Eve Egoyan: De Puro Amor/En Amor Duro CD release

Piano concert with Eve Egoyan and interview with Jim Montgomery

Sat, 04/14/2018
8:00 PM St. George The Martyr

Co-presented by the Goethe-Institut

Pianist Eve Egoyan has had a long association with the Music Gallery, and this concert – structured suitably as a diptych – looks both backwards and forward. Egoyan first met the Cologne-based composer Maria de Alvear in Toronto when Egoyan performed the North American premiere of these works twenty years ago at the Music Gallery’s Richmond St. location. At long last, the recording of this monumental composition is available as a recording and fittingly, Egoyan returns with de Alvear's music to where it began.

"De Puro Amor/En Amor Duro" is written in loose proportional notation – pitches are selected by the composer leaving exact durations, voicing, and pedalling open. The score is a map which both challenges and invites its interpreter into a new type of dialogue, allowing room for the performer to adjust to the given acoustics of the performance space, the piano, and the shared energy between performer and audience. The two movements are a tour de force, blending composer, piano, pianist and audience into an emotionally charged performance experience.

"Maria de Alvear refuses the piano its history… in the hands of a committed interpreter such as pianist Eve Egoyan … it becomes a pathway to the unconscious … The intensity of Egoyan’s focus pulled the listener – like a camel through the eye of a needle – into a claustrophobic inner world, holding us within a net of promise that evaporated only as the final notes died away." – Elissa Poole, The Globe and Mail

Eve’s performance gives us cause to look back to the 90s incarnation of the Music Gallery. The Artistic Director was Jim Montgomery and he was at the helm when the Music Gallery moved into 179 Richmond Street. The lifespan of the venue coincided almost perfectly with the decade – 1991-2000. Prior to the main event, Mary Dickie (Musicworks, Chatelaine) interviews Jim Montgomery about the life and times of the venue, while recounting the many highlights of the decade. The interview starts at 6 pm.