Piccinini pays homage to ‘Uncommon Women’ theme

SUPPLEMENT TO THE ASPEN TIMES MONDAY, JULY 5, 2021 VOL 31, NO. 2

Piccinini pays homage to ‘Uncommon Women’ theme

SHANNON ASHER

Festival Focus Writer

On Wednesday, July 7, virtuoso flutist Marina Piccinini will return to the stage for the first time since the pandemic began. “I’m really looking forward to being in Aspen and making music with other people and for other people without computer screens,” Piccinini said during a recent phone interview from her home in Switzerland. “That’ll be really wonderful.”

Piccinini spent the lockdown time at her family cabin in the Swiss Alps with her husband, Andreas Haefliger, and their daughter. “It doesn’t sound like much, but for two traveling musicians, being together for that long is a gift that you can’t even begin to describe. My husband and I have been married for 30 years and we have never spent as much time together in the 30 years combined as we have in this last year.”

Piccinini continues, “We had nature, we had nurture, and we had each other. We had our instruments, we had inspiration, and we were safe. We were very lucky in that way.”

Though all Piccinini’s concerts this past year were canceled, her teaching at the Peabody Institute continued. “My students at Peabody are, for me, a central part of my life and I don’t feel that my involvement with them has an expiration date,” Piccinini says. “It’s really about our connectivity from the first to the last. I hope that, to the end of my life, to the end of their lives, we will always be connected. In that way, we are really a very strong family.”

With her debut concert in 2009, this will be Piccinini’s fourth time performing with the Aspen Music Festival and School. “I think the Festival represents very high quality, high standard, and a wonderful global artistry,” Piccinini notes. “All the people who are at the Festival are experts in their own fields. They all come together and make music together in this very beautiful environment. It is just very uplifting and inspiring to be in this kind of atmosphere. Every time I am asked to play and perform with other people who are there—other guests, other faculty—I know it’s going to be just an incredible and fabulous experience. I think the draw is really just the amazing quality that it has.”

Flutist Marina Piccinini presents a recital with the Pacifica Quartet and AMFS artist-faculty friends July 7.

Piccinini has constructed an evening of music about which she is passionate, performed with musicians she adores. Her recital on Wednesday will honor the 2020 season themes of Beethoven and “women of note.” “I’m beginning the concert with Sofia Gubaidulina who’s one of my heroes,” Piccinini confesses. “She’s a Russian composer who is still alive and quite elderly. I think she’s one of the strongest, most unique voices we have in music.”

After playing two short pieces of Gubaidulina, Piccinini will play the Amy Beach Quintet with the Pacifica Quartet. “This is a beautiful, gorgeous piece for flute and string quartet. Beach (who lived from 1867-1944) was a woman who was so ahead of her time.”

Piccinini continues about Beach, “I sometimes stop and think about what would have happened if a personality like that were here now and how much we owe somebody like that for the small little dents they made throughout history. She really had this amazing gift and was an incredible composer. She was also a pianist at a time when that was just not even possible. I am so happy to bring this American composer to Aspen. She’s written this beautiful piece and was such a trailblazer for American music and for women in music.” Wednesday’s recital will end with a very uplifting piece—Beethoven’s “Serenade” in D major, op. 25.

The Pacifica Quartet joins Marina Piccinini in recital July 7, and follow with their own recital July 8.

Piccinini is excited to be performing chamber music with some of Aspen’s longtime artist-faculty members (most of whom she has worked with before). “I’m playing with Anton Nel, who’s a dear old friend of mine,” Piccinini says. “I haven’t played with him in years, but I just love him. I can’t believe I get to play with him again.”

Aspen artist-faculty member and Chicago Symphony concertmaster Robert Chen, whom Piccinini befriended at the Marlboro Festival will be joining the recital along with the Pacifica Quartet. “I know them, but I’ve never performed with them, so I’m really excited to be able to play with them for the first time.”

Despite the obvious pandemic setbacks, Piccinini has kept busy with various special projects. AMFS artist-faculty member and composer-in-residence Chris Theofanidis is in the process of writing a concerto for Piccinini. “It was a secret, but I think it’s no longer such a secret” Piccinini reveals. “We’re going to be premiering it next year at Grant Park. I will be playing it with several orchestras, but the first concert will be one year from now in Chicago. He and I are very old friends and we have always wanted to collaborate somehow.”

Piccinini continues, “I have a lot of recordings, and a lot of new commissions in the works. It’s a tricky time moving ahead because everybody is in disarray and so the seasons are kind of scattered and unorganized right now, but it’ll get there. We’ll get there.”

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