Performing as soloist with Kensington Sinfonia
premiering Mark Limacher’s newly commissioned Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council
“This multi-movement composition for piano and small orchestra explores the relationship between variation and memory, using this timeless musical form to reflect on how we recall, reinterpret, and ultimately lose touch with our past. Rather than treating variations merely as technical exercises that progressively embellish a core theme, this piece explores how memories—like musical motives—are gradually eroded, distorted, and mediated by time, even as they retain, or perhaps long for, a sense of self-similarity.
The evolving relationship between theme and variation mirrors how we engage with our own memories, and our desire to remember things in particular ways. As we move further from an original event or experience, we begin to reconstruct and reinterpret it, layering new perceptions and interpretations—alongside forgetfulness. Yet, despite this transformation, an intangible thread remains. This continuity, much like the self-similarity in each variation, binds the present to a past that is fading but never fully forgotten.
Through its movements, this composition invites listeners to reflect on how we engage with our memories, both musically and personally, where the boundary between embellishment and erasure becomes blurred. In the end, the piece offers not just a meditation on musical variation, but also on the fragile and ever-shifting nature of memory itself.”
Mark Limacher, composer