Festival Focus July 18, 2016

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Behzod Abduraimov makes Music Fest debut abilities, all of his gifts, in the service of music to communicate. I think that’s Twenty-five-year-old pianist Behzod what makes him a star.”

Abduraimov is the epitome of a rising Abduraimov will perform a solo recital star. At just eighteen, he won first prize on Thursday, and on Sunday he will join in the 2009 London the Aspen Festival International Piano Orchestra for Rach“His technique is Competition. He’s maninoff’s Third Piaperformed with no Concerto, noted impregnable. And he some of the top as one of the most puts all of this in the orchestras of the technically difficult world, including the piano concertos in service of music. He’s Los Angeles Philharthe canon. monic and London Abduraimov startnot doing a highwire Philharmonic Ored playing the piano chestra. And now, act to show off. He’s at the age of six. With he’s making his Asa piano teacher for actually putting all of pen Music Festival a mother, he didn’t and School (AMFS) these abilities, all of his have much say in the debut. matter.

“Abduraimov is “I didn’t have a gifts, in the service of at the start of his choice, and, of music to communicate. course, I don’t regret career, and he’s had an incredible it,” he says.

I think that’s what start,” says Asadour He would listen Santourian, vice to his mother’s clasmakes him a star.” president for artissical LPs as a child tic administration and wonder when Asadour Santourian and artistic advisor he would be ready Vice President for Artistic Administration of the AMFS. “His and Artistic Advisor to play the music he technique is imwas quickly falling in pregnable. And he love with. But even does all of this in the service of music. he may not have been able to conceive He’s not doing a high wire act to show of the critical acclaim awaiting him. off. He’s actually putting all of these See Abduraimov, Festival Focus page 3 LINDA BUCHWALD

Festival Focus Writer

Emerson String Quartet 40th Anniversary!

Celebrate the 40th anniversary of this nine-time Grammy Award-winning ensemble at a Harris Concert Hall Special Event!

The program features Haydn’s String Quartet in D minor, Berg’s Lyric Suite, and Brahms’s Second String Quartet, performed by “one of our best chamber ensembles, not merely precise but expressive and intelligent to the last ounce,” according to the OC Register.

The Emerson String Quartet’s 40th anniversary celebration recital is at 7:30 pm on Tuesday, July 19.

Visit www.aspenmusicfestival.com for tickets and more information.

CHRISTIAN FATU

Rising star pianist Behzod Abduraimov performs a solo recital and as a guest artist with the Aspen Festival Orchestra this week.

Shakespeare mini-festival celebrates the Bard in music COURTNEY THOMPSON

Festival Focus Writer

“If music be the food of love, play on.” The opening verse of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is just one of many instances in which the Bard uses music, both literally and metaphorically, in his plays. Many composers, in turn, reference Shakespeare’s words in their own works. This year, in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) presents within its season a mini-festival of musical works inspired by the prolific playwright.

“I think there is no dramatist, and very few poets, whom musicians turn to more than Shakespeare,” says AMFS President and CEO

Alan Fletcher. “He has provided the source material for more operas than any other person, and also song cycles. I would also say there is no writer in all history who has written more poetry about music. That’s attractive to composers as well.”

The works scheduled as part of the Shakespeare mini-festival have been woven throughout the summer season—“a red ribbon of Shakespeare’s ideas,” says Asadour Santourian, the AMFS’s vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor.

But two major events anchor the theme: next month’s Aspen Opera Center (AOC) production of Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict, based on Much Ado About Nothing; and this Wednesday’s Shakespeare Songs: Of Love

and Madness, a concert solely comprising Shakespeare-inspired pieces, and also featuring AOC singers.

As the recital’s title suggests, the “Of Love and Madness” program is inspired by the plights of Shakespeare’s characters. “Both men and women lose their minds to love in both his comedies and tragedies,” says Santourian.

The evening will begin with selections from Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, an early English opera featuring a libretto loosely adapted from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The work originally premiered in 1692, which makes it a musical treat for those accustomed to the See Shakespeare, Festival Focus page 3

This season, the AMFS commemorates the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death with a mini-festival of music inspired by the Bard.

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Misha and Cipa Dichter return to Aspen for 42nd season KATE DROZYNSKI

Festival Focus Writer

For husband-and-wife piano duo Misha and Cipa Dichter, the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) is more than a chance to perform, more than a community of artists, more than a festival. For the Dichters, who have been coming to Aspen for more than forty years, it has become a second home for the whole family.

“We love it here,” Misha says. “Our kids, who are now this summer going to be 45 and 43, arrived there when they were 3 and 1. And we’ve spent weeks and weeks every summer there. They still consider it [a] magic land.”

