The Vancouver Island Symphony will explore unpublished and unfinished compositions for its first show of 2025.
The concert at the Port Theatre on Saturday, Jan. 18, will feature four pieces, starting with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 10, which he could not finish before the end of his life. The composition was pieced together by Barry Cooper in 1988 using sketches left behind by Beethoven.
“This is going to be a discovery for us, for the musicians and I,” said Cosette Justo Valdés, Vancouver Island Symphony artistic director. “We have never played this piece. It’s almost never performed and it is a great experience to be part of the legacy that Beethoven left with this material that he didn’t destroy – he was always the perfectionist and would destroy previous versions of his revised pieces but this one he left the sketches so it is an honour to be able to perform this piece.”
It will be followed by Jocelyn Morlock’s Interloper – a piece that reflects the theme of the concert: Second Guessed. Unpublished. Unfinished.
“She talked about feeling inadequate – something that also happened sometimes to Beethoven. Not as often as she experienced it herself but definitely was right in recognizing that composers, even of the highest calibre, the undeniable genius of Beethoven, would revise a piece again and again and would second-guess their own ideas,” Justo Valdés said.
Next will be a short piece by Charles Ives titled the Unanswered Question, which was not performed during the composer’s lifetime.
“It’s a piece that creates a lot of space and it has a definitive question that continues repeating, repeating, a musical question and a group of woodwinds tries to answer this question but as the title says, the question can never really get answered,” Justo Valdés said. “It’s a great experience to feel this piece in a live space where the piece even uses the concert hall in a way that is not typical.”
The concert will end with Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 'Italian.'
Justo Valdés said so far this season has been well-attended for the Vancouver Island Symphony, with a sold-out show in November.
Tickets for Second Guessed. Unpublished. Unfinished. can be purchased from the Port Theatre’s website for $39.50-$63.50 for adults and $28.50 for students. There will be two performances, one at 5 p.m. and one at 7 p.m.