UTNMF: Berlin Philharmonic Oboist, Christoph Hartmann
80 Queens Park
80 Queens Park
Norbert Palej, festival coordinator
Featuring the winner of the 2026 Bedford Trio Composition Competition.
The Bedford Piano Trio Composition Competition Prize is generously supported by Alexandrina and Jeffrey Canto-Thaler
Program
Souvenir de Berlin for Oboe and Piano, Op. 19
Casimir Théophile Lalliet (1837-1892)
Christoph Hartmann, oboe, Younggun Kim, piano
Six Metamorphoses after Ovid for Oboe Solo, Op. 49 (1921)
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Christoph Hartmann, oboe, Younggun Kim, piano
Variations on a Theme by Beethoven for Oboe and Piano
Theodor H. Leschetizky (1830-1915)
Christoph Hartmann, oboe, Younggun Kim, piano
INTERMISSION
“Ecstasy-Vajd” for Piano Trio (World Premiere)
(Winning Work of the 2025 Bedford Piano Trio Composition Competition)
Kaveh Mirhosseini (b.1989)
I - Makkoran
II – Gouati
Alessia Disimino, violin / Lucia Ticho, cello / Tristan Savella, piano
Bedford Piano Trio Composition Competition Prize is generously supported by Alexandrina and Jeffrey Canto-Thaler
Piri for Oboe Solo (1971)
Isang Yun (1917-1995)
Oboe Sonata in D Major, Op. 166 (1921)
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
I - Andantino
II – Ad libitum – Allegretto – Ad libitum
III - Molto Allegro
Christoph Hartmann, oboe, Younggun Kim, piano
BIOGRAPHY
Christoph Hartmann was introduced to the oboe by his piano teacher, who suggested that he try the instrument. At the time, Hartmann was 13 years old. Just one year later, he was already studying with Georg Fischer at the Augsburg Conservatory. He went on to study with Günther Passin at the Munich Academy of Music, where he also taught after graduating.
He began his career as an orchestral musician in 1991 with the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra, moving to the Berliner Philharmoniker the following year. Christoph Hartmann, who has taught in the Orchestra Academy since 1993, founded the Landsberger Sommermusiken festival in 1999 together with colleagues, from which the Ensemble Berlin, which performs in Germany and abroad, emerged.
In recent years, Hartmann has done great service to the neglected oboe virtuoso Pasculli, whose compositions he rediscovered and recorded. In addition to music, Christoph Hartmann has another great passion: bicycles. He runs his own cycling shop and has developed his own bicycle brand, which he named – what else?! – Pasculli.
Younggun Kim is a pianist known for his "blazing technical capacity and a lush sound supported by a natural phrasing sense" (Timothy Gilligan, New York Concert Review), who has performed across North America and Europe. His performances this season include appearances with Toronto Concert Orchestra and recital engagements in San Antonio, Vancouver, and Toronto.
The winner of various prizes including San Antonio International Competition, Concours International de Piano Francis Poulenc and Doctor of Musical Arts Recital Competition at the University of Toronto, he also received various prizes and scholarships from the Canada Council for the Arts, University of Toronto, Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music, Canadian Music Competition, Shean Competition, the Alice and Armen Matheson Graduate Scholarship, Anne Burrows Foundation and Winspear Fund. Most recently, Younggun was given the Tecumseh Sherman Rogers Graduating Award worth $25,000, which is the largest award that the University of Toronto Faculty of Music offers.
He has also been closely involved since 2011 with the Health Arts Society, providing classical music concerts to audiences who no longer can make it to concert halls. As an adjudicator in demand, Younggun has adjudicated Canadian Music Competition and Kiwanis Festival, among others. A Toronto-based Canadian citizen from South Korea, he finished his undergraduate degree at the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music with Professor Marietta Orlov, Master’s Degree at Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University under the guidance of Professor Boris Slutsky and the Doctor of Musical Arts Degree at the University of Toronto with Professor Marietta Orlov. He is active as soloist, chamber musician, and adjudicator.
“A triple header of virtuosity,” (Toronto Concert Reviews), Bedford Trio presents passionate performances of contemporary and traditional repertoire, with a deep commitment to reshaping the future of piano trio music through commissions and multidisciplinary artistic collaborations. The trio's performances interweave a respect for the traditional forms alongside a deep desire to launch to the future, engage with the art and culture of our time, and promote a spirit of artistic collaboration of the highest excellence.
Based in Toronto, Bedford Trio was founded in 2016 and features award-winning instrumentalists Alessia Disimino (violin), Lucia Ticho (cello), and Jialiang Zhu (piano). The Trio is the 2025-26 Artist in Residence at the University of Toronto (U of T), where they host and adjudicate the Piano Trio Composition Competition as part of the U of T New Music Festival, a position they have held since the Competition's inaugural edition in 2020. As the adjudicators of the Competition, they have presented workshops and given world premieres of pieces by numerous emerging composers. Bedford Trio is lauded for their IMMERSED project, with its fourth edition underway, which highlights their dedication to multi-disciplinary presentation of contemporary works written for the Trio, alongside captivating digital art, lighting, and dance by Canadian young artists. Bedford Trio's annual concert series has received support by the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Ontario Government, and Canada Council for the Arts, and frequently features guest instrumentalists, composers, and artists.