The Dichters return to that magic land once again this Saturday, when they’ll perform a Harris Concert Hall recital that revolves around the AMFS’s 2016 season theme, Invitation to Dance. And choosing a piano four-hands program full of dance music posed no problem for the veteran performers.

“This year’s theme was very easy and very fun,” Cipa says. “Especially for four-hands, there’s just so much.”

The Dichters have crafted a program full of Hungarian and Slavic sounds from Brahms

and Dvořák, opening with Schubert’s Divertissement à l’hongroise, which Misha says is an excellent complement to the familiar folk sounds of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances.

“Schubert wrote it for piano four-hands, and it fits perfectly into this program,” Misha says. “Here they [both] are, about fifty years apart as composers, really using very similar compositional elements to evoke this gypsy style.”

The Dichters will also perform Spanish composer Manuel Infante’s Three Andalusian Dances to close their program.

“The Infante is very close to us,” Misha says.

“We found it, actually, in a dusty bin of used music in Paris maybe thirty-five years ago.”

When Misha rescued the piece from its Parisian prison, he recognized it as the theme song to a piano program he remembered from his childhood.

“I never knew what it was!” Misha says. “So we bought it and took it back to New York and started playing it.”

The Dichters have been playing it ever since.

“The Infante is a great piano piece,” Cipa says. “It’s just a wonderful sound and a wonderful feeling of magic.”

Also magic? Being able to perform to-

ALEX IRVIN

Husband-and-wife piano duo Misha and Cipa Dichter will perform a recital of piano four-hands pieces inspired by the season theme, “Invitation to Dance.”

gether for so many decades, as the Dichters have. Back when the two were students at Juilliard, joining together at the piano became a way to unwind and let loose after a long day of each practicing individually.

Misha says he and Cipa would relax at the instrument, playing until midnight.

“And that’s how it all began,” Misha says.

“It’s very intimate when it’s two people playing four-hand piano.”

It’s more than just the two of them, however, in the Aspen spotlight this summer.

Their son, Sasha, was in town, too, when his nonprofit, the Acumen Fund, presented at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

“Here’s a guy who arrived as a 1-year-old in Aspen,” Misha says of his son, “and he’s coming back to share his thoughts about doing good things for people. It’s all come full circle.”

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ABDURAIMOV: Rising star pianist plays Rachmaninoff Continued from Festival Focus page 1

For his recital in Aspen, Abduraimov chose a mix of works from different composers and periods. “All in all, I’m not one of the monographic pianists who like to put one or two composers in one recital,” he says. “I offer quite contrasting styles. It’s interesting for me and, I hope, for listeners.”

Abduraimov tends to consider his listeners when choosing a program, and one piece he thinks the audience will enjoy is J. S. Bach/Busoni’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor.

“I think even the audience who are not very into classical music would recognize this piece,” he says. “It’s very familiar to most ears.”

The rest of the recital includes two Moments musicaux

by Schubert, Beethoven’s “Appassionata,” and Prokofiev’s Sixth Piano Sonata.

“It has a stylistic clarity and structural perfection, and it’s full of different kinds of emotions from sarcastic to bombastic,” he says of the Prokofiev. “It’s very beautiful musically, and sometimes it’s very vulgar also.”

Then on Sunday, he will take on Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, a work that AMFS President and CEO

ASPEN MUSIC FESTIVAL AND SCHOOL BOX OFFICE HOURS

Alan Fletcher says is especially suited to what he calls Abduraimov’s “barnstorming style.” It is a piece of music that only the most skilled artists are able to master.

“It’s like being a decathlon athlete,” says Santourian.

“The composer wrote this for himself, but the orchestra is very large, very active throughout the entire work, so they’re making a great deal of sound, and he has to produce a tidal wave of sound to match that and have at the same time something to say about the music.”

Abduraimov admits that it is a demanding piece, but he says all pieces have their challenges. “Everything requires a lot of work, and they’re all challenging, but Rachmaninoff’s Third, besides being technically one of the most demanding pieces, became one of the peaks of Rachmaninoff’s creativity,” he says. “I see it as a concerto symphony because the orchestra is so involved.”

He is looking forward to playing with the Aspen Festival Orchestra, especially the young students, saying, “I very much enjoy working with musicians of my age because they are so involved and so interested in everything and in learning to play,” he says. “I think it will be a good energy.”

CHRISTIAN FATU

When Behzod Abduraimov plays Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto on Sunday, he’ll be tackling what is considered one of the most technically difficult piano concertos of all time.

Harris Concert Hall: 9 am through the intermission of the evening concert, daily.

Wheeler Opera House: 9 am–5 pm daily.

