Dear Friends and Music Lovers

It is a pleasure to invite you to join us for our fourteenth annual Great Romantics Festival, a celebration in music, words, and song, of some of the outstanding composers of musical history.

Fourteen years! That is a long time, and we are proud to have built up such a large and enthusiastic following for an artistic event that has been described as ‘one of the important vistas in the cultural landscape of Ontario.’ By calling our musical offering this year The Titans, we are drawing attention to those enduring qualities in the music of Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Chopin, and Tchaikovsky, which compel us to return to their works time and again—no matter how familiar they are to us. That is surely one of the defining characteristics of the term ‘masterpiece’—music which cannot be consumed through use. Like the peaks of some distant mountain-range, the further these composers recede from us, the greater their stature seems to become. Whenever their compositions are played, they confirm the truth of Nietzsche’s famous aphorism: “Without music life would be a mistake.”

The music of Johannes Brahms is brought to the forefront in this year’s festival. Four of our leading concert pianists will appear in the ever-popular Piano Gala, which will be devoted in its entirety to his piano music. And we will also hear some of Brahms’s organ music, and his Lieder as well.

An internationally-recognized cast of artists has once more been assembled for the Festival, and we anticipate some music-making of a high order. We are particularly proud to continue our association with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, a connection of many years’ standing, and the orchestra will continue the tradition of opening the Great Romantics Festival under the baton of Maestro Horst Förster, from Leipzig.

Do join us for this important event, and we look forward to welcoming you to our weekend of music-making.