Bedford Trio has performed in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Past notable appearances include performing the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the Brampton Rose Orchestra at Roy Thomson Hall (2024) as part of the Skyky Multicultural Learning Foundation’s Fundraising Concert for the SickKids Hospital; featured ensemble in the joint project “New Techniques in Global Collaboration in Musical Performance” between U of T and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2023); virtual season-opening gala concert of the Tartini Conservatory in Trieste, Italy (2020), the Irene R. Miller Piano Trio Residency at U of T’s Faculty of Music under the mentorship of Gryphon Trio (2018-2020), Chamber Music Fellowship at Toronto Summer Music (2019), Career Development Residency at Ottawa Chamberfest also under the mentorship of Gryphon Trio (2018). The Trio was a finalist in the 2018 Anton Rubinstein International Chamber Music (Germany) and a semi-finalist in the 2019 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition (USA). In the 2025-26 season, the Trio looks forward to performing the Beethoven Triple Concerto again with the Rose Orchestra and presenting a self-produced concert series celebrating music, digital art, and dance by Canadian emerging young artists.
Bedford Trio is committed to commissioning and performing contemporary repertoire by both established and emerging composers. Since 2018, the trio has been working with music students at Earl Haig Secondary School, workshopping their pieces throughout the academic year and performing them as part of the year-end showcase. The trio is dedicated to bringing live music performance to a diverse audience and has given recitals in senior residences, community centres, hospices, and hospitals across Ontario. In 2019-2020, the trio delivered sensory-friendly concerts for autistic youth and their families and performed for adults with Alzheimer in collaboration with the charity organization Xenia Concerts.
To learn about Bedford Trio’s latest events, please visit bedfordtrio.com/concerts and follow them on Instagram @bedford_trio.
Kaveh Mirhosseini, a Doctoral student at the University of Toronto, is an Iranian composer, conductor, percussionist, and researcher of Iranian folk music. He founded the Tehran Cantus Ensemble, which performed and recorded more than 30 works by Iranian composers in Tehran. He also established MECA (Middle Eastern Composers Association) to collect an extensive archive of Middle Eastern composers, perform their works, and introduce a new diversity of compositional styles from the region.
Mirhosseini has performed as principal percussionist with the Tehran Symphony Orchestra for fourteen years and has served as guest conductor of both the TSO (Thran Symphony Orchestra) and the Iran National Symphony Orchestra. His compositions have been performed by numerous orchestras, ensembles, and soloists, including the Mili Reasurans Chamber Orchestra (conductedby Hakan Sensoy, Istanbul, Turkey), Koda Orchestra (conducted by Oguzhan Kavruk, Izmir, Turkey), Annie Kosanovich
(Oregon State University, USA), Branka Parlic (Silk Road Music Festival, Serbia), Gokce Bahar Oytun (Istanbul, Turkey), Respina String Quartet (Tehran Contemporary Music Festival), and by Kelasiz Keshavarz and Mehrdad Gholami at the NFA (National Flute Association) Music Festival in the USA.
He has released four albums of his compositions:
• Illusion for Violin & 58 Violin Orchestra, performed by Lora Kmieliauaskaite
• Illumination, Concerto for Violoncello & String Orchestra, performed by the Cantus Ensemble
• The Waste Land for solo Bassoon, performed by Elise Jacoberger
• Mysticism, String Quartet, performed by the Respina String Quartet
Mirhosseini has contributed to the Canadian contemporary music scene by curating and conducting a program of Iranian composers’ music at the UTNMF and being invited as a speaker at the UTNMF Iranian Contemporary Music Symposium. As artistic director of JAM Music Center in Toronto, he led the newly established JAM Orchestra to a sold-out concert and plans additional performances in the near future.
His works have been recognized internationally: one of his compositions was selected for inclusion in the anthology A Century of Cello Music from Persia and is available in the University of Toronto library. He has expanded his professional reach internationally, receiving commissions to record orchestral works by Iranian and non-Iranian composers, including Christos Hatzis (Zeitgeist and Winter Solstice), Reza Vali (Zand), M.R. Davishi (The Lost of Truth), Mehran Rouhani (For Those), and others. In 2021, his Cello Concerto Illumination (Eshragh) was awarded the BARBOD, a major Iranian music award.
PROGRAM NOTES
“Ecstasy-Vajd” for Piano Trio
Ecstasy in Persian is VAJD. VAJD is a moment in which a person is elevated to spiritual and mystical state and could escape the reality of this world.
Once in Blouchistan at night by the beach of Makkoran I was looking at the magnificence of waves the Ocean that were hitting the rocks and overtaken by the magic of the moment, I felt VAJD (Ecstasy).
In that part of my country there is a kind of exorcism which is accompanied by playing musical instruments and singing, this is known as Gouati ceremony. The exorcist is called The father of Gouati and he sings a minimal motive (generally is in Balouchy Pentatonic) with a very slow tempo which gradually increases for about an hour. This is done to exorcise the djinn.
I participated in this ceremony to record and analyze the music and again experienced Vajd and I tried to write a piece for Piano Trio and again I experienced VAJD during the GUATI which became my muse for a piece.