Faculty Spotlight: Anneleen Lenaerts SHAKESPEARE: Mini-festival chestra, with practice, can do it the same,’” says Lenaerts.

“But the Vienna Philharmonic really has so many traditions At just twenty-nine years old, Aspen Music Festival and that have been given from generation to generation that School artist-faculty member Anneleen Lenaerts jokes one can only realize and learn when being part of it. that she often gets mistaken for a student while in Aspen “Composers like Brahms, Bruckner, Strauss, or Mahler during the summer. were working closely with the orchestra or even conductIn reality, the acclaimed harpist has already accom- ing themselves and saw the world premieres of their most plished what many twice her age can only dream about: important works happening there. Gustav Mahler was for the past six years, Lenaerts has served as principal chief of the orchestra and director of the Vienna State harpist for what is arguably the best orchestra in the world, Opera. If you think of all this knowledge the orchestra the Vienna Philharmonic. received first-hand and passed on for “You can never imagine to win such years and years, I feel extremely grate“As a teacher I can an audition, because it is an absolute ful to be able to be part of it!” dream to get there,” says Lenaerts.

Now Lenaerts has returned to Aspen only try to pass my “Therefore I didn’t have huge expecfor her second summer as an AMFS tations of actually winning when I little knowledge artist-faculty member, ready to share played the audition; I just wanted to as much of her experience as she can and experience and do well and musically bring out everywith her nine harp students. thing I could. When they announced And, as someone who went through hopefully help each that I got it, not yet understanding the audition process herself not too German at the time, I first looked at long ago, Lenaerts particularly hopes individual find their the other person thinking she won… I to help them navigate the many possiway to a happy musical bilities available to them as they pursue couldn’t believe it!”

Lenaerts was born and raised in a life in music. future.”

Belgium and pursued her music stud“I think it’s not always easy for every ies at the conservatories of Brussels student to know immediately which diAnneleen Lenaerts and Paris. But her appointment in Virection you want to take. Do you want AMFS Harp Artist-Faculty enna was the beginning of an entirely to be a soloist, or a chamber musician, new chapter of her education. or an orchestral player? It’s not an easy In regards to repertoire, for instance, the close relation- question to answer if you don’t know how real life will be,” ship between the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna says Lenaerts. “To those questions the Aspen Music FesState Opera meant that Lenaerts had to quickly learn for- tival gives so many possibilities and opportunities for stuty-five operas in her first season alone. dents to discover and learn from. As a teacher I can only But she also found that her own musicianship began to try to pass my little knowledge and experience and hopegrow and evolve in ways much more difficult to quantify, fully help each individual find their way to a happy musical thanks to the unparalleled musical legacy of the city and future.” its orchestra.

Harpist Anneleen Lenaerts performs Debussy’s Danses “Before I started in Vienna I could never believe when sacrée et profane alongside fellow AMFS artist-faculty people would say, ‘Oh, this repertoire they can only play members during this Saturday’s 4:30 pm chamber music like that in Vienna.’ I always thought, ‘Ah, another great or- performance at Harris Concert Hall.

TAMARA VALLEJOS

Festival Focus Writer

Continued from Festival Focus page 1 styles of today’s standard opera repertoire.

“It was composed for the harpsichord, not the piano,” says AOC Director Edward Berkeley. “The style of music is also different. The masque tradition in the Elizabethan period was a mixture of visual, dance, as well as singing.

It’s a very refined form.”

The evening then takes a turn for the dramatic with Berlioz’s cantata La mort de Cléopâtre (based on Antony and Cleopatra) and a selection each from Bellini’s opera I Capuleti e Montecchi (based on Romeo and Juliet) and Thomas’s opera Hamlet. All three pieces to be performed focus on Shakespearean heroines driven to madness by love.

“Part of what is exciting [about these works] is that they are really psychological explorations of conflicted states,” says Berkeley. “Ophelia in the Hamlet scene is on the edge of madness leading to her own suicide. The Bellini scene we are doing is at the end of the opera, with the deaths of the lovers; it’s at a moment of great love but also tragedy.”

“And Cleopatra is addressing her own death. She’s confronting what she’s reached and, on top of that, what she has lost, the different lovers she has had, and what it all means now. It’s a wonderfully conflicted scene.”

Santourian adds that the beauty of the music will match the emotion of the drama. “It is such brilliant vocal display,” he says.

The evening will also include Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, “Tempest,” performed by pianist HungKuan Chen.

Shakespeare Songs: Of Love and Madness will take place this Wednesday, July 20, at 8:30 pm in Harris Concert Hall. Other tributes to Shakespeare this season include Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture on August 3; Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream on August 12; and selections from Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette on August 21.