Collaboration Brings Fiddler on the Roof to the Tent Stage
BY CINDY HIRSCHFELD
Each year, when Aspen Music Festival and School President and CEO Alan Fletcher and Theatre Aspen Producing Director Jed Bernstein discuss their organizations’ annual collaboration, “we think big Broadway classic fun,” says Fletcher. Plus, adds Fletcher, “I’m thinking orchestrations that are worthwhile for our students to play.”
This year’s performance— Fiddler on the Roof in Concert, on Tuesday, July 23, at the Klein Music Tent—uniquely hits both marks, as Aspen audiences will have a rare opportunity to hear John Williams’s orchestral score of the beloved musical, written for the 1971 film version.
“This is John Williams at his best,” says Shuler Hensley, the Tony-winning actor (for Oklahoma! ) who will star as Tevye as well as direct the production. Indeed, Williams won his first Academy Award for the
score—the only Broadway musical he’s adapted for the screen.
An orchestra of more than 60 AMFS students (and one faculty concertmaster), conducted by leading Broadway music director Andy Einhorn, will accompany the cast, which includes local youth from Theatre Aspen’s education program.
“It’s a show that reminds us about the importance of family and the tradition of standing up to oppression. I think of it as a story about humanity.”
Jed
Bernstein Producing Director, Theatre Aspen
“You don’t get a chance to see this kind of performance anymore with that size orchestra,” says Hensley, who calls the difference between the usual Broadway pit orchestra of 20 or so musicians and this one “extraordinary.” Additionally, this is Fiddler at its essence, with no sets or costume changes. “It’s a real chance to emphasize the music,” Hensley notes.
About three years ago, Einhorn helped resurrect Williams’s score, which had not been played in full since the film’s release, as part of a project with the Philadelphia
Orchestra and the University of Michigan. “A music service in Los Angeles went back to almost hand sketches of Williams’s material and painstakingly built this version,” explains Einhorn, who then had to integrate it with the Broadway script (a few musical tweaks were necessary). The new production was performed in Philadelphia and in Ann Arbor in 2022, and then again by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra last February (Hensley’s debut as Tevye), making Aspen only the fourth venue for it.
“It gives people a new sonic landscape to hear a score they know and love but in a slightly different arrangement,” says Einhorn, who notes that Williams had to adapt the music for the cinematography of a film, which included underscoring some of the dialogue, as well as adding transitions and a noteworthy violin solo played by Isaac Stern. “The songs sometimes feel different than on the Broadway album,” Einhorn says. He adds that Williams’s arrangement hints at the composer’s now-signature style in his scores for movies like E.T. and the Harry Potter series.
A fortunate twist for the Aspen performance: Hensley returns to Aspen for the
Bruce Liu piano
In Recital:
July 20, 7:30 PM
With the Aspen Festival Orchestra: July 21, 4 PM
The first Canadian to ever win a gold medal at the prestigious International Chopin Competition, at 26 Liu has already achieved rock star status in the classical music world. In Aspen he will play a solo recital of works by Haydn, Chopin, and Rameau before joining the Festival Orchestra under the baton of AMFS alumnus Leonard Slatkin for Prokofiev’s highvoltage, virtuosic Third Piano Concerto.
first time since he was an AMFS opera student for two summers in the early 1990s, before launching his career as a musical
See A Timeless Story, Festival Focus page 3
Hansel and Gretel: A (Literally) Delicious Opera
BY KIMBERLY NICOLETTI
The 1812 Brothers Grimm story of Hansel and Gretel tells a dark tale, in which parents pushed to the edge by starvation abandon their two children in the woods. Yet, Engelbert Humperdinck’s 1893 opera conveys a lighter version of the classic yarn, while still subtly maintaining its commentary on poverty. On July 19, the Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS (AOTVA) program presents Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, accompanied by a 74-piece orchestra.
In Humperdinck’s rendering, the pressure of trying to feed a family has exhausted Hansel and Gretel’s mother, who sends the children into the woods to
gather strawberries. The playful children ultimately get lost in the forest, where a sandman guides them to sleep, and angels watch over them. They awake to find a gingerbread house with a resident witch who aims to eat them. Though terrified, the children outsmart the witch, and in killing her, liberate other captive children. After searching all night for Hansel and Gretel, the children’s parents finally find them, reminding themselves that evil never wins, and no one receives a burden heavier than they can bear.
“It’s about navigating adolescence and learning how to take care of ourselves, which they do,” says stage director and award-winning actress Joanna Gleason.
“(It underscores) putting some faith in yourself—that you can figure things out.”
Patrick Summers, AOTVA co-artistic director and Houston Grand Opera artistic and music director, conducts the opera, which he says is “filled with musical invention.”
