Concerto Net reviews World Premiere of Violin Concerto No. 2!

February 28th, 2015, was the incredible World Premiere of Fung's Violin Concerto No.2 "In Snow and Ice" and Michael Johnson from concertonet.com had this to say..."The Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s 11th annual New Creations Festival, with its focus this year on British composer/conductor George Benjamin, launched with a program of four substantial works....The second half of the evening, under the baton of Peter Oundjian, began with the world premiere of Canadian composer Vivian Fung’s Violin Concerto No. 2 “Of Snow and Ice”. Ms Fung grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, a very wintery city. The work arose from nostalgic thoughts about her childhood while in her current home in snowless San Francisco. The commission was specifically for the TSO’s principal violinist, Jonathan Crow, and the writing superbly shows off his immaculate tone and technique. The work skilfully evokes, as the first two sections state, “Birth of a Snowstorm” and “Crackling Ice”, before the “Macabre Pseudo-winter Dance” and then the lingering “Final Return”. The absorbing work is very much of the post-Sibelius, post-Britten era in its sound.I suppose it is appropriate that, at the end of the coldest February in the city’s history, we should have two pieces so evocative of winter (not to mention that a couple of days earlier we heard - and felt - Christian Gerhaher’s deeply expressive Die Winterreise)."-by Michael Johnson Full article here.