McGegan Returns, Slobodeniouk Debuts
BY EMMA KIRBY
For conductor Nicholas McGegan, the greatest joy in life is making music with friends. And his annual return to the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS)—this year marking his 25th—always brings ample opportunities for joyous reunions.
McGegan brings a curated Aspen Chamber Symphony program to the Klein Music Tent on Friday, July 5 at 5:30 pm with soloists Inon Barnatan, Michael Rusinek, and Nancy Goeres, whom he jumps to describe as “great friends.” Two symphonies by Haydn bookend the evening, surrounding twentieth-century works by Shostakovich and Strauss.
The concert opens with Haydn’s No. 31, “Hornsignal,” a piece that uniquely employs four French horn players (two was typical at the time). The concert closes with Haydn’s No. 100, “Military,” a much grander symphony, as Haydn had by then
moved from central Europe to London and was working with a much larger symphonic orchestra, on the scale of Beethoven’s early symphonies. Although composed nearly 30 years apart, Haydn’s two symphonies are both characterized by the composer’s “good humor” and “compositional brilliance,” says McGegan.
Pianist Inon Barnatan joins McGegan to perform Shostakovich’s striking First Piano Concerto in C minor. “He’s a wonderful musician of course,” says McGegan, as he happily recalled the many performances the two of them have done across the world.
“I have heard so many great things about the Festival. Everyone whom I tell that I’m going there, they say I’ll love it.”
takes to the Harris Concert Hall stage for the annual Baroque Evening, a favorite AMFS tradition. This year’s edition showcases another life-long friendship, this one with cellist Steven Isserlis who will perform Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C major. The two first performed that particular concerto together in 1991 when—McGegan remembers with amusement—the orchestra was provided with the music for the wrong Haydn concerto. This time around, he made sure to bring his own score!
Dima Slobodeniouk Conductor
The work, a double concerto for piano and trumpet, features AMFS artist-faculty member Stuart Stephenson as trumpet soloist. Clarinetist Michael Rusinek and bassoonist Nancy Goeres, also AMFS artistfaculty, join forces to perform Richard Strauss’s Duet-Concertino, a piece rarely heard on the concert stage. This performance is particularly special because not only have the two extraordinary musicians been pillars in the orchestra for years, they are also life partners. “It will be really special to see [and] to hear that almost intimate dialogue,” says AMFS VP for Artistic Administration Patrick Chamberlain.
On Thursday, July 11 at 6 pm, McGegan
Weilerstein Gives
BY SAMANTHA JOHNSTON
Cellist Alisa Weilerstein needs no introduction to Aspen audiences. Born to musicians on the faculty at the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS), Weilerstein can recall only two summers she didn’t spend in Aspen until she turned 18; and she hasn’t missed a summer since she turned 26.
This summer, she’ll take the Harris Concert Hall stage on back-to-back evenings, July 2 and July 3, performing firstof-their-kind recitals entitled Fragments I and II.
Weilerstein’s ground-breaking, multi-year project for solo cello is in serendipitous alignment with the AMFS’s season theme, “Becoming Who You Are,” exploring Aspen’s impact on the musical and personal development of important musicians over the past 75 years.
“As a student of classical music, many of my formative playing years were spent in Aspen,” Weilerstein said.
Bach
On Sunday, July 7, beloved violinist and Aspen regular Augustin Hadelich returns to the Music Tent for a Festival Orchestra performance, this time with conductor Dima Slobodeniouk who makes his highly anticipated Aspen debut. The Finnish conductor has made appearances at “all the great orchestras in the world. We’re really excited to welcome him to Aspen,” says Chamberlain.
The concert opens with Wang Lu’s 2022 Surge, a product of an initiative by the League of American Orchestras to commission new works from six women composers. The contemporary work fits perfectly in the musical dynamic of the program, says Slobodeniouk. “The lan-
See Slobodeniouk, Festival Focus page 3
THE NATIONAL YOUTH PIPE BAND OF SCOTLAND MAKES ITS ASPEN DEBUT
The National Piping Centre of Scotland (NPC) brings its elite troupe of young performers to Aspen to demonstrate the astounding range of the Highland bagpipes.
These young artists will make a variety of appearances during their Aspen residency. Don’t miss these free events!
ANNUAL FOURTH OF JULY CONCERT
July 4, 4 PM
Klein Music Tent
PIPING CLASS WITH NPC DIRECTOR
FINLAY MACDONALD
July 5, 1 PM
Wheeler Opera House MUSIC ON THE MOUNTAIN July 6, 1 PM
Top of Aspen Mountain PRE-CONCERT FANFARE
July 7, 3:30 PM
Klein Music Tent Plaza
Generously underwritten by Mr. and Mrs. Thomas D. Rutherfoord, Jr.
a Twist with FRAGMENTS I and II
FRAGMENTS features the commissioned works of 27 current composers whose work is weaved throughout the 36 movements of J. S. Bach’s solo cello suites. The collection is divided into six fragments, which will be released independently over several seasons.
