Dueling Violins: Winnipeg Chamber Music Society performs on February 26th at the WAG

This Sunday, February 26th at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Winnipeg Chamber Music Society will be presenting the 3rd concert of their 2022-23 season. This concert will feature music of Ravel, Prokofiev, Leclair, and Moszkowsk, and showcase two of Winnipeg’s finest Violinists, Gwen Hoebig, Concertmaster of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and her stand partner Associate Concertmaster Karl Stobbe. The pianist for this concert will be David Moroz who is the chair of the piano department at the University of Manitoba.

The music for this program makes up a dream concert and consists of music that all three players have thought about for some time. As Moroz says, “I think we have been dreaming about the ideal program for two violins and piano for a long time, and we wanted to find the right combination of solos duos and a trio. We came up with this repertoire, and I think it makes for a lovely program.”

This concert will feature a sonata for two violins by the French Baroque composer Jean-Marie Leclair. In 2018 Hoebig and Stobbe released a recording of six sonatas for two violins by Leclair. Gwen Hoebig is David Moroz’s wife and Moroz got a first-hand hearing of these sonatas. “It is fantastic music! They are very evenly balanced pieces, so if you like you can choose your favorite fiddler and just watch them and listen to them all the way through…or you can listen to the interplay between the two players. There is just wonderful stuff going on all the time,” says Moroz.

There are two works for solo violin and piano that will be performed on Sunday night. Ravel’s Jazz influenced Violin Sonata in G and Prokofiev’s 5 Melodies for violin and piano. Hoebig will play the Ravel Sonata and Stobbe will play the 5 Melodies by Prokofiev.

Moroz has a delightful way of describing the 5 Melodies. “They’re strangely wonderful. I think a little bit about the fact that movies were just starting to be popular…and these melodies sound a little like music for a silent film…but a European silent film track…no vaudeville comedies or anything like that…it’s something very, very unusual, weird and wonderful.”

Ravel’s Violin Sonata is full of contrasts. As Moroz explains, “Ravel didn’t think the two instruments actually blended very well…so he wanted to bring across the contrasts between the two instruments more than necessarily trying for a homogenous whole. Throughout most of the piece the piano and violin are playing in a different key. But it works perfectly…there is concept of bitonality that is really quite striking."

The last piece on the program is the Moritz Moszkowski Suite for two violin and piano. This is a very charming and virtuosic piece for all three instruments, with Moszkowski making the most of the interplay between the three parts. Moszkowski aside from being a virtuoso pianist, was also a fine violinist and knew how to write for the instrument.

The Winnipeg Chamber Music Society’s concert this Sunday, February 26th at 7:30pm at the Winnipeg Art gallery is going to be fantastic.! For more information and for tickets, you can visit the WCMS website.