Award-winning Montreal violinist Olivier Thouin, who in 2002 captured the Young Canadian Musicians Award, joins pianist Anton Kuerti in the season opener of Mooredale Concerts’ 16^th season, Saturday and Sunday, September 18 and 19, 2004.

They will perform sonatas for violin and piano by Schubert (A Major, D. 574 - "Duo"), Beethoven (No. 7 in C minor, Op. 30 No.2) and Franck (A major).

Kuerti and Thouin have previously collaborated at Quebec’s Festival de Lanaudière in a performance of the Schumann Piano Quartet, which was telecast. They will repeat their Mooredale performance September 20 in Montreal, at a concert to be broadcast on CBC.

Mooredale Concerts’ Artistic Director, cellist Kristine Bogyo, has compiled an imaginative season of outstanding chamber music concerts mainly from the baroque, classical and romantic periods, played by musical luminaries and dazzling new talent. Among the highlights are a program of baroque concerti, an all-Bach concert, and world-renowned pianist Claude Frank in his highly acclaimed performance about The Romantic Triangle of Robert & Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms.

Subscriptions are $95 (save $55 over single ticket price); students and seniors $75 (save $45).
To order, send a cheque payable to Mooredale Concerts, to Mooredale Concerts, 146 Crescent Road, Toronto ON M4W 1V2.

MUSIC & TRUFFLES - Prior to the September 19 concert, Kuerti and Thouin will entertain children four and up as Mooredale Concerts’ successful Music & Truffles series begins its second season. Anton Kuerti Shares his Piano takes place at 1 p.m. at Walter Hall. Tickets are $10, or $35 for a season of five concerts, available from Mooredale Concerts.

Pianist ANTON KUERTI (http://www.jwentworth.com/Kuerti) has toured 31 countries, and has performed with most major North American orchestras and conductors. His vast repertoire includes some 50 concertos, including one he composed himself. In Canada, Kuerti has appeared in 140 communities from coast to coast, and has played with every professional orchestra, including 40 concerts with the Toronto Symphony. As a chamber musician, he has performed the major repertoire with such artists as Gidon Kremer, Yo-Yo Ma, Janos Starker, Barry Tuckwell, and the Cleveland, Guarneri, Tokyo and St. Lawrence string quartets. Called "one of the truly great pianists of this century" by CD Review (London), Kuerti has recorded all the Beethoven concertos and sonatas, Schubert sonatas, Brahms concertos and works by many other composers. His new recording of Beethoven Sonatas, which includes the Hammerklavier, will be released in September on Analekta.

Violinist OLIVIER THOUIN is winner of the 1997 Prix d’Europe and a Canadian Music Centre Prize, the Cécile Menard-Pomerleau grant for his active participation as concertmaster of the Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra, and the 2002 Young Canadian Musicians Award. His U.S. appearances have included the Tanglewood festival, where he received the Jules C. Reiner Violin Award, as well as the prestigious Marlboro Festival in Vermont, and concerts celebrating 50 years of Marlboro in New York, Philadelphia and Boston. Thouin has appeared as guest soloist with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Métropolitain and Les Violons du Roy. He has recorded Alan Belkin’s Violin Concerto (Amberola) and a CD with Trio Contrastes (ATMA). Reviewing his January 2003 appearance with Mooredale Concerts, Robert Harris remarked in the Globe and Mail that Thouin demonstrated "...a powerful playing style that allowed him to seize each dramatic moment in the scores. Claude Gingras of Montreal’s La Presse wrote earlier of his "...elegance, musicality, sonorous refinement and precision. A great violinist is developing in him."

Mooredale Concerts are presented with the assistance of the Toronto Arts Council.