“Hansel and Gretel is one of the greatest masterpieces ever written. One never tires of hearing it or performing it; it is an opera I could very happily conduct or listen to every day,” he says. “It is one of the greatest operas in the repertoire, and it benefits anyone who immerses in it. It is also justifiably popular throughout the world, so there is a great benefit to knowing it at the cellular level one would be
hard-pressed to find a more exquisite opera score anywhere.”
Quiet, nearly sacred music opens the opera and builds into “a blazing musical radiance,” as a wordless chorus of angels accompanied by gleaming brass chords arise.
“Of all of the spiritual transformations music can provide, this moment of Hansel and Gretel is one of the most moving,” says Summers.
The Colorado Children’s Chorale adds yet another dimension to the performance.
“This is a work that is largely about the innocence of youth, so their sound and presence is essential,” he says.
Gleason, who won a Tony Award for Best
See Surrender, Festival Focus page 3
Broadway music director Andy Einhorn, who helped resurrect John Williams’s original film score for Fiddler, will conduct the orchestra for the AMFS–Theatre Aspen production.
Tony winner and AMFS alumnus Shuler Hensley stars as Tevye and will direct the production.
Alumni Spotlight: Leonard Slatkin, 60 Years Later
BY EMMA KIRBY
When 19-year-old Leonard Slatkin first arrived in Aspen to spend the summer as a fledgling conducting student at the Aspen Music Festival and School, he wasn’t sure where life would take him. But after a summer completely immersed in the musical environment of the Festival, the decision was easy: he would become a conductor—as it turns out, a great one.
Sixty years later, he still credits his time in Aspen to this decision. It was here where he realized that “conducting felt right,” says Slatkin. When he asked his teacher Walter Susskind if he could return for another summer, his teacher
responded with a smile and said, “you had better.” So Slatkin returned the next summer, and the next, and the next. “Those four years as a student were some of the happiest of my time,” he says.
The four happy years were also some of the most formative for Slatkin. He says he “thrived on his curiosity,” and didn’t miss a single orchestra rehearsal or concert. At one rehearsal, Slatkin took the podium to continue leading the orchestra at a moment’s notice when Susskind stepped away to hear the orchestra from the back of the hall.
Slatkin believes his dedicated study at the AMFS prepared him to move into and succeed in the professional world, a transition that’s “one of the hardest things to do” for a conductor, he says. In 1968, immediately following his tenure as a student, Slatkin was appointed as the associate conductor at the AMFS, a position which he held for many years. And when Susskind took a job at the St. Louis Symphony that same year, Slatkin was his first choice to join him as the assistant conductor. Slatkin would go on to hold a 17-year tenure as the music director in St. Louis.
Much has changed, of course, since the 1960s when there was no formal campus. The Music Tent resembled a tent more than a structure. (If it stormed, pylons would go flying in the wind and rain would seep through the canvas, Slatkin recalls.) Yet if you look closely, many aspects of the Festival remain constant.
Most importantly, says Slatkin, the AMFS’s driving principle has held strong: “to provide opportunities for young people to come and learn in a particularly idyllic environment.” And his favorite part of the AMFS now hasn’t
changed in 60 years: the camaraderie. Every time he returns, he cannot wait to reconnect with old friends.
Slatkin has returned to conduct at the AMFS countless times since his student days, but this year is particularly special. In addition to working with students in the Aspen Conducting Academy, he will lead the Aspen Festival Orchestra in a performance of some of his favorite works that hold strong memories—including Barber’s beautiful Adagio for Strings, the first (and only) piece he conducted in his first summer here.
Continued from Festival Focus page 1
Slatkin came out of retirement in 2019 to celebrate his 75th birthday in Aspen where he conducted Elgar’s iconic “Enigma” Variations and Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with Seong-Jin Cho.
Alumnus Leonard Slatkin before he was a renowned conductor in Walter Susskind’s conducting class in 1968.
CHARLES ABBOTT
A Palooza of Pianos: A Game of Musical Chairs
BY EMMA KIRBY
You might be wondering, what exactly is a “Piano-Palooza”? Palooza: a colloquialism used to describe something outstanding, out of the ordinary, exaggerated. PianoPalooza: an evening of 8 pianos, 16 pianists, and 32 hands, performing together on the Klein Music Tent stage this Thursday, July 18.
“This concert reflects the spirit of the Festival,” says Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) artist-faculty pianist Arie Vardi, referring to the strong, long-standing institutional emphasis on students and artist-faculty playing side by side in performances.
