On Saturday November 30th at 7:30pm in Immaculata Auditorium Antigonish Performing Arts will present a concert by the ARC Ensemble - the Ensemble in Residence of the Royal Conservatory. Erika Raum and Marie Bérard (violins), Steven Dann (viola) Tom Wiebe (cello), and Kevin Ahfat (piano).
The concert was predicated by one of the ensemble's recent musical finds: the Czech composer Walter Kaufmann, who fled Europe and spent 12 years in Bombay. Having arrived at Pier 21, he taught briefly at the Halifax Conservatory and went on to conduct the Winnipeg Symphony – the orchestra's first professional conductor. In 2017, ARC released a recording of Kaufmann's chamber music, the first commercial recording devoted to his works. This has led to the publication of a number of his compositions, and recently, the premiere of his Indian Symphony at Carnegie Hall. We hope to feature Kaufmann's music in our Nova Scotia appearances and we are happy to assemble a program that includes works by a range of composers.
ARC‘s repertoire is largely dedicated to music suppressed and marginalized under the 20th century's repressive regimes. ARC believes that there is a moral obligation to recover works that have been forgotten because of political or racial discrimination, and that their omission sustains the aims of perpetrators, and leaves us with a distorted appreciation of cultural history.
