Founded in 1970, the Canadian Brass is one of the world’s most renowned brass quintets, celebrated for its virtuosity, innovative performances, and diverse repertoire. The group initially consisted of founding members Eugene Watts (trumpet), Charles Daellenbach (tuba), and Fred Mills (trumpet). Over the decades, it expanded and evolved, welcoming various musicians who contributed to its distinctive sound. The ensemble has performed worldwide, appearing everywhere from major concert halls to people’s living rooms through numerous television specials. As a result of its accessible repertoire and engaging performance style, the group has played a crucial role in popularizing brass music.

The Canadian Brass is particularly renowned for its annual Christmas concerts, which have become a beloved tradition for many audiences with their fusion of classical Christmas music and carols with jazz and popular tunes. In the words of the ensemble, “Our Christmas concerts are a celebration of the season’s joy and magic. We strive to bring an element of surprise and delight, making each performance a special experience for our audience." The selections from A Canadian Brass Christmas were created for the group by the famous jazz arranger and pianist Luther Henderson, whom Duke Ellington called “my classical arm.”

Selections include:

• BERNARD/TKACZYK Winter Wonderland
• arr. HENDERSON Ding Dong Merrily on High
• WELLS/TKACZYK The Christmas Song
• JESSEL/TKACZYK Parade of the Wooden Soldiers
• STYNE/TKACZYK Let it Snow
• HELMS/TKACZYK Jingle Bell Rock
• MARKS/TKACZYK A Holly Jolly Christmas
• ANDERSON/SNELL Sleigh Ride

Ferenc Farkas was born in 1905 into a musical family; his mother played the piano, and his father played the cimbalom, a Roma dulcimer. After studying in Budapest and Rome in the 1920s, he eventually moved to Vienna and Copenhagen, where he wrote music for Scandinavian films. He eventually returned to Hungary and, from 1949 to 1975, was a professor of composition at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. He earned a reputation as one of the leading Hungarian composers and teachers of his generation, including György Ligeti among his many famous students.

Although Farkas occasionally veered into 20th-century atonality, his music is mainly melodic and folk-infused. His Early Hungarian Dances from the 17th Century are an excellent illustration of Hungarian music’s impact on Farkas’ own compositions. As Farkas described the work,

In Hungarian music, folk songs are obviously of great importance, but our ancient airs and dances play a more modest role. For this work, I was influenced by 17th-century dances, written by unknown amateurs in a relatively simple style. Most of these dances were written between the 14th and 18th centuries in the usual form of tablature notation. My interest in this music was first captured in the 1940s. I was so fascinated that I decided to give these melodies new life. I assembled small eight-bar dances into trios, which I put together in the form of rondos, and, using the harmony and counterpoint of the Old Baroque, I tried to recreate the atmosphere of a “provincial” Hungarian Baroque style.

Franz Schubert was born into a typical 19th-century family: music was simply part of everyday life. The composer began writing chamber music as a teenager, not because he was expected to be a virtuoso but to have new things to play with his family. He had two brothers who were accomplished violinists, his father played the cello, and Schubert filled out the quartet on the viola. Schubert was not thinking about anything beyond the walls of his own home when he composed this music, yet the early quartets display some of the characteristics that typify later masterpieces like the Death and the Maiden quartet, like frequent use of tremolo and dramatic key changes. Given the circumstances that led to his interest in chamber works, it makes complete sense that when Schubert was asked at the end of his life to whom he wished to dedicate his E-flat Piano Trio, D. 929, he responded, “This work is dedicated to nobody, save those who find pleasure in it.”

Schubert did write chamber music intended for more accomplished players, particularly between 1824 and 1828 in the last five years of his life. As he wrote to his friend Leopold Kupelwieser on March 31, 1824, “I have written very few new songs, but instead I have tried my hand at several kinds of instrumental music and composed two string quartets [no less than the great A-minor Rosamunde and Death and the Maiden] and an octet ...The latest news in Vienna is that Beethoven is giving a concert, at which his new symphony, three selections from the new Mass, and a new overture are to be performed.” (The works by Beethoven to which Schubert refers—all performed at the same concert—were the Ninth Symphony, the Consecration of the House Overture, and the Missa Solemnis.)

Commissioned by Count Ferdinand von Troyer, one of Beethoven’s students and chief steward to Archduke Rudolph, Emperor Leopold II’s youngest brother, Schubert’s Octet came to life in just a few weeks between February and March 1824. The first performance occurred privately in April at the home of one of Troyer’s friends in Vienna, with Troyer himself on clarinet and Ignaz Schuppanzigh, whose string quartet premiered nearly all of Beethoven’s late string quartets, as first violin. Schuppanzigh led the Octet’s first public performance in 1827, too. The complete score was not published until the late 1880s.

A clarinet player, Troyer asked Schubert for a work modeled on Beethoven’s popular Septet for Winds and Strings, and Schubert complied. The instrumentation is nearly identical—clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, and cello—though Schubert adds a second violin. He also retains Beethoven’s six-movement form, based on the 18th-century serenade. And like Beethoven, Schubert begins the outer movements with slow introductions and uses both the outmoded minuet and forward-looking scherzo forms. Schubert’s unique flair for drama is entirely on display throughout the hour-long work, however. In the final movement, Schubert incorporates a quote from his song, “The Gods of Greece,” a setting of a poem about loss and the restorative powers of music:

Fair world, where are you? Return again,
sweet springtime of nature!
Alas, only in the magic land of song
does your fabled memory live on.

During the Octet’s composition, Schubert was going through personal travails. As he divulged to a friend, “I feel myself the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, and who in sheer despair over this makes things worse and worse instead of better.” As in “The Gods of Greece,” the “magic land of song” saves the day, and the dark mood of the Octet’s final movement ultimately gives way to light. As Schubert famously said, “When I attempted to sing of love, it turned to pain. And when I tried to sing of sorrow, it turned to love.”