Supplement to The Aspen Times
FESTIVALFOCUS | YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE
MONDAY, JULY 29, 2019 3
LUGANSKY: Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, French recital Continued from Festival Focus page 1 Thorvaldsdottir’s Aereality, which the composer describes Sunday, Lugansky is giving us a very French recital with as “vast sound-textures combined—and contrasted—with works by César Franck and Debussy, and then Skryabin, various forms of lyrical material.” The work was called “a who, while Russian, is a very French side of Russian music.” highlight of last season’s New York Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice Philharmonic programming” by The president for artistic administration “Lugansky is certainly New York Times and will serve as a and artistic advisor, says the focus of gorgeous opener for this exciting and Lugansky’s recital program is color. one of a kind...it is varied program. “He’s chosen to go to the color The concert concludes with world—works that inspire color, infuse always a tour de force to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, facolor, works of Debussy, the two Arahear him play the piano besques and the Images, and then of mously unpopular at its premiere but a work that has grown into an course Skryabin, who not only thought in any literature.” audience favorite for its raw rhythms in color, but he also notated his music and piercing harmonies. This iconic, where color could be used—so the Asadour Santourian groundbreaking work is not to be space could be filled with color. His AMFS Vice President for Artistic missed in the open-air surroundings program is all about the transmutation Administration and Artistic Advisor of the Benedict Music Tent. of color in music.” At 7:30 pm on Tuesday, August 6, The evening begins with Franck/ Lugansky will shift gears and treat audiences to a mostly Bauer’s Prélude, fugue, et variation, which was composed French recital program in Harris Concert Hall, featuring for the organ. Organists comment that Franck wrote orworks by Franck, Debussy, and Skryabin. gan music as if for the piano, and pianists point out how “From that pinnacle of the big Russian repertoire on “organ-like” his piano music is. Here, Franck plays with the
ASPEN MUSIC FESTIVAL AND SCHOOL BOX OFFICE HOURS
Harris Concert Hall: 9 am through the intermission of the evening concert, daily. Wheeler Opera House: 12 pm–5 pm M–F, 9 am–5 pm Saturdays, one hour prior to operas.
Fleming Teaches Master Class, Scenes LAURA E. SMITH
Festival Focus Writer
One of superstar soprano Renée Fleming’s signature roles in her career has been Countess Almaviva in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, but did you know it was in Aspen that she first learned and performed the role? The year was 1983. The young Renée arrived open to everything, and much came. “It was a very sweet time on my life, with blue skies, serious musicians, and endless possibilities,” she remembers in her book, The Inner Voice. “I bicycled seven miles up to the Maroon Bells and back down every day…After a winter in Rochester, a summer in Aspen is an almost unimaginable reward, and every year I could hardly wait to pack up my suitcase and my bicycle and get back there.” She describes that she was more full of wonder than fire at that time. “I wasn’t making any major life pronouncements at that time,” she recalled in a 2016 interview. “I just seemed to follow things along as they kept leading me from one thing to another. The fighting stage came a little bit later.” When, in her second year in Aspen, she was cast as the Countess in the Mozart, it seems, however, something was found. She went on to make some of her most important professional debuts in this role, including at the Metropolitan Opera, Houston Grand Opera, San Francisco Opera, and Glyndebourne. The role is, as she says, “incredibly challenging because it requires a certain pristine perfection. There are just so many skills required, but I credit Mozart as one of my best voice teachers for that reason.” In Aspen in 1983, it was then-AMFS Music Director Jorge Mester who heard her and singled her out, and suggested she go to Juilliard for a postgraduate program. Part of the excitement of a program like Aspen’s, she recalls, “is that you never know who is going to be in the audience or the orchestra pit, holding your fate in his hands.” This week, it is Fleming herself holding so much, giving so much, as she returns to Aspen to perform at
expectations of both instruments, as well as the expectations of form with regard to fugues. The first half of the program rounds out with Debussy’s Deux arabesques and Images, series 2, works that will highlight Lugansky’s ability for delicacy and warmth in his playing. Another work by Franck, Prélude, choral, et fugue, begins the second half of the program and once more plays with the meaning of a fugue, as well as a chorale. The program concludes with Skryabin’s Third Piano Sonata, full of ravishing melodies throughout its bold emotional and harmonic journey. “Lugansky is certainly one of a kind,” Santourian says. “It’s hard to describe—he has incredible virtuosity that he puts at the disposal of these programs. And a word about these programs: they’re always conceived as a world, so whatever is the theme that he’s curating to support the idea of the recital is always beautifully and carefully thought through. At the end of the day, it is always a tour de force to hear him play the piano in any literature.”
a sold-out recital and also to teach today’s young students at the Aspen Music Festival and School. AMFS Artistic Administrator and Artistic Advisor Asadour Santourian notes that it is “most gratifying” when artists who have reached such high levels in their career return as alumni to Aspen. “Not only does their return signify a homecoming,” he says, “but they’re incredibly generous with sharing their experience, their knowledge.” He goes on to say that “There’s a great deal of the unspoken that happens with their presence on our grounds that is so meaningful to our students. For an aspiring young artist who is here studying, they can then say, ‘This can happen to me, too. This is part of the endless, limitless possibility for me.’ ” Audiences have the opportunity to witness Fleming teaching twice, at a master class for young vocalists on July 30 at 1 pm at Harris Concert Hall and at an opera scenes master class on August 3 at 10 am at the Wheeler Opera House. Ticket availability is limited.
Soprano and AMFS alumna Renée Fleming leads a special event master class on July 30 and then performs with the Emerson String Quartet on August 1.
APO: Copland’s
Third Symphony Continued from Festival Focus page 1 fully comprehends and writes in the forms and the structures. Yet, of course, his idiom is the jazz idiom. In terms of a violin concerto, it has all the requisite difficulties for the soloist to make it an interesting challenge for the champion of the work. At the same time, the sound world is entirely unique to Wynton, and entirely the jazz world.” Marsalis composed the piece for Benedetti at the same time as another, his Fiddle Dance Suite. Of this duo of works, Benedetti has said, “It has been a privilege to deepen my understanding of Wynton’s compositional language, cultural richness and philosophical insights. These compositions take us from the introspection of a spiritual to the raucous celebration of a hootenanny, from a lullaby to a nightmare, and from a campfire to a circus. We travel far and wide to distant corners of the world, the mind and the soul. Long-form musical pieces are often described as a journey. This sure has been a rich and fascinating one, and I am thrilled to now share the results with you.” The program concludes with Copland’s Third Symphony, one of the rare unabashedly heroic and optimistic works in the repertoire. The piece was commissioned by then-Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Serge Koussevitsky, and in the end it served as a post-World War II testament reflecting the euphoric spirit of America at the time. Leonard Bernstein said of it, “Copland’s symphony has become an American monument, like the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial.” These two works on Wednesday’s program are of a different era and inspired by different sound worlds, but that is more a testament to the “Being American” season theme than it is a problem. Part of the goal of sharing American works with Aspen audiences is to put on display the wide variety of sounds that can be described as American. Scottish violininst Nicola Benedetti performs Marsalis’s Violin Concerto on August 7.
