YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE
FESTIVAL FOCUS
Supplement to The Aspen Times
Simone Porter Returns! After seven years as a student in Aspen, brilliant young violinist Simone Porter made her exhilarating Aspen guest artist debut last summer in the Tent. Be there this Sunday, August 16, to cheer her on when she returns to play Barber’s supremely lyrical Violin Concerto.
ALEX IRVIN/AMFS
Monday, August 10, 2015
Vol 26, No. 7
Joshua Bell conducts and performs the Four Seasons TORIE ROSS
Festival Focus writer
A child prodigy turned adult superstar, violinist Joshua Bell has had a charmed career. Since Bell’s career skyrocketed following a debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of fourteen, the violinist, and his career, have been “kissed by fate,” says Asadour Santourian, vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor to the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS). In 1999, in recognition of his performance in John Corigliano’s Oscar-winning score for The Red Violin, he received a standing ovation at the Academy Awards. In 2001, after an encounter in London’s famous J & A Beare violin shop, Bell came to own the 300-year-old “Gibson ex-Huberman” Stradivarius violin, one of the world’s most revered instruments. His list of achievements and accolades is seemingly endless, from receiving the 1998 Gramophone Award, winning a Grammy in 2000, and being named Classical Artist of the Year by Billboard Magazine in 2004. Bell, who spent two summers during his teens as a student at the AMFS, showed his superstar power even then. “Josh made the transition from prodigy to adult musician rather seamlessly,” says Santourian. “He always demonstrated that maturity as an interpreter and a musician, which helped that
seamlessness.” Although Bell has returned to Aspen, and to the AMFS, many times in the thirty years since he was a student, citing Aspen as “one of [his] favorite places on earth,” this year Aspen audiences will be treated to a whole new side of the musician. When he takes the Benedict Music Tent stage on August 14 with the Aspen Chamber Symphony for a program including Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, Bell will not only be on stage as a violinist, but also as a conductor. Bell began his conducting journey half a decade ago, as a guest conductor from the front chair of the ensemble Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Then, in 2012, he was trusted by the Academy’s founder, Sir Neville Marriner, to take over. While seeing a conductor lead his ensemble from the concertmaster’s chair, instead of the podium, may be unfamiliar to some, Bell told NPR in a 2012 interview that, “somehow, it feels even more natural.” He added, “it makes the players…have to sit on the edge of their seat. They can’t get away with kind of sitting back and following. They have to lead themselves, as well.” While Bell’s role as a conductor may come as a surprise to some, for others, it seems just another way for him to exSee Bell, Festival Focus page 3
LISA MARIE MAZZUCCO
Violinist Joshua Bell will be both performing and conducting Vivaldi’s perennial favorite the Four Seasons this Friday.
The AMFS presents “tango opera” María de Buenos Aires TORIE ROSS
Festival Focus writer
The streets of Buenos Aires come to Harris Concert Hall this Tuesday when the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) presents a performance of Piazzolla’s seductive “tango opera” María de Buenos Aires. Scott Terrell, who will be conducting the performance and is an alumnus of the AMFS’s American Academy of Conducting at Aspen, first experienced María de Buenos Aires at the Festival almost a decade ago and was immediately entranced by the score. “The beauty of the music is really overwhelming. It is operatic at times and concert music at times. It goes between so many forms,” he says. Asadour Santourian, vice president of artistic administration and artistic advisor to the AMFS adds: “It is one of the sexiest scores out there, and the tightest. There is
not one superfluous note, not one superfluous sound.” Ástor Piazzolla’s tango opera tells the story of María and her life, and eventual death, in the seedy underbelly of Argentina’s capital city. “This piece is unique in its construct because the librettist, Horacio Ferrer, has turned the tango into the subject matter,” says Santourian. He goes on to explain that, in the opera, María is the human manifestation of tango. “Whatever María’s life trials and tribulations are, they are really a metaphor for the story of the tango,” he says. As the Argentineans tell it, tango, much like María, was born in the poorest areas of Buenos Aires, where immigrants and the lowest classes of society mixed traditional African rhythms and European music to dance the night away in the local milongas, or dance halls. See María, Festival Focus page 3
EDUARDO MILIERES
Bandoneónist Héctor del Curto will play in the ensemble for María de Buenos Aires at the Festival this Tuesday, August 11.
