AMFS Artist-Faculty Celebrate 25th Season

AMFS Artist-Faculty Celebrate 25th Season

SHANNON ASHER

Festival Focus Writer

Longtime AMFS artist-faculty members come back together in Aspen this year after a year away, performing in the orchestras as well as in a series of Saturday chamber music concerts featuring a rich variety of hand-picked chamber works.

The first, this Saturday, July 10 at 2 pm in Harris Concert Hall, will feature ten artist-faculty joining forces for a program comprising Dvořák’s Piano Quintet in A major and Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp minor.

Dvořák’s Piano Quintet is a paragon of the chamber music repertoire, melding the composer’s expressive lyricism with original melodies based on Czech folk music.

Veteran artist-faculty member and pianist Anton Nel claims it is one of the most beloved works in all the chamber music repertoire. “The work is beautifully balanced for all five players and is filled with beauty, excitement, charm, and folk idiom,” he says.

Nel initially came to Aspen as a guest artist in 1988 and joined the artist-faculty in 1997. “To me, Aspen is just one of the greatest music festivals in the world,” Nel says. “I have been given some fantastic performance opportunities here and some of my most important musical partnerships have been formed here.”

Nel continues, “I also love the educational component, where students and faculty play side-by-side in the orchestras. There are things that give me goosebumps year after year: driving over Independence Pass for the first time, the first sighting of the Music Tent, the opening fanfare at the convocation, and so on. It’s a very special place that I’ve missed very much. I’m so thrilled to be playing in front of audiences again.” The AMFS will bring 263 students this summer to study and play with the 101-plus artist-faculty members.

Nel will share the stage this weekend with his distinguished colleagues violinist Bing Wang, violinist Espen Lilleslåtten, violist James Dunham, and cellist Desmond Hoebig. “It will be my first time working with Bing Wang. She is a violinist I so admire, and we’ve been trying to play together for years so this will be a special treat,” says Nel.

Nel and Dunham first met when they were both teaching at the Eastman School of Music and Dunham was in the Cleveland Quartet. “For the past, I don’t know, 20-plus summers, we’ve played together in Aspen at least once a summer, often twice,” Dunham says.

Now celebrating his 25th season here, Dunham explains that it’s just hard to stay away from Aspen. “What’s not to love?” Dunham asks. “My colleagues are awesome. The students we get to meet and work with are just terrific. I love that I get AMFS artist-faculty member Anton Nel. to perform and do so much chamber music and be in such a beautiful place. It’s just a combination of all these things.”

Dunham continues, “Obviously we miss each other, our friends, and our colleagues. We love to be together, we love to play together, and we love to play for the audience. What just came home to us again, is how important the audience is for our performance. We love to perform for them. They are part of the performance, and they actually inspire us by their presence.”

AMFS artist-faculty member James Dunham.

FESTIVALFOCUS

YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE