals in Europe and North America.
Alexeyev has recorded for EMI, Dutton Epoch, Toccata Classics, and Marquis Classics labels. Her performances have been broadcast by BBC Radio 3 (UK), GMTV (UK), CBC (Canada), Deutschland Radio, and numerous other radio stations around the world. In 1995, she premiered Paul McCartney’s first solo piano piece, A Leaf, which was later released on CD for EMI Classics.
She is a faculty member at Wilfrid Laurier University, the Glenn Gould School, and the Phil and Eli Taylor Performance Academy for Young Artists.
Sinfonia Toronto now in its 27th season, has toured twice in Europe, in the US, South America and China, receiving glowing reviews. It has released six CD’s, including a JUNO Award winner, and performs in many Ontario cities. Sinfonia Toronto's extensive repertoire includes all the major string orchestra works of the 18th through 21st centuries, and it has premiered many new works. Under the baton of Nurhan Arman the orchestra’s performances present outstanding international guest artists and prominent Canadian musicians.
PROGRAM NOTES
Piano Quintet in F minor by César Franck (1822-1890)
Orchestra version by Nurhan Arman
This work is the first of César Franck's significant late works. In spite of the celebrated composer Camille Saint-Saens’ participation playing the piano part when it was premiered in January 1880, the Quintet met with a cold reception, and was only performed a few times more during the composer's lifetime. Only in the twentieth century did audiences and critics recognize it as a masterwork of French chamber music. One critic described the work as having "torrid emotional power," and composer Édouard Lalo called it “an explosion."
Franck wrote the Quintet in the winter of 1878-1879, when some biographers believe he was in love with one of his students. It is an intensely expressive work - it contains more ppp (extra soft) and fff (extra loud) markings than any other piece of chamber music – which may have been inspired by his romantic passion. That could also account for his wife's public disdain for the piece.
The work’s late-Romantic harmonies, searing emotion and unbridled sensuality caused Saint-Saens - who had been sight-reading his part - to walk off the stage in protest at the end, and stunned the audience. On a positive yet condescending note, Liszt exclaimed that such mastery was unexpected from an "organ loft composer.”
Franck was a musical prodigy but never became the star piano virtuoso his father had desired. Born in Belgium, he spent most of his life in Paris as one of several composers involved in a late 19th century renaissance of French instrumental music. His organ classes at the Conservatoire were celebrated forums for harmony and composition, with a cult following in the next generation of composers, including d'Indy and Debussy. He gradually gained fame for his improvisations as organist, while focusing his compositional skills on monumental oratorios and operas. Franck had admired Wagner's Tristan und Isolde's Prelude to Act I, which he heard in 1874. He took Wagner’s tonal innovations a step further, treating harmony like colour. His late works included symphonic poems, chamber music, and the famous “Organ Symphony,” all displaying his distinctive tonal advances and intensely chromatic harmony.
Serenade for Strings in C major by Pyotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893)
Tchaikovsky was a solidly romantic and nationalistic composer, but he adored Mozart, whom he once called "the Christ of music." Tchaikovsky wrote that a performance of Don Giovanni he attended when he was only 10 was the experience that first showed him music’s power to express deep emotion.
In September 1880 Tchaikovsky was working on his bombastic 1812 Overture, and perhaps needed to balance it with something more delicate. He decided to write an orchestral serenade as an homage to Mozart's serenades. Inspired by his love of Mozart’s music, he completed this work very quickly, and was much more satisfied with it than the 1812 Overture.
He wrote to his patron, Nadezhda von Meck, "The overture will be very showy and noisy, but will have no artistic merit because I wrote it without warmth and without love. But the Serenade, on the contrary, I wrote from inner compulsion. This is a piece from the heart." Later on he also told von Meck, "I am violently in love with this work and cannot wait for it to be played."
The Serenade was premiered in St. Petersburg in 1881 and became a hit immediately. Tchaikovsky was gratified to receive congratulations on it from one of his living idols, the pianist and composer Anton Rubenstein.
This first movement, Pezzo in forma di Sonatina, moves from a measured Andante introduction into a simple four-note theme that develops into vigorous scale passages in the Allegro which show off the varied tone colors available within the strings alone. The rapid passagework is brilliant but not forced or too prominent; it complements and supports the flowing movement of the Allegro theme.
The second movement Waltz is Tchaikovsky's 19th-Century replacement for the minuet movements in Mozart's serenades. As with waltz sections in some of his symphonies too, this movement resonates with Tchaikovsky's ballets. And in the next century this movement and parts of the rest of the work were used by George Balanchine for his 1936 Serenade. Balanchine later expanded his ballet to include Tchaikovsky's entire Serenade, but with the second and third movements reversed. Each string section takes their turn to play the waltz melody poised against rhythmic lines in the other sections.
The second movement ends in a gentle pianissimo, leading to the third movement Elegia. Like the first two movements, the Elegy is developed from a scale passage, this time rising in steadily increasing fervor. The lower strings carry much of the singing melody which is more reflective than mournful.
The Finale is subtitled Tema russo and includes two authentic Russian folk tunes; both had been catalogued by the composer and musicologist Mily Balakirev. The first tune, a slow song sung by Volga carters, is the content of the Andante introduction to the movement. The second tune is a lively folk dance. Tchaikovsky underlines this theme’s village origins here and there with pizzicato (plucked) octaves that mimic the sound of balalaikas. A third sweeping motif appears over the vigorous dance, creating contrast and grandeur that blossom into an audible impression of the vast Russian landscape. The first movement’s Andante theme returns, seemingly to round out the entire work, but Tchaikovsky wittily transforms the descending portion of what had been a stately motif into the throbbing downward scale of the dance to conclude the Serenade in bravura style.
Sinfonia Toronto respectfully acknowledges that we work in the Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat and Haudenosaunee peoples