In Conversation: The Viennese in Los Angeles

Sunday 7 April, 2024, 11 am to noon

Simon Wynberg, Artistic Director, ARC Ensemble and Alexander Brose,  President & CEO Designate, The Royal Conservatory of Music

Mazzoleni Concert Hall, The Royal Conservatory of Music

273 Bloor St W, Toronto, ON M5S 1V6

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957), a phenomenally gifted child prodigy, had conquered Vienna while still in his teens. He began working in Los Angeles in 1934 and settled there as a Jewish exile just prior to the Nazi takeover of Austria in March 1938. He soon became one of the most significant and influential film composers in Hollywood’s history. Like Korngold, Ernest Kanitz (1894-1978) escaped Vienna but chose an academic path, teaching composition and theory at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

During this conversation, co-presented by ARC Ensemble and Koffler Arts, Wynberg speaks with Brose about the music and legacy of Erich Korngold and Ernest Kanitz in the broader context of their exile and their adoptive homeland.

Edinburgh-born Simon Wynberg grew up in South Africa, and then moved to London, where he earned a musicology degree at Goldsmiths’ College. During the 1980s he researched and edited an extensive repertoire of guitar music for several publishing houses – The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians describes him as “not only a virtuoso performer of distinction but one of the guitar’s foremost scholars.” Simon’s many recordings (on Chandos, ASV, Hyperion, Narada, Stradivari, Vox and Naxos) have received glowing reviews as well as accolades that include a Penguin Rosette, Gramophone Critics’ Choice and Diapason Award. He has performed at the Newport, Bermuda, Sitka, Ann Arbor, Santa Fé and Ottawa chamber music festivals, at New York’s Bargemusic as well as in venues throughout the U.K. and Europe. Prior to his work with the ARC Ensemble, Simon also founded and directed chamber-music festivals in Ontario, Scotland and the Caribbean.

Simon moved to Toronto in the early 1990s. His administrative, practical and musicological experience led to his appointment as the Artistic Director of The Royal Conservatory’s ARC Ensemble, a project initiated by the Conservatory’s CEO, Dr Peter Simon. Since its Music Reborn (2003) and Music in Exile (2006) series in Toronto, the ARC Ensemble has established an international reputation as a result of its pioneering work in the research, performance and recording of music marginalized and forgotten as a result of political suppression.

Alexander Brose has over 20 years of experience working in classical music performance and education in both the United States and China. In March 2017, Brose was named The Tianjin Juilliard School’s founding Executive Director and CEO and as the first expatriate employee on the ground in China. Prior to working for Tianjin Juilliard, Brose was the Vice President for Development at the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) in Colorado. Before Aspen, Mr. Brose spent 11 years at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM), the West Coast of the United States’ oldest school of music, first as Assistant Director of Admissions, then as Director of Admissions, and finally as Associate Vice President for Advancement.

Raised in South Korea, Hong Kong, and the United States, Mr. Brose received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Asian Studies, with a concentration in China, from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. An award-winning vocalist, Mr. Brose has performed in prestigious concert venues across the globe, including on the U.S. nationally-syndicated radio show “A Prairie Home Companion,” at the Seoul National Arts Center in South Korea, with the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, N.Y., and with the Grammy Award-winning San Francisco Symphony Chorus, among others. He has served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Recording Academy (Grammys) in the United States and the American Chamber of Commerce in China. He currently sits on the advisory councils of the Cornell University Glee Club, the school’s oldest student organization, as well as the Tianjin Juilliard School. A sought-after public speaker, Mr. Brose has presented at major arts conferences and universities in both the U.S. and China.

To register for FREE, please click HERE.

ARC Ensemble: The Viennese in Los Angeles

Sunday 7 April, 2024, 2 to 4 pm

Mazzoleni Concert Hall, The Royal Conservatory of Music

273 Bloor St W, Toronto, ON M5S 1V6

The ARC Ensemble’s program includes Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s extravagantly lush Piano Quintet, op. 15, and two pieces for clarinet and piano by his Viennese contemporary Ernest Kanitz. As part of ARC’s ambition to broaden the performance of recovered repertoire, a string quartet of Glenn Gould School students will contribute Kanitz’s String Quartet in D, a work unheard since the 1940s.

Comprised of the senior faculty of The Royal Conservatory’s Glenn Gould School, with special guests drawn from the organization’s most accomplished students and alumni, the three-time Grammy Award nominated ARC Ensemble is among Canada’s most distinguished cultural ambassadors. Performing a wide range of music, its focus remains the research and recovery of works that were suppressed and marginalized under the 20th century’s repressive regimes. A growing number of previously unknown masterworks are rejoining the repertoire as a result of the ARC Ensemble’s work.

The ARC Ensemble (Artists of The Royal Conservatory) is among Canada’s most distinguished cultural ambassadors with multiple Grammy Award nominations. Performing a wide range of music, its focus remains the research and recovery of works that were suppressed and marginalised under the 20th century’s repressive regimes. A growing number of hitherto unknown masterworks are rejoining the repertoire as a result of the ARC Ensemble’s work. For more information, please visit arcensemble.com.

For tickets, please click HERE.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938): Celebrating the Music of Erich Korngold through Film

Sunday 7 April 2024, 7 pm (doors open 6:30 pm)

Signy and Cléophée Eaton Theatre, Royal Ontario Museum

ROM’s South entrance at 100 Queens Park, Toronto, ON M5S 2C6

“Perhaps most of all, for me, [he had] just a divine melodic gift… the way of singing a tune through a scene that is inimitable. It is a beautiful, beautiful talent, I think.”

– John Williams, American composer and conductor

Celebrate the revolutionary work of composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold in this special screening of The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. With remarks by Owen Lyons, DocMedia Program Director and Assistant Professor in the School of Image Arts at Toronto Metropolitan University, we will contextualise the film’s Oscar winning score within the life and times of its composer, Erich Korngold. A Jewish composer born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1897, Korngold fled the rise of antisemitism and the Nazism in Europe to become one of the most influential composers in American history, revolutionising how music was integrated into Hollywood blockbusters and paving the way for modern composers like John Williams and Henry Mancini.

Dr. Owen Lyons is a researcher who works at the intersection of media archaeology, documentary, digital media, and critical theory. He holds a PhD from the Institute of Comparative Studies in Literature, Art, and Culture at Carleton University as well as an MA in Film and Media Studies from the University of Amsterdam. His forthcoming book with Amsterdam University Press examines representations of finance during the Weimar Republic and the emergence of the idea of the world economy. His current research projects include Liquid Screens: The Media Landscape of Financial Markets, which addresses the visual culture of 21st-century financial markets and their reflection in digital media, as well as an examination of the application of artificial intelligence to cinema entitled Machine Learning and the Moving Image.

To register for FREE, click HERE.