YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE
FESTIVAL FOCUS
Supplement to The Aspen Times
Free Family Concert! Introduce your children of all ages to the delights of classical music with Prokofiev’s beloved children’s classic, Peter and the Wolf, this Thursday, August 20, at 5 pm. Come early at 4 pm for free, kid-friendly refreshments and activities! For more information, call 970-925-9042 or visit www. aspenmusicfestival. com.
Monday, August 17, 2015
Vol 26, No. 8
Aspen Festival Orchestra concert closes 2015 season lived to be like,” he says. Unlike Rimsky-Korsakov’s version of The Aspen Music Festival and School the tale of the savvy, story-telling queen, (AMFS) season will come to a close this Ravel’s version includes text written Sunday when the for a soprano voice, Aspen Festival Orwhich will be sung chestra performs its by Susanna Phillips. final concert of the Phillips comes to the summer. AMFS fresh from a Led by conduccritically acclaimed tor and AMFS Muperformance of Arsic Director Robert minda in Mozart’s Spano, the program La finta giardiniera at includes Mozart’s the Santa Fe Opera. concert aria Bella Following the promia fiamma…Resgram’s intermission, ta, o cara, Ravel’s the AFO will perform Shéhérazade, and Mahler’s Sixth SymMahler’s Symphony phony. Santourian No. 6 in A minor. notes that this symIt is fitting that a phony in particular season centered on is fitting for the final the theme “Dreams Sunday. “The Sixth of Travel” both beSymphony, with its Robert Spano AMFS Music Director gan and will end with marches, beautiful a take on the famous slow movements, Arabian Nights. and great epigrams, “It’s so wonderful that we were able is an unabashedly big party piece for to begin the season with Rimsky-Kor- the AFO to close the season with and sakov’s Scheherazade and end it with it’s a great piece to say farewell to evRavel’s version,” says Asadour Santou- eryone with,” he says. rian, vice president for artistic adminisThe composer’s Sixth Symtration and artistic advisor to the AMFS. phony has long been con“The exotic sounds and beautiful text are what Ravel imagined the Middle See Final Sunday, Festival Focus page 3 Eastern world in which Shéhérazade TORIE ROSS
Festival Focus writer
“Certainly one of the great journeys for all of us at the AMFS was the Music Festival itself as we traveled from all over the world to converge in this spectacular setting.... Through music, all journeys are possible.”
ALEX IRVIN/AMFS
AMFS Music Director Robert Spano will conduct the final Aspen Festival Orchestra concert of the summer, closing the season.
AOTC closes 2015 Festival season with Mozart’s Così fan tutte TORIE ROSS
Festival Focus writer
The Aspen Opera Theater Center closes its 2015 season this week with a performance of Mozart’s masterful comedy Così fan tutte, presented August 18, 20, and 22 at the Wheeler Opera House. A comedy of errors, Così fan tutte, which can be loosely translated to mean “women are like that,” tells the story of two soldiers, Ferrando and Guglielmo, and the humor that ensues when they test the love of their girlfriends, Fiordiligi and Dorabella, by disguising themselves. “Mozart was absolutely at his best when he was writing humorous music,” says Asadour Santourian, vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor to the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS). “It’s a wonderful parody on the behavior of men and women in relationships, a high-class comedy gone wrong, gone
right,” he says. Mozart’s comedy was first performed in 1790 at the Wiener Burgtheater in Vienna, Austria. The librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, also penned Le nozze de Figaro and Don Giovanni. Although the opera was written in the eighteenth century, AOTC Director Edward Berkeley and Così fan tutte Director James Robinson have decided to give it a modern update. “We’re staging it with this ’60s Mad Men sensibility,” says Berkeley. “I think the urban, modern setting is a very witty way to go with the opera and I think I will fit on the Wheeler Opera House stage perfectly.” Soprano Yelena Dyachek, who performed the role of Tatiana in the AMFS’s production of Eugene Onegin last See Così, Festival Focus page 3
COURTESY OF GEOFFREY HAHN
AMFS student Geoffrey Hahn will appear as Guglielmo in Così fan tutte. This is his first time performing a principal opera role.
