The 2017-18 Season

We are happy to announce that we have sold a record breaking number of subscriptions this season! The only bad news is that there are only 70 tickets left for Seong-Jin Cho's Vancouver recital debut at the Chan Centre on November 12th. Once those last tickets are gone, we will only be able to sell subscriptions for the remaining three concerts.

You can still win a trip to Warsaw for the Finals of the first ever Chopin Competition on historical instruments, to be held in September 2018 in Warsaw. The package includes a round trip flight for one person, two tickets for the Finals, three days of accommodation and a tour to Zelazowa Wola, Chopin’s birthplace. To qualify for the draw, you will have to be a subscriber OR a single ticket holder for the Blechacz recital. The draw will be held at Rafal Blechacz’s 20th anniversary Gala Performance on April 22, 2018.

Our box office this season is at UBC's Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. Please call 604.822.2697 or the VCS 604.871.4450.

Special Event, October 14, 2017

We are opening our milestone 20th anniversary season with a spectacular concert - From Warsaw, Maria Pomianowska and her Folk Band will present A Journey into Chopin’s Musical Inspiration at the Vancouver Playhouse.
To find out more about this very special performance, please read the programme notes written by Maria Pomianowska.

According to Lee Kum Sing, our Artistic Director, the performance by Maria Pomianowska and her colleagues will be the most ambitious and important presentation in the history of our society. In the second half of the concert, we will have about thirty musicians performing together on the stage. The cost of this project is almost equivalent to the total cost of the remaining four concerts. Members of our board have spent countless hours weighing the pro and cons of making this commitment. We finally decided that there would not be a better time to present this project than this, our Society's 20th Anniversary, which coincides with Canada's own 150 birthday. Furthermore, the Polish Consulate in Vancover will be celebrating its 25th anniversary at the evening concert, where the entire  diplomatic Corps has been invited.

Grzegorz Michalski, Polish musicologist and the first Director of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw wrote:
The unique meaning of Chopin's Mazurkas is almost an anthem, often played, but not necessarily understood. That is the heart of Chopin's music.
I think the crux of the matter lies in the extraordinary ability of Fryderyk Chopin to record and transform in his own way the specific features of the music from the Polish countryside, despised by his contemporaries. The irregularities in the rhythm and intonation, barely noticeable, the peculiarities of the musical scale, the obsessive repetition of the motifs, all of them were eliminated in artistic adaptations because they were considered too simplistic, lacking of good taste and difficult to write down on the score. Nevertheless, those features were the most important for Chopin. And he was right! He was ahead almost one hundred years of his time in understanding the rural music. (…) We can feel privileged because we listen the music from Mazovia, Kujawy, Kurpie and Podlasie the way Chopin loved.

Chopin mazurkas are intimately linked to Polish folk dances - known to us collectively as mazurkas - such as the mazur or mazurek, the obertas or oberek, and the kujawiak. At the performance, you will have a chance to witness these dances, performed by Vancouver's own Polonez Dance Group. For ten years, Barbara Bartnik, the group's  choreographer and dancer, performedin with the Polish National Ballet (since 2005) before recently relocating to Canada.

Seeing and hearing this performancet will increase your appreciation of not only Chopin but the music of other composers.

For all those who study music, for those who play music, and especially for all those who teach music, please do come and experience this important and unique event. You will come out of this performance with a much greater awareness of and a deeper appreciation for music. There will not be another chance to experience a performance like this one.

Here is the link to buy online.
Here is the link to find out about all participating musicians.

Subscribers get close to a 30% discount. Non-subscribers who are seniors and students, as well as BCRMTA members, are eligible to receive a 20% discount. The price for youth (Grades 1 through 12) is only $15 per ticket.

Lecture by Dr Margit McCorkle on May 24th, 2018

In her talk, Dr. Margit McCorkle will share with us her discoveries about the relationship between Chopin and Schumann. The lecture will take place at The Vancouver Academy of Music on May 24th, 2018 at 10:30 am with musical illustrations on the piano (pianist to be announced). This very interesting talk will be free for subscribers, and $10 for non-subscribers.

Margit L. McCorkle is an internationally renowned musicologist and music bibliographer. She is best known for her two monumental catalogues of all the works of Johannes Brahms (published in 1984) and Robert Schumann (published in 2003). Her early training in music was as pianist, harpsichordist, and fortepianist.

In 1972 she emigrated from the United States to Canada, together with her husband Professor Donald M. McCorkle who had been invited to head the UBC Music Department. After his untimely death in 1978 she continued make Vancouver her base as she discovered and examined Brahms and Schumann manuscripts all over Europe and North America.

Since 2007 she has been the official German-to-English translator for the texts of the enormous cumulative complete editions of all the works of Robert Schumann and Carl Maria von Weber.

Jon Kimura Parker to receive honorary doctorate from UBC

On We would like to share with you an important event that took place on May 30th, 2017, when world-renowned pianist and former School of Music student Jon Kimura Parker, O.C, received an honorary Doctorate of Letters, honoris causa, from the University of British Columbia in recognition of his many contributions to the world of classical music. In his speach Parker said:
“As a youngster growing up in Vancouver, a real highlight for me was to attend student and faculty recitals in the UBC Recital Hall. As a teenager I began piano studies with Professor Lee Kum-Sing and was incredibly excited to continue those studies with him at UBC. I learned repertoire while at UBC that I still perform today, and it was at UBC that Mr. Lee helped me transition from a pianist into a musician, with the glimpse of what it might be to become an artist. I can’t say enough about what I learned from him."

We at the Vancouver Chopin Society feel very fortunate to have Lee Kum-Sing serving as our Artistic Director, and look forward to many more years of collaboration with this distinguished artist and teacher.

"Come and help us celebrate our 20th Anniversary Season. Purchase your tickets now!"