Here is the ARC ensemble's second video, a short account of Mieczysław Weinberg's tumultuous life between 1940 and 1953 (the first video, dedicated to Adolf Busch, is also available on our YouTube channel). It was directed by James Murdoch with illustrations by Thomas Dannenberg. The music is drawn from the ARC Ensemble's Grammy-nominated CD "On the Threshold of Hope."

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2013

May 23rd
Amsterdam, Concertgebouw
Robert de Roos, String Quartet, Leo Smit Trio for viola, clarinet & piano
Nico Richter, String Quartet, Milhaud "La Creation du Monde," Songs by Stephan, Korngold Dick Kattenburg with Lenneke Ruiten (soprano)
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June16th
Stratford Festival, 5:30pm
Excerpts from Sholem Aleichem's Tevye stories, complemented by the music of his Russian contemporaries

September 21st
Stratford Festival, 5:30pm
A rare performance of Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco's Piano Quintet

September 29th
Toronto, Koerner Hall
Suite Italienne, Igor Stravinsky
I Crisantemi, Giacomo Puccini
Tramonto (The Sunset), Ottorino Respighi
with Peter Barrett, baritone
Italian Serenade, Hugo Wolf
Piano Quintet No. 1 in F major, Op. 69,
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedeso

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As the ARC Ensemble moves into its 10th anniversary season, we have begun to look back at our archives. Among our past series are two concerts of English music composed between the wars which we presented under the title "A Green and Pleasant Land." These performances, which included poetry of the period read by R.H. Thompson, were broadcast by CBC Radio 2, and later packaged for NPR affiliates with introductions by the ARC Ensemble's Artistic Director, SImon Wynberg.

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"The ARC Ensemble arrived from Canada to offer rare repertory at Wigmore Hall [and] gave a beautifully performed programme of chamber works by Jewish composers undermined by Nazism: a fluent Clarinet Sonata by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a vigorous Piano Quintet on Polish tunes by Szymon Laks, Paul Ben-Haim's big-boned, late-Romantic Piano Quartet in C minor, and, most memorable, an unfinished D minor violin sonata movement by the teenage Mendelssohn (Hider had it in for him, too), completed by the pianist David Louie, who played it with Benjamin Bowman. The composer's magical fleetness was in evidence, and other inspirations besides!"

Paul Driver, The Sunday Times (London)
March 17, 2013

 
"If Tuesday’s concert at Mazzoleni Hall was any indication, Sunday’s audience at Wigmore Hall in London is in for a treat from seven members of the ARC Ensemble, the elite squad of professional performers from Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music.

They presented an evening of beautiful music gorgeously played."

John Terauds, MusicalToronto.org
March 5, 2013

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"An impressive group of musicians..."
– The Washington Post, Nov 2008
 
"Passion, polish and vitality."
– The New York Times, Nov 2008
 
"Sets the skin rippling at every turn, with its ear-tingling corporate intonation and magical phrasing..."
– The Strad, June 2008

"A message from a reader sent me back to the disc On the Threshold of Hope... Weinberg's 1944 Piano Quintet is as searingly eloquent as the big Shostakovich chamber works of the same period. Members of the Arc Ensemble play with fierce conviction..."
– Alex Ross, December 2007

"Recently I became entranced by a disk of the 1944 Piano Quintet, by the ARC Ensemble, and began to perceive the subtle ways in which Weinberg stands apart from his hero."
– Alex Ross, The New Yorker, September 2011

"Weinberg, a friend and follower of Shostakovich, died in partial obscurity in 1996, but his music is undergoing something of a revival… As a point of departure, I would recommend a superb disc of Weinberg's Clarinet Sonata, "Jewish Songs" and Piano Quintet, with members of the Arc Ensemble."
– Alex Ross, The New Yorker Blog, August 29, 2011