Old friends reunited for chamber music series

What:

Vetta Chamber Music

Where:

Wilhemsen Hall, Millennium Place

When:

Jan. 12, 8 p.m.

Old friends and co-artistic directors Victor Costanzi and Eugene Osadchy have been reunited for the Vetta Chamber Music series, which includes Saturday’s concert at Whistler’s Maurice Young Millennium Place.

The pair, who co-ordinated Vetta Chamber Music for the last 16 years, are currently developing an upcoming CD which will include a live music performance at West Point Grey United Church. The church is considered to have the top acoustics in Vancouver, according to Costanzi and other members of the Vancouver music industry.

In addition to Costanzi and Osadchy, Vetta Chamber Music includes pianists Linda Lee Thomas and Terry Dawson. Thomas is the former director of Vancouver’s Masterpiece Theatre. She will be accompanied by Dawson for Debussy’s En Bateau, part of a "four hands" piece where the two perform together on the same piano.

Additional selections at the Whistler concert include the work of Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Glinka, and Rachmaninoff.

Osadchy, former principal cellist with the CBC Radio Orchestra, emigrated from Kiev, Ukraine. Past performances have included the Bargemusic series based in New York City, and the Mozart Festival on Long Island. He is currently a music professor at North Texas State University.

Costanzi grew up playing the Messiah in fifth grade in St. Paul’s, Minnesota. He later studied in Rochester, N.Y., and currently freelances musical projects.

What most musicians emphasize about chamber music, which originated as a form of music for amateur musicians to play in small rooms during the last two centuries, is the intimate setting of the forum. Large scale orchestras like New York’s Philharmonic offer a dramatic soundscape, but diminish the emphasis on a solo artist’s skill. From this perspective, the music style has been called "democratic" by some, owing to its ensemble nature.

Vetta Chamber Music has performed at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, and the Vancouver’s Norman Rothstein Community Centre, as well as the Courtenay and Banff Music Festivals throughout the ’80s and ’90s.

A 1999 concert, featuring the same four musicians, featured the work of Schumann, Brahms, and Dvorak and was titled Two Pianos, Four Strings, Twelve Hands.

For information and tickets for the Vetta Chamber Music Whistler concert contact the Maurice Young Millennium Place box office at 604-935-8410.