Storgårds, Beethoven & Dvořák: and Élisabeth Pion's Debut

This program celebrates John Storgårds’s first program as Music Director of the NAC Orchestra! From a musical meditation on the universe to a symphony overflowing with tranquil melodies, this program offers countless moments of beauty and calm. Beethoven wrote that he composed to express “what I have in my heart”—a sentiment brought to life in his tender, soul-stirring music for piano and orchestra.

Feel your breath expand, and your mind unwind with the dreamy lyricism of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. From the tranquil opening hymn to the finale’s operatic drama, Beethoven’s concerto receives a spellbinding performance from Québécois pianist Élisabeth Pion—the 2025 winner of Canada’s Honens International Piano Competition—who believes the piano’s enchanting voice “speaks to everyone.”

Antonín Dvořák was working as a freelance violist in Prague when he composed his Third Symphony. But the work’s celebrated premiere quickly launched the Bohemian musician’s new career as a full-time composer. With its unbroken flow of passionate melodies and joyful dance music, it’s easy to understand why Dvořák’s friend Johannes Brahms called the symphony “pure love, and it does one’s heart good!”

Opening the program, Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question contemplates the search for meaning in our vast universe. And Music Director John Storgårds begins his season-long spotlight on the music of Jean Coulthard with the Canadian composer’s Vision of the North, her brooding “symphonic image” evoking the majestic landscapes of Western Canada.