Weilerstein conceived the idea for FRAGMENTS during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when she reimagined what it would be like to be in a concert hall again in a spontaneous, visceral, and organic way.
“I wanted to capitalize on that feeling when you hear a symphony that touches you very deeply for the very first time and how remarkable that is,” she said.
In choosing the composers for the project, Weilerstein wanted to celebrate the best of what is being written today from a musically varied and diverse group of people.
“The youngest is 26 and the oldest is 83. They are in varying stages of career, represent nine different nationali-
Cellist and AMFS alumna Alisa Weilerstein brings a new take on the Bach Cello Suites to Harris Concert Hall, July 2 and 3.
Nicholas McGegan returns for his 25th year at the Festival, conducting the Aspen Chamber Symphony on July 5, and leading his annual Baroque Evening from the harpsichord with an ensemble and cellist Steven Isserlis on July 11.
Celebrating a Comedic Composer’s Aspen Roots
BY DAVID HOYT
Concertgoers heading into Harris Concert Hall on the evening of July 6 will be in for an unusual treat as the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) presents an evening of works by one of classical music’s most mysterious composers, P.D.Q. Bach. Audiences are familiar with the alphabet soup of Bachs who regularly grace Aspen’s stages—from J. S. to J. C. to C.P.E.—but the family’s poor relation, P.D.Q., has languished in relative obscurity, mostly due to the slight disadvantage of being fictional.
Yes, the composer may be fake, but the music is gloriously real, all stemming from the madcap musicianship of Peter Schickele, who died earlier this year at the age of 88. While a student at both the Juilliard School and AMFS in the 1960s, Schickele came up with the character of P.D.Q. as a way to parody Classical-era works, often inserting slyly absurd quotations of anachronistic popular songs.
Is that a fairground rendition of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” in the O.K. Chorale movement of the Toot Suite for Calliope? Or “Ring Around the Rosie” played by taunting brass in the Echo Suite for Two Unfriendly Groups of Instruments? It surely is.
“P.D.Q. Bach is part of the Aspen story,” said AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration Patrick Chamberlain. “At the time of his passing, we felt that celebrating and honoring Peter Schickele via the character of P.D.Q. Bach was something the Festival just had to do.”
“[Schickele] was an extremely gifted musician; he was not simply making fun,” said AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher, who will host An Evening with P.D.Q. Bach. “The humor really lands, and it lands for people with a lot of musical knowledge, but it also can appeal to people with not so much musical knowledge, and I think that’s a real gift.”
The jokes in P.D.Q.’s substantial oeuvre range from silly sound effects and unconventional instruments (Schickele pioneered the “tromboon,” a combination of trombone and bassoon that produces a sound less than the sum of its parts) to the sophisticated double entendres of the Cantata: Iphigenia in Brooklyn, which is Fletcher’s personal favorite. (You don’t have to brush up on the plays of Euripides to enjoy this one—but it helps.)
Fletcher will partner with AMFS Music Director Robert Spano to perform the Toot Suite, with other AMFS artistfaculty and students from the Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS program taking on the challenge of presenting unwieldy works like the Sonata for Viola Four Hands and selections from the opera The Abduction of Figaro
“A lot of us, we’re not used to being funny on stage,” Fletcher conceded. “But I think to find humor in this art form is wonderful.”
Although Schickele was sometimes rueful that his creation of P.D.Q. Bach overshadowed the many “serious” works composed under his own name (Schickele won one Grammy to P.D.Q.’s four), this juxtaposition between composer and character brilliantly illuminates how music can run the gamut from playful to profound. As AMFS celebrates its 75th Anniversary season with the theme “Becoming Who You Are,” there’s no more fitting tribute than to explore how Peter Schickele emerged as one of history’s greatest musical humorists.
GET MORE MUSIC FOR LESS WITH A SEASON PASS! AVAILABLE ALL SUMMER
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Schickele in one of his press photos at the height of P.D.Q. Bach’s popularity.
Schickele, in concert-dress construction boots, performing as his wry alter-ego, P.D.Q. Bach, at the AMFS in 1974.
Partnership with Carnegie Hall+ Brings Leonard Bernstein’s Classic Young People’s Concerts to the Wheeler
BY LAURA E. SMITH
In a new partnership between Carnegie Hall+ and the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS), Aspen viewers of all ages can see two of Leonard Bernstein’s legendary, historic Young People’s Concerts (YPC) with the New York Philharmonic at the Wheeler Opera House this summer. The screenings will be July 2 and July 9 at 4 pm, lasting approximately an hour. Tickets are $10 for adults and free for kids 18 and under.
Bernstein’s YPCs were a national sensation through the 1960s, winning 13 Emmys, being televised at prime time, and, as widely recognized, introducing an entire generation to the joys of classical music.
“Speak to anyone who saw these presentations as a kid, and they get a faraway look in their eyes,” says Laura Smith, vice president for marketing and communications at the Aspen Music Festival and School. “The enchantment they felt as a child still lives, even decades later. These presentations teach us about classical music, but they also are just each a delightful hour of Bernstein’s unique insight, humor, and charm. These are truly for everybody to enjoy, no matter your level of musical knowledge.”
