Flautist Alberta Brown won the Elora Festival’s Young Performers award on July 23.
Brown won the first prize of $3,000 in the final round of the TD Canada Trust Young Performers competition at St. John’s Church.
Brown, of Toronto, also won a future engagement at the festival. She performed Adagio ma non tanto and Allegro from Sonata in E major by J. S. Bach, and Sonatine by Henri Dutilleux.
Brown said “I was totally shocked; everybody played so well tonight. I competed last year, but didn’t make it to the final round, and tonight I thought I was just coming in to play. The competition has been a great experience for me, and this is such beautiful place to perform.”
Second place went to Sarah Marie Kramer (soprano) from Guelph, who sang Be Kind and Courteous to this Gentleman from A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Benjamin Britten, Mozart’s Una Donna a Quindici Anni from Così fan tutte, C’est l’extase from Ariettes Oubliées by Claude Debussy, and De los alamos vengo, madre, and De donde venis, amore? from Cuatro Madrigales Amatorios by Joaquin Rodrigo. She won $2,000. Third place ($1,000) and the Kathleen Deters audience favourite award of $500 went to pianist Alexander Seredenko from Richmond Hill. His repertoire included Alan Richardson’s arrangement of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise, and Scherzo No. 1 in B minor, Op. 20 by Chopin.
Deters, who assisted artistic director Noel Edison in the establishment the competition 19 years ago, passed away suddenly in 2007. Edison told the audience that Deters’ memory would live on through this award that “honours the work and dedication to the Festival that she was so proud to be a part of.”
Four other finalists also competed. The three judges who decided this year’s winners were Rick Phillips, former host and producer of Sound Advice on CBC Radio One and Radio Two and author of The Essential Classical Recordings – 101 CDs, Howard Dyck, artistic director and conductor of the Grand Philharmonic Choir and Consort Caritatis and host of Choral Concert and Saturday Afternoon at the Opera on CBC Radio Two, and Lynn Janes, conductor of the Toronto Mendelssohn Youth Choir, and Head of Music at Havergal College in Toronto.
Application forms for the 2009 competition will be available on-line in September, 2008. For information on the competition, and tickets and information for the remaining two weekends of this years’ events are available at www.elorafestival.com.