Buy tickets now! (970) 925-9042 or www.aspenmusicfestival.com
Page 2 | Monday, August 10, 2015
FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide
Supplement to The Aspen Times
Vladimir Feltsman performs recitals of Russian master works TORIE ROSS Festival Focus writer
In the twenty-one years that pianist Vladimir Feltsman has been coming to the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS), audiences have heard him perform everything from Baroque to twenty-first century composers. However, this week, the pianist brings a different, and very personal, type of recital to the Harris Concert Hall stage. Feltsman’s “Masterpieces of the Russian Underground” is a three-part project that brings to the forefront composers who are largely unknown outside of Russia. The Russian-born pianist will perform two of the three parts of the repertoire project at the AMFS this season on August 12 and 13. “This program is several years in the making, and really focuses on bringing composers from my motherland to audiences around the world. Although these composers are not well known, their music is second to none,” Feltsman says. In addition to a deep appreciation of their compositional talent, Feltsman also has a personal connection to these artists, many of whom were oppressed by the Russian regime in their lifetimes. When Feltsman applied for an exit visa from Soviet Russia in 1979, because of growing restrictions on artistic freedom, he was not only denied the visa, but was also banned from performing in public and his recordings were suppressed.
“Although these composers are not well known, their music is second to none.” Vladimir Feltsman Pianist
Feltsman had spent most of his life as a rising star on the Russian, and international, music stage. At age eleven he debuted with the Moscow Philharmonic and at seventeen he entered the worldrenowned Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory. In 1971, eight years before he was forced into what was essentially artistic exile, Feltsman won the Marguerite Long International Piano Competition in Paris, which resulted in extensive touring throughout the former Soviet Union, Europe, and Japan. In 1987, eight years after his visa was denied, Feltsman was finally granted permission to leave the Soviet Union. His first stop after arriving in the United States was the White House, where he performed his first recital in North America. Then, that same year, came
his debut at Carnegie Hall, which firmly established him on the American and international scene. The first of his two recitals in Aspen, this Wednesday, August 12, uses the works of Alexander Skryabin as a starting point and will also feature works by his lesser-known contemporaries, including Mosolov, Roslavets, and Protopopov. “We will not only have Feltsman on solo piano, but also Darrett Adkins on cello to give us this extension of Skryabin’s world of sound and color,” says Asadour Santourian, vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor of the AMFS. Adkins, who sits on the faculty of both The Juilliard School and the Oberlin Conservatory, has been performing in Aspen since 2002. Thursday’s recital similarly focuses on Dmitri Shostakovich and his contemporaries, including works by Weinberg, Ustvolskaya, and Schnittke. That evening’s recital will feature accompaniment by Brinton Smith on cello, James Dunham on the viola, Joaquin Valdepeñas on clarinet, and Bing Wang on violin. “Audiences don’t get a chance to hear many of these composers, especially not in the context of their better-known contemporaries,” says Santourian, adding that most of the music had to be specially ordered and printed for the Festival. “I appreciate the AMFS so much for supporting me and this project and I am so looking forward to introducing these composers to the audience,” says Feltsman.
Buy tickets now: (970) 925-9042 • www.aspenmusicfestival.com
Supplement to The Aspen Times
FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide
Monday, August 10, 2015 | Page 3
BELL: Violinist conducts in Aspen for the first time Continued from Festival Focus page 1
press his immense musical aptitude. “To me, this conducting is not such a surprise as it is a natural extension of himself,” says Santourian. While audiences tend to fall in love with Bell, and his artistry, almost immediately, it doesn’t hurt that for his AMFS performance, he will be bringing with him one of the most popular pieces of all time. “The Four Seasons, since it was recovered from an unsuspecting library shelf all those years ago, has become a perennial favorite,” says Santourian. “Most people know every single note of it, and enjoy every single note of it.” It’s so popular, in fact, that more than 1000 recordings of the piece have been made since the first discovered recording in 1939. “Vivaldi’s the Four Seasons is an ideal choice for this performance, because it is generally led by the principal violinist,” explains Alan Fletcher, president and CEO of the
AMFS. “It brings together all the great attributes of Vivaldi, as both a composer and a violinist,” adds Santourian. It is fitting, then, that a piece that personifies a composer’s multitude of talents would be performed by an artist displaying his variety of talents to Aspen audiences for the first time. Plus, Bell says, Aspen has a way of rekindling his “musical spirit” and inspiring him to push himself. “To be around young people who are in the process of discovering what a life of music really means— the joy, the sense of discovery, and the hard work,” he says, “reminds me of the two wonderful summers that I spent as a teenager when I was at the brink of my own musical career.” ”There’s a certain number of people who are among the greatest violinists in the world at any given moment, and [Josh] has always been one of those,” says Fletcher.
Aspen Music Festival and School Box Office Hours
ALEX IRVIN/AMFS
This performance will be Bell’s first time conducting in Aspen. The violinist began conducting with the world-renowned Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, for which he is now music director.
