ABOUT THE PERFORMERS
Harpist Teresa Suen-Campbell's recent album of "My Voice," with Sinfonia Toronto conducted by Nurhan Arman, released by Navona Records, was praised "a splendid presentation of 3 concerti" (Textura).
Harp Column commented Teresa's performance "brings warmth, clarity and emotional depth to a thoughtfully curated program," and La Scena Musicale remarked that Teresa "brings out the acoustic qualities of the harp with a fluidity that matches the pastoral feel of the work (Handel's harp concerto)."
An advocate of contemporary music, Teresa has collaborated with many composers and has commissioned five harp concertos, three solo works for the harp, and two solo works for harp and electronics to date. In July this year, she will be presenting renowned Chinese Canadian composer Alice Ping Yee Ho's new harp concerto "Beneath the Sea of Time" at the One Harp World/World Harp Congress in Toronto. The same work will be premiered under the baton of Nurhan Arman with Sinfonia Toronto in March 2027.
In the past season, Teres appeared with the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong to perform Prof Chan Ka Nin's harp concerto hosted by the Hong Kong Composers' Guild to a sold-out audience. She also premiered two new works written for her by her colleagues from Lakehead University, Caanadian composers Aris Carastathis and Darlene Reid along with her own new arrangement for vocal and harp sponsored by the Canadian Music Centre and the American Harp Society. She has also performed and recorded Alice Ping Yee Ho’s work “Beyond the Erupting Skies Silver Angels Sing Among the Gold Stars” for harp and electronics on the Centrediscs label.
As a soloist, Teresa has performed with Sinfonia Toronto, Toronto Concert Orchestra, Hong Kong City Chamber Orchestra, Kindred Spirits Orchestra, Hong Kong Strings and the SAR Philharmonic. She has also been invited to different international music festivals and conferences, such as the Toronto Summer Music (2022), American Harp Society Summer Institute (2015), Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival (2015), Music and Beyond (2013), and the Hong Kong Arts Festival (2009).
As an orchestral harpist, Teresa is currently principal harpist of the Toronto Concert Orchestra and the North Bay Symphony, and formerly, Hong Kong City Chamber Orchestra (2009-2011). She has also performed with the Ontario Philharmonic, Windsor Symphony, Peterborough Symphony, Scarborough Philharmonic, Hong Kong Sinfonietta and the Illinois Symphony. She has performed under the baton of Vladimir Ashkenazy and has shared the stage with renowned artists such as Kathleen Battle, Placido Domingo, Skaila Kanga and Dame Evelyn Glennie. Her performances were broadcasted on TV and radio stations in Canada, Hong Kong and US.
An enthusiastic and dedicated educator, Dr. Suen-Campbell is a harp examiner at the Royal Conservatory of Music. Teresa is also on faculty at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Prior to this appointment, she taught harp performance at Carleton University and Northwestern University, and as an adjunct Assistant Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.Teresa is Co-Chair of the “Focus on Youth” committee (2024) and "New Music" Committee (2026) of the World Harp Congress in Toronto in 2026. She gave a lecture on contemporary harp repertoire at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, UK as part of the World Harp Congress 2022.
Dr. Suen-Campbell has been invited to be an adjudicator for various competitions/exams, including the Ontario Harp Society Scholarship Audition, Glenn Gould School of Music Adjudications, Vancouver Academy of Music Performance Exams, International Music Festival and Competition, Ottawa Kiwanis Music Festival and the First Hong Kong International Harp Competition. Her students have obtained top prizes in both local and international music festivals/ competitions and have been accepted into prestigious music programs in the US.
An avid music scholar, Teresa's journal articles were published by the World Harp Congress Review, German Harp Society Journal, and the American Harp Journal. In recent years, she has also composed her own music as well as making arrangements from music of Beethoven, Schumann and traditional Chinese music for solo harp, the latter of which was critically reviewed by Harp Column Magazine.
Dr Suen-Campbell is the first harpist from China to acquire a Doctor of Music degree in harp performance. She studied at Northwestern University in Chicago with Elizabeth Cifani, former principal harpist of the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Pianist Theadora Koski began piano studies at the age of five under the direction of Cheryl Graham. She has been the recipient of multiple first place awards and scholarships across Ontario, including the Young Artist Trophy of the CCC Toronto International Music Festival, first place at OMFA 2023 and the National Gold Medal of the Royal Conservatory of Music. Theadora has been performing across Canada as a soloist since 2023. In 2024 Theadora was honoured to perform at Carnegie Hall. Theadora enjoys working with children as an elementary piano teacher and her church choir as a collaborative organist. Her favourite activities include skiing, long distance running, and enjoying the world’s best classical music.
Sinfonia Toronto now in its 28th 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. Its 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.