While students and teachers typically perform together in orchestral settings, Piano-Palooza seeks to give piano students a similar experience. All four AMFS artistfaculty pianists will be joined by three of their own students for the jubilant evening. Each artist-faculty and student group will have an opportunity to perform together, and all 16 pianists take the stage for three of the pieces. It’s a real-life game of “musical chairs,” says Vardi.
Vardi has led group piano recitals in Aspen before, performing with up to four grand pianos on stage. But those hardly
compare to this year’s extravaganza, which presents an almost impossible technical feat: having eight grand pianos available for rehearsals and a stage large enough to fit eight grand pianos for the performance. Certainly, this will be one of the summer’s most notable, ‘only-in-Aspen’ performances.
Audience members will recognize many favorites from the piano repertoire by Shostakovich, Rossini, Weber, and
more, as well as samplings from the Beatles, Sousa, and other classics. Some pieces are meant to entertain: one requires four pianists to play on one piano, which artistfaculty pianist Veda Kaplinsky jokingly described as a “territorial battle” of pianists. Others are more serious, including Arie Vardi’s own work, Mazurka’s Day Dream, which is written in the style of a traditional mazurka, a dance that often includes a melancholy yet beautiful theme.
With most selections lasting under 5 minutes and the longest clocking in around 15 minutes, the concert will be lively and fun. “It’s serious, but it’s a Happening. It’s a palooza. What we do is a very strict discipline, but also, we enjoy it,” says Vardi.
The evening ends with perhaps the most unique transcription of Stars and Stripes Forever that you will ever hear (it is scored for 16 pianists). The arranger, Greg Anderson, will step in to conduct the final piece, but for the other selections on the program, the orchestra of pianists will be sans-conductor. When asked how it is possible for a group of 16 pianists playing at once to stay together, Kaplinsky smiled and had a simple answer: “You listen.”
If a concert like this one seems hard to comprehend, you’re in good company. “Piano-Palooza has to be seen to be believed,” says AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher.
Hansel and Gretel: Surrender to the Beauty
Continued from Festival Focus page 1
Actress in a Musical for Into the Woods, has coached AOTVA students in the past and says she is thrilled to work with such talented artists. “They come in with obligations to be vocally perfect, so I’m thinking less about that and more about, ‘What is the story I’m tasked to tell?’” she said. “The coaching they get in Aspen is second-tonone.”
Of course, the students benefit from working with one of the premier American actresses as they build their roles and act them out in the semi-staged performance to depict the story, sung in German.
“It’s more than a concert and less than a fully staged opera—there are no fly-ins from the roof, but we have some set pieces and can section off different sides to create different playing areas, and we have beautiful costumes and wigs,” she says. “Adapting to the (space) limitations keeps the story front and center.”
Nature itself plays a role: Sunset and dusk in the Klein Music Tent move seamlessly with the story as the children venture into the forest.
“The audience can just let the night air fill with the music. It’s pretty much a feast for all of the senses,” says Gleason. “Surrender to the beauty of that music and the clarity of the performances. Release your expectations, and watch for the nuances, for the decisions that are being made on stage.”
As Summers points out, it is “one of the most singularly beautiful and moving experiences that opera can provide.”
HANSEL GRETEL
When: July 19, 7:45 p.m.
Where: Klein Music Tent
Tickets: $50 and $85
($30 for children 18 and under)
More info: aspenmusicfestival.com
Fiddler : A Timeless Story
Continued from Festival Focus page 1
theater and film actor. “Renée Fleming and I studied with [renowned voice teacher] Beverly Johnson,” he says. “My mother was a ballet director, and she instilled in me—as a singer—[how important it was] to get a classical [music] foundation.” Opera training has both helped his technique, he notes, and his ability to manage the grueling Broadway schedule of eight performances a week.
Hensley calls the Klein Music Tent’s semi-outdoors setting a perfect venue for Tuesday’s production. “As a student, I remember going to the Tent and seeing these larger productions performed. I think Fiddler lends itself beautifully to that atmosphere. Nature is an important co-star in the film.”
Beyond the music’s appeal, of course, there’s Fiddler’s timeless story, which transcends its fictional setting—a Jewish settlement in the Russian empire in 1905—to offer universal themes that resonate with audiences worldwide. “The story is important now more than ever,” says Bernstein. “It’s a show that reminds us about the importance of family and the tradition of standing up to oppression. I think of it as a story about humanity.”
A 2019 ‘Evening of Bach’ with AMFS artist-faculty member Arie Vardi and his students featured four pianos and eight hands. This season’s July 18 Piano-Palooza promises to involve 704 keys.
CARLIN MA
Broadway actor Anne L. Nathan stars as Golde in Fiddler on the Roof In Concert on July 23.