Harris Concert Hall: 9 am through the intermission of the evening concert, daily. Wheeler Opera House: 9 am–5 pm daily.
New compositions critiqued live in free event MARÍA: Tango Opera LAURA E. SMITH Festival Focus writer
A free, public composition master class, this Sunday, August 16, at 9 am in Harris Concert Hall, offers the public a unique look at the multi-dimensional process of creating classical music. At the Aspen Music Festival and School’s annual Composer Showcase, five student composers enrolled in the AMFS’s Susan and Ford Schumann Center for Composition Studies will have works they have recently written played by full orchestra and then critiqued live by a panel of some of today’s most distinguished compositional minds: AMFS composition artist-faculty member and Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Steven Stucky, AMFS composition artistfaculty member and Grawemeyer Prize-winning composer George Tsontakis, guest composer-in-residence Shulamit Ran, guest composer-in-residence and former AMFS artist-faculty member Christopher Rouse (also a Pulitzer Prize–winning composer), AMFS Music Director Robert Spano, and AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher. Both Spano and Fletcher are also accomplished composers; Fletcher will, in fact, be fresh from hearing the world premieres of four of his own compositions in Aspen and elsewhere this year. “Very often we experience the great classic works of music as if they had always been and as if there were no choices involved,” says Fletcher. “Whereas everyone involved in a performance and prep of music knows everything is about choices that are made in the composition process, and in the interpretive process. These choices are often key to the success of the work. So it’s fun to hear new works with the criticism of how they might be different and perhaps better.” The panelists, amplified to be audible to the full audience, will offer comments and suggest possible changes that will then be made and performed right
in the moment. “It’s quite a distinguished panel, with guest composers from outside and artist-faculty from inside,” Stucky says, “and the feedback they’re able to give the composer fellows is immense.” He continues, “The showcase is fascinating for the audiences because not only are they watching the rehearsal process for a brand new piece we’re still experimenting with, but the contrast between each of the pieces is enormous. The range of expression and contrast of styles that these composers bring is very gratifying.” The Schumann Center’s ten student composers have each participated in readings already this summer. For the Showcase, Maestro Spano has selected the works of five students to be workshopped. “Maestro Spano has selected to bring back these pieces for a variety of reasons: there are interesting conducting challenges for the student conductors [who will lead the readings] to address, there are interesting problems for the composers to repair, the pieces will be especially interesting for audiences, or a whole variety of things,” Stucky explains. The five works that will be presented on Saturday are Phil Taylor’s Chiaroscuro, Weijun Chen’s Canoe, Michael Small’s Eastern Point, Sunbin Kim’s On the Essence of Sound: The Disappearance of Smanato, and William Cooper’s Clouds of Witnesses. “It’s so exciting for us to have these brand new pieces, many of which have never been performed before, by these brilliant young composers,” says Stucky. This Composer Showcase is an opportunity for the students to display the culmination of their hard work—and vie for a prestigious Hermitage Prize. The prize is a grant from the Hermitage Artist Retreat, which annually awards one AMFS composition student a gift of an artist residency and a stipend.
Continued from Festival Focus page 1
“It’s interesting, because people look at tango as a simple structural thing, but in the case of Piazzolla, it is very layered and complex,” says Terrell. Piazzolla himself struggled immensely with reconciling his artistic style with the traditional styles of tango composers. “He was a thoroughly well-trained and educated musician, who the tango world would not accept because his harmonies and rhythms were too sophisticated for what tango was expected to do,” says Santourian. The composer eventually championed a new form of tango, nuevo tango, which incorporated elements of jazz and classical music into the musical structure. In addition to the singers on stage, Piazzolla calls for several special ensemble members, who are essential to not only the music, but to the story itself. “It is a very unique combination of instruments and a broad spectrum of colors that he can create from this diverse group,” says Terrell. Along with Ryan Shirar on piano and Jisoo Ok on cello, Héctor del Curto will be playing the bandoneón. “The work is centered on how entranced María is by the music, so it really acts as a fourth character on the stage,” says Terrell. “The style of the bandoneón and its style of playing is like it is breathing, and it has an immediate impact on the players.” AMFS alumnus and mezzo-soprano Cecilia Hall will be in the title role of María, accompanied by baritone Luis Alejandro Orozco in the role of the Payador, and Enrique E. Andrade in the role of the narrator. Although this season’s presentation will be in a concert format, as opposed to a staged production, Terrell says the excitement and power of the music is still there. “This is not a situation where the orchestra is sitting back; the orchestra is very much a part of it,” he says. “Therefore, in a concert version, the work can easily stand on its own, because the music is that good.” “In the end, it’s going to be so fun for audiences, and the performers,” Terrell notes.