The presentation on July 2 is called “The Anatomy of a Symphony Orchestra” and in it Bernstein dissects the resplendent orchestration of Respighi’s great symphonic
work Pines of Rome and teaches listeners how to develop what he calls “X-ray hearing.” Before this, hear Pines of Rome in grand “surround sound” with triple brass playing while ringing the Klein Music Tent—on June 30 at the AMFS’s afternoon orchestral concert.
The presentation on July 9 is called “Who is Gustav Mahler?” With excerpts from Mahler’s Fourth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde, Bernstein advocates for Mahler
at a time when the composer’s place in the pantheon was less assured than it is now. Hear Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in concert on July 28 at the afternoon orchestral concert at the Klein Music Tent.
While Bernstein reached the highest levels of fame as a classical conductor, he felt passionately about music education and applied to these concerts his genius for both music and communication.
He conducted his first Young People’s Concert on January 18, 1958, just two weeks after becoming music director of the New York Philharmonic, where the YPC had been in place since 1924. Bernstein made them a centerpiece of his work, and later referred to them as “among my favorite, most highly prized activities of my life.”
The 52 recorded concerts have been recently remastered and licensed for broadcast on Carnegie Hall+, the performing arts center’s digital arm. The two episodes available to watch this summer on a big screen will mirror the original experience so loved by generations past.
Says Smith, “We are grateful to Carnegie Hall+ making these available to Aspen audiences and look forward to future collaborative projects spotlighting true gems of the genre.”
These screenings are also made possible in collaboration with Unitel and the Leonard Bernstein Office.
PM MT, or concert
Fragments: Spontaneous Enjoyment of Music
ties, and are equally gender balanced,” Weilerstein said. Of special note among the FRAGMENTS II composers is Aspen Music Festival and School President and CEO Alan Fletcher whose piece— workshopped during the summer of 2022—will be performed.
Each classical composer was given the same prompt: write up to 10 minutes of solo cello music in two or three movements (or fragments) that can stand alone. The composers also gave Weilerstein permission to intersperse the fragments between other pieces of new music or between the movements of Bach.
Unlike most classical recitals, attendees will not receive the full program until after the show.
“I
want people to experience the spontaneous enjoyment and visual aspect of listening to music. In a museum we see the art first and it moves us, or not, and then we find out about it. I wanted to recreate that in contemporary music.”
“I want people to experience the spontaneous enjoyment and visual aspect of listening to music,” Weilerstein said. “In a museum we see the art first and it moves us, or not, and then we find out about it. I wanted to recreate that in contemporary music.”
Weilerstein views the recital as not only solo cello music, but a piece of theater that doesn’t really fit into any one category.
“Lighting, costumes, and stage visuals are responsive to the music, almost as if there are two performances in one,” she said. “What Elkhanah [Pulitzer, director] and Seth [Reiser, scenic and lighting designer] have done is just so intentional.”
Alisa Weilerstein Cellist and AMFS Alumna
Weilerstein acknowledged that some people are fearful that they don’t know enough about Bach or musical composition to attend a recital of this nature.
“You don’t have to come at it with any particular knowledge to get everything out of it,” she said. “While I was creating the project, I was reminded of how emotional it is to discover music that you like, or don’t like. It is a primal response that doesn’t need explanation.”
While portions of FRAGMENTS may be familiar to some, there is newly composed music that attendees will be hearing for the very first time. The experience should be moving, puzzling, interesting, and inspiring.
“Sometimes I just want to have the permission to sit back and let the music speak to me,” Weilerstein said. “Don’t worry about what you don’t know. Be brave and come. You don’t even have to be brave. Just come.” CELEBRATE
Slobodeniouk
guage is modern, but the way of writing is classical. It’s very colorful.”
Although it’s Slobodeniouk’s first time in Aspen, he and soloist Augustin Hadelich are far from strangers. “He’s one of the best. I don’t think there are many players like him in the world. It’s a great satisfaction to make music with him,” says Slobodeniouk. This year sees Hadelich performing Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto, a piece that has moments of dazzling virtuosity and quiet introspection.
The concert closes with Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony, a piece that’s “tremendously beautiful,” says Chamberlain. “This piece is really the mature flowering of that lyrical voice that we love so much about his music.”
Of his Aspen debut, says Slobodeniouk, “I have heard so many great things about the Festival. Everyone whom I tell that I’m going there, they say I’ll love it.”
It’s a unique joy of Aspen: a weekend of magical music making is also one of celebrating quarter-century-long friendships and sowing seeds of new ones. Bring your friends, loved ones, and enjoy a Friday evening Chamber Symphony or Sunday afternoon Festival Orchestra concert. After all, what is music if not enjoyed with friends?
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Continued from Festival Focus page 1
Leonard Bernstein with some of the many children who were avid viewers of his Young People’s Concerts.
Conductor Dima Slobodeniouk makes his Aspen debut on July 7.