Jaeden Izik-Dzurko with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal

A double-prize-winning new force at the piano

Returning under conductor Rafael Payare for a second evening after its concert with Bruce Liu, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal turns the spotlight onto another Canadian pianist, Jaeden Izik-Dzurko. He won the gold medal at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2024, and became the first Canadian pianist to take the Grand Prize at the Concours musical international de Montréal. Dame Imogen Cooper, Chair of the Leeds Jury, praised Izik-Dzurko for demonstrating “exceptional artistic maturity…a profound ability to captivate and transport the audience”, while Bachtrack named him among its “Rising Stars to Watch” for 2025–26.

The concert opens with La Traversée by contemporary Canadian composer Denis Gougeon, in which instruments of sharply contrasting register—piccolo, contrabassoon and muted trumpet—trade fleeting dialogues. Izik-Dzurko performs Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, a work of unusual intimacy: its hushed opening—a solo piano meditation answered by the orchestra in a distant key—sets the tone for a conversation between equals rather than a display of heroics. Of Beethoven’s five piano concertos, the Fourth is often considered to demand the most refined musical sensibility from its soloist. Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben rounds out the programme, a musical autobiography scored for the full forces of a late-Romantic orchestra. Strauss paints himself as composer-hero and his critics as bleating adversaries, while a solo violin represents his wife, Pauline, weaving lyrical episodes throughout. The work builds to a valedictory ending that quotes from his own earlier works.

Advance Bookings will start at 10am on 7 October 2026