Buy tickets now! (970) 925-9042 or www.aspenmusicfestival.com
Page 2 | Monday, August 17, 2015
FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide
Supplement to The Aspen Times
Pianist Conrad Tao presents three performances in final week TORIE ROSS Festival Focus writer
Pianist and Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) alum Conrad Tao was just eighteen months old when he began playing the piano—and only four years old when he gave his first recital performance. “Getting such an early start is an interesting thing to me,” recalls Tao, “because it means that I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t playing the piano in some capacity.” Although he was performing for years before he arrived at the AMFS to study with AMFS artist-faculty member Yoheved Kaplinsky, the young pianist cites his time at the Festival as when he began doing “real performing.” The now twenty-one-year-old pianist, and his career, show no sign of slowing down. In fact, this year alone, Tao has already performed with symphonies nationally and internationally, including performances with the San Francisco and Dallas symphony orchestras and an appearance at the Musicora classical music festival in Paris. This week, he returns to Aspen, and to the festival he says still feels like home, to perform three times before the AMFS wraps up for the season. Tao will first perform a solo recital on Tuesday, August 18, followed by a chamber music performance on Thursday, August 20, and finally an appearance with the Aspen Chamber Symphony for its final performance of the season on Friday, August 21.
“Through these three programs, Conrad is really showing us his versatility.” Asadour Santourian
Vice President for Artistic Administation and Artistic Advisor to the AMFS
“Through these three programs, Conrad is really showing us his versatility as a recitalist, a chamber musician, and an orchestral soloist,” says Asadour Santourian, vice president of artistic administration and artistic advisor to the AMFS. For his Tuesday recital in Harris Concert Hall, Tao has constructed a program that not only speaks to his technical abilities, but to his belief in the power of music as a way to express social and political opinions. The first half of the evening includes music from two American composers: Frederic Rzewski and Aaron Copland. “These composers both have a very obvious social consciousness, which comes across very clearly in their music and is something I find to be very powerful,” says Tao. After the intermission, Tao will perform Schumann’s Carnaval,
scènes mignonnes sur quatre notes. According to Santourian, Tao’s program choices “demonstrate what a serious musician he is. It reflects his thinking.” On Thursday, Tao will be performing chamber music along with Stefan Jackiw on violin and AMFS artist-faculty and students. “At the opportunity to work with some of our students, Conrad immediately accepted. It shows our patrons not only the immense talent of our current students, but also their future potential,” Santourian says. For his final performance of the week, Tao will appear as piano soloist alongside the Aspen Chamber Symphony in the Benedict Music Tent. The program for the evening includes Mozart’s “Haffner” symphony and Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, Lutosławski’s Partita for Violin and Orchestra, and Beethoven’s “Choral Fantasy.” “I’m so thrilled I get to play on three different programs because I get to have the total experience,” says Tao. “That’s what is nice about festivals, and especially Aspen with its massive reach—you get to do so much.” “We are so ecstatic that Conrad said ‘yes’ to all three of these projects because he is such a multifaceted artist and excels in all these different areas. The fact that we get to witness the extent of his versatility within one Festival season is very exciting,” says Santourian.
Buy tickets now: (970) 925-9042 • www.aspenmusicfestival.com
Supplement to The Aspen Times
FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide
Monday, August 17, 2015 | Page 3
Final Sunday: AFO concert closes Festival season Continued from Festival Focus page 1
sidered one of his most personal works. His wife, Alma Mahler, wrote, “We were both in tears… so deeply did we feel this music,” after her husband first played the piece for her. Mahler also dedicated an entire movement in the piece to his wife, personifying her in music. Ivan Hewitt of The Telegraph describes the “Alma Mahler” movement as “a lovely surging theme that feels like a defiant assertion of human feeling.” AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher notes that this Sunday’s concert will also benefit greatly from Robert Spano’s presence. “Hearing Robert conduct Mahler’s Sixth Symphony will be one of the treasures of the summer,” says Fletcher. “As one of the world’s great teachers of conducting, it’s natural that he would be a master interpreter of one of history’s greatest composer/conductors.” In a season filled with concerts and master classes and experiences as varied as ever, which transported audiences around the world, and even in to mythic lands, the 2015 AMFS summer was one to remem-
Aspen Music Festival and School Box Office Hours
ZACHARY MAXWELL
Soprano Susanna Phillips will join the AFO in a performance during the final concert of the 2015 season.
ber. “Certainly one of the great journeys for all of us at the Aspen Music Festival and School was the Music Festival itself, as we—students, artist-faculty, guest artists, and audience members—traveled from all over the world to converge in this spectacular setting, ready to listen, learn, and be swept away by
composers’ dreams of the elsewhere,” says Spano. “Through music it seems all journeys are possible.” For tickets and more information, call 970-925-9042 or visit www.aspenmusicfestival.com. Also mark your calendars for next year’s AMFS season, running from June 30 to August 21, 2016.
