Alum Zlatomir Fung Returns Sunday

SUPPLEMENT TO THE ASPEN TIMES - MONDAY, AUGUST 2, 2021 VOL. 31, NO. 6

Alum Zlatomir Fung Returns Sunday

SHANNON ASHER

Festival Focus Writer

On Sunday, twenty-two-year-old cellist and Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) alumnus Zlatomir Fung will perform at the Benedict Music Tent under the baton of three-time Grammy-nominated conductor Hugh Wolff. It will be a chance for the AMFS audience to celebrate one of its own, as well as hear an astonishing talent on the rise.

Fung is the first American in four decades and the youngest musician ever to win First Prize at the 2019 International Tchaikovsky Competition in the Cello Division. Says Alan Fletcher, AMFS president and CEO, “He was with us two summers and was just a teenager, but he was a complete standout, the kind of person about whom someone would come running into my office and say, ‘You’ve got to come hear this kid.’ He had tremendous intensity and concentration.”

Of Bulgarian and Chinese heritage, Fung began playing cello at the age of three. “It was my parents’ decision, although apparently I had shown interest in plucking the strings on my sister’s violin,” Fung explains. “Neither of my parents played musical instruments (both were trained mathematicians), and in a way, I am grateful for that, since they weren’t in a position to put pressure on me. This allowed me to naturally develop my own interest and love for music. I decided I wanted to become a musician when I was 13 years old.”

Fung was a student in Aspen during the summers of 2014 and 2015, playing in the Aspen Chamber Symphony and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. “Both summers, I worked with incredible teachers and colleagues and learned a great deal,” Fung said. “But the strongest and most powerful feelings of inspiration from the Festival were at the many concerts I attended. Witnessing great artists from diverse backgrounds play day after day was an education in itself.”

Of the Tchaikovsky Competition, Fung says, “The competition has a rich legacy and reputation in the United States, and it had been my dream to participate in the competition since I was 12 years old. Being in Russia and seeing how everyone had come from all the corners of the earth to gather around a common passion was powerful.”

International Tchaikovsky Competition prizewinner Zlatomir Fung performs that composer’s Variations on a Rococo Theme this Sunday, August 8, with the Aspen Festival Orchestra.

He continues, “The most memorable moment of the trip was getting to play the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 2 with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic.

Knowing the deep connection that Shostakovich’s music had with Leningrad, it was like the music and energy was already there in that place, and the performance was merely tapping into it.”

On Sunday, Fung will perform Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme for cello and orchestra. “This work is close to my heart because it is one of the first works for cello and orchestra that I studied intensely during my teenage years,” Fung says. “Musically, the work is characterized by a charmingly classical attitude, inspired by Mozart, but my favorite moments are the bursts of operatic lyricism, which are all Tchaikovsky, and quintessentially Russian.”

Also on the program, conductor Hugh Wolff leads the Aspen Festival Orchestra in Jessie Montgomery’s Coincident Dances, where the audience will hear nods to a diverse array of twentieth-century musical genres, and Schumann’s Second Symphony, an uplifting and triumphant piece the composer wrote despite personal struggles with poor health and depression.

Hugh Wolff conducts as Zlatomir Fung performs with the Aspen Festival Orchestra August 8.

Fung has played with Wolff before as a member of the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra at the New England Conservatory where Wolff served for a year as the interim conductor. He actually took Fung and the ensemble on tour to Argentina in the summer of 2013. “He was one of the first great conductors I had the chance to play under,” Fung said.

Recalling the most memorable lesson he’s learned so far throughout his studies, Fung says, “Many of my teachers have come at this same concept from different angles. The most important and impactful thing I have ever learned is that beauty and expression are two different things in music. Beauty can be neutral, sometimes even static, but expression can never be. It always takes a point of view, and that is what we as artists have to strive for in our playing.”

Fung continues, “After such a long hiatus from live performances, I’m ready to put my heart on my sleeve. I’m really looking forward to playing for everyone in Aspen.”

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