Maestro Nurhan Arman has conducted throughout Europe, Asia, South America, Canada and the US, returning regularly to many orchestras in Europe. Among the orchestras Maestro Arman has conducted are the Moscow Philharmonic, Deutsches Kammerorchester Frankfurt, Filarmonica Italiana, Orchestra Sinfonico di Roma, St. Petersburg State Hermitage Orchestra, Orchestre Regional d’Ile de France, Hungarian Symphony, Arpeggione Kammerorchester, Milano Classica and Belgrade Philharmonic.
ABOUT THE MUSIC
Harp Concerto ‘Beneath the Sea of Time’ by Alice Ping Yee Ho (1960 - )
World Premiere
Beneath the Sea of Time is a harp concerto in a single continuous span, unfolding through four interconnected sections linked by extended harp sonorities and electronic soundscapes. The sea serves as a metaphor for memory, loss, renewal, and our increasingly fragile relationship with the natural world.
The work begins with The Tide Remembers, where shimmering textures evoke distant memories. Salt in the Wounds and Driftwood Psalms follow, with fragmented melodies drifting like half-forgotten songs. In Storm in the Mirror, turbulent orchestral forces confront the harp in a lament for both personal and environmental loss.
Between these sections, The Turning of the Sea appears as electronic interludes shaped by the harpist’s improvisatory gestures. An optional singing part further highlights the expressive artistry of the soloist.
Throughout the concerto, the harp serves as a guide—lyrical, fragile, and resilient—inviting us to listen deeply to the echoes of the past and the changing world around us.
Commissioned by Sinfonia Toronto for harpist Teresa Suen-Campbell, we would like to acknowledge funding support from the Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Ontario.
Piano Concerto No. 23, K. 488 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
By early 1786, Mozart was earning more from vocal compositions than from writing and performing piano works. He was working on his opera The Marriage of Figaro and a comic singspiel, The Theatre Director, but still hoped that fickle Viennese patrons and audiences would return to the appetite for his piano concertos they had shown just a few years before, when he was a popular new sensation recently arrived from Salzburg.
Mozart wrote three piano concertos in 1786, each different in atmosphere and displaying different instances of the innovations with which he was expanding the genre: the festive Concerto in E-flat, K. 482; this Concerto in A Major, K. 488; and the darker, dramatic Concerto in C minor, K. 491. Mozart probably performed them during Vienna’s 1786 Lenten season concerts. Unpublished until after his death, all three have become standard repertoire, with K.488 especially beloved for its lyrical, intimate character.
The first movement is in traditional sonata form, with a double exposition in which the main themes are presented by the orchestra first and then by the soloist. The home key of A major is one Mozart favoured for gentle, gracious works including his Clarinet Quintet and Clarinet Concerto; the themes here follow this serene path.
The slow second movement, in a-B-A form, has operatic echoes, with a piano theme in the pastoral, dotted-rhythm Siciliano style and unusually wide melodic leaps. The third movement sonata-rondo with harmonic changes somewhat adventurous for Mozart’s time, and an opera buffa-like harmonic interruption partway through.
String Quartet Op.96a, “American” by Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)
Orchestra version by Nurhan Arman
Many of Dvorak’s early works were quartets and quintets, modeled after those by Beethoven and Schubert that he played with colleagues and friends. He continued to write chamber works as his symphonic and opera career blossomed.
After the first of three academic years he spent as Director of the New York Conservatory, Dvorak left the noise of the city for a summer in Iowa, staying in the tiny town of Spillville settled by Czech immigrants. Spillville had a Czech newspaper and church; he felt very much at home there while writing two major works said to be in his “American” style: this quartet and his String Quintet Opus 97. He had already sketched out his “New World” Symphony in New York but completed it in Spillville also.
On June 12 Dvorak began to write the final version of Opus 96, heading it “Second composition written in America,” and noting at the end of the first movement “how beautifully the sun is shining!” The quartet’s beauty and freshness of expression spring from his delight at discovering a bit of home in Spillville more than from his more typical American experiences. Some of the syncopated rhythms and modal scales may perhaps have been acquired from Dvorak’s African-American students in New York or Indigenous people living near Spillville, but many of these characteristics are also typical of Bohemian folk music and appear in works he had already written before arriving in America.
The Quartet opens with a quietly joyous movement whose themes are clearly and classically organized. The slow movement is an extended, pensive duet for first violin and cello or sometimes second violin over a gently rocking accompaniment. The Scherzo’s quicksilver themes are so complementary that this movement almost seems to be a set of free variations. One warbling motif provides a comical picture of what Dvorak called “a damned bird, red, but with black wings” that annoyed him from the summer fields - perhaps a scarlet tanager. The rondo finale is an energetic celebration that pauses briefly for a chorale such as Dvorak might have improvised on the organ in Spillville’s Czech church.