Harris Concert Hall: 9 am through the intermission of the evening concert, daily. Wheeler Opera House: 9 am–5 pm daily.
Marc-André Hamelin to perform own works COSÌ: Final opera to describe his intellectual and music depth, as well Festival Focus writer as technical prowess, with terms and phrases such as Marc-André Hamelin has consistently been ranked “profound,” “penetrating,” “crystalline,” and “it was as among the best pianists of his time, not only for his if he has turned the keys in to silk.” “He is one of the most brilliant pianists of his time musical virtuosity, but also for his ability to create for his intellectual curiosity and capacity and his abilprograms that challenge the mind and speak to the ity to fashion programs that are journeys,” says Asaheart. Aspen audiences can hear him perform masdour Santourian, vice president for artistic administerworks by Mozart, Debussy, and Schubert, along tration and artistic advisor to the AMFS. with two of his own original compositions, on SatAnd, adds AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher, urday, August 22, at Harris Concert “he has one of the most dropHall. dead technical abilities of any Music engaged Hamelin’s own living pianist. When you hear the mind and heart from his youngest quality of his playing, even of simyears. He started playing piano as a ple pieces, you can immediately small child after watching his father, hear the difference.” an amateur pianist, play, and he beThe two original works that gan “composing” almost simultaneHamelin will be performing at his ously. “When I was five, I discovered recital will be bookended by Momusical notation. My dad had scores zart’s Piano Sonata in D Major, of Chopin and the like lying around the composer’s last piano sonata, and they looked very impressive to and Debussy’s Images, series 2, me,” says Hamelin. “I wanted to do in the first half of the recital and the same thing, so I would just fill up Schubert’s Four Impromptus, D. the pages of empty books. Of course 935 in the second half. it was utter nonsense, but the emThe first original work Hamelin bryonic desire to compose was there will be performing is his Pavane from the very beginning.” Variée, a piece that was commisThe pianist cites his father as one Alan Fletcher sioned for the 2014 ARD Interof his earliest inspirations and teachAMFS President and CEO national Music Competition in ers (though his father never formally Munich and was performed by the four semi-finalists gave him lessons). “He placed a lot of hope in me,” for the competition. His second work is his Variations Hamelin explains. “Unfortunately, he passed away on a Theme by Paganini, a theme he says “is very about twenty years ago, but I’m so thankful he was fascinating and simple, and therefore invites a lot of able to see some of my success before he died. I only transformation.” wish he was here to see things now that everything “Although this piece is just ten minutes long, I has gotten so much better for me and my career.” really went all out and tried to push the envelope. Hamelin’s career now includes a large body of There are a few whacky moments in there where I recordings, numerous awards, and performances expect laughter, and I usually get it,” says the pianist. around the world. Critics use powerful superlatives TORIE ROSS
“[Hamelin] has the most drop-dead technical abilities of any living pianist. When you hear the quality of his playing...you can immediately hear the difference.”
Continued from Festival Focus page 1
year and now plays the principal role of Fiordiligi, the older and “wiser” sister in Così fan tutte, says she believes the staging makes the themes of the opera more relatable to the audience. “Love and hate and betrayal have been lifelong themes. They apply to modern times just as well as they applied to life in the time Così fan tutte was written,” she says. Geoffrey Hahn, the baritone in the principal role of Guglielmo (his first principal role in an opera), agrees. “Although this opera is hilarious, the emotions these characters feel and the relationships we see them have are very real, and this staging really helps to make that feel more present to the audience,” he says. “Throughout the opera the six-person cast is intricately intertwined in each other’s business and by the end of the opera all the knots are only slightly unknotted,” says Santourian. In addition to Dyachek and Hahn, Così fan tutte’s principal roles include mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey in the role of Fiordiligi’s younger sister Dorabella, tenor Paul Han in the role of Ferrando, mezzo-soprano Sofia Selowsky in the role of the sisters’ maid Despina, and baritone Fan Jia in the role of Don Alfonso, who originally wages the bet that the women will not be faithful to their lovers. For the uproarious comedy brimming with flirtation and seduction, Hahn says he hopes audiences walk away enjoying the true nature of Mozart’s humor. “I hope the audience enjoys the hilarity of it and how ridiculous and over-the-top the production is,” he says.
For tickets to Mozart’s Così fan tutte ($75, $25 obstructed) visit the Wheeler and Harris Hall box offices, go online to www. aspenmusicfestival.com, or call 970-925-9042. The opera runs August 18, 20, and 22, at 7 pm at the Wheeler Opera House.