INNERchamber and vocalist Lillian Brooks to explore foundations of world-renowned orchestral music in concert

In its third concert of the season, Stratford’s INNERchamber ensemble will join guest vocalist Lillian Brooks to explore the mysteries of some of the world’s most profound orchestral works by stripping away the varnish to reveal the essential music underneath.

This Sunday’s concert at Revival House will feature chamber arrangements commissioned by INNERchamber oboist Jim Mason and arranged by Trevor Wagler and Daniel Warren of some of the western canon’s most iconic works for orchestra including Gustav Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder (Songs after Rückert), Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 101 and Maurice Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin.

“In this concert are three pieces and they’re … well-known works in the orchestral canon,” said INNERchamber artistic director of violinist Andrew Chung. “There’s a song cycle by Mahler. Typically any piece by Mahler would involve an orchestra of over 50 people and we don’t have that. We’re doing this with five instrumentalists and also adding in mezzo-soprano Lillian Brooks. Her part is exactly the same, but what’s happened is there are these … transcriptions of the orchestral score for reduced numbers. In this case, we’ve got a pianist who covers multiple parts within the original orchestration, we’ve got violin, cello, oboe and clarinet.

“Why do we do this? Partly it’s because the music is just so gorgeous that it bears doing to try to bring this in to a smaller context. We’re not in a massive concert hall with 2,000 people and a massive orchestra. We’re in a very intimate setting at Revival House so we’re able to focus on some of the finer details of the performance and there’s just a different approach when you bring it into a chamber-music environment. All the notes are still covered by our instrumentalists but it’s like, ‘Oh, hang on. This is familiar but different.’ ”

While the performances of Haydn and Ravel’s works will be purely instrumental, Chung said INNERchamber opted to collaborate on the Mahler song cycle with Brooks after former INNERchamber pianist and co-director of Stratford Summer Music’s Vocal Academy Emily Hamper encouraged Chung to find a way to perform with the accomplished, young singer.

“Lillian was in Stratford in 2021 and she was one of the singers selected to partake in the Stratford Summer Music Vocal Academy,” Chung said. ” … Emily, last year, had said to me this wonderful mezzo-soprano Lillian Brooks, who’s really just on the cusp of her career, is totally ready to do something wonderful with INNERchamber.

” … So I thought, ‘Ok, let’s give Lillian the opportunity to sing Rückert-Lieder by Mahler,’ which is something she had studied at the Stratford Summer Music Vocal Academy. She’d gone through the entire cycle, but just with piano at that time. There’s a lot to chew on with this work. It’s a very dense work to study and perform. (At the vocal academy) they do tackle the depth of the poetry and the meaning of the words and how, with the voice, to bring out Mahler’s intentions. … Now she gets to work with a number of instruments that would have been involved in that original Mahler orchestration.”

While in-person tickets for Sunday’s concert, which begins at 7 pm, are sold out, tickets for the concert livestream are still available at www.innerchamber.ca/ive-lost-the-world. Those who purchase livestream tickets will have the option to add a take-out dinner from Revival House.

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