Aspen Music Festival and School – Festival Focus, Week 5

FESTIVALFOCUS

Spano, O’Connor Bring Mahler’s Third to Aspen

BY EMMA KIRBY Marketing Coordinator

Marking the midpoint of the Aspen Music Festival and School’s (AMFS) 2023 summer season is one of the largest of all symphonies: Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony. “It truly just encompasses the world,” says AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher. “It’s right in the middle of our summer and on purpose: it’s a centerpiece.”

AMFS Music Director Robert Spano leads the Aspen Festival Orchestra in the performance on Sunday, July 30 that features Kelley O’Connor as the mezzo-soprano soloist. Members of the Colorado Children’s Chorale and students from the Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS (AOTVA) program make up the chorus.

Spano and O’Connor are frequent collaborators and close friends, having known each other for almost 20 years. “He’s such a joy to work with,” says O’Connor. O’Connor and Spano performed Mahler’s Third together just last year in Spano’s final concert as the music director of the Atlanta Symphony after a 22-year tenure. This week presents an opportunity for the pair to reunite and share the stage, and O’Connor is delighted to perform the work with Spano once again, this time in Aspen.

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The setting makes for a special and organic experience. Mahler composed his Third Symphony during the summer, surrounded by nature in a one-room hut at Steinbach on the Attersee, near Salzburg, Austria. “You just look outside the Tent and know that Mahler was in a similar setting when he was writing this. You think, he was seeing what I am seeing. It really helps you to connect to the music,” says O’Connor.

In this 100-minute, six-movement Symphony—the longest symphony in the stan-

dard repertoire—Mahler aims to “encompass all of humankind and its relationship with the world and with each other,” says AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration Patrick Chamberlain. Unpublished programmatic titles that Mahler originally assigned to each movement give insight into how the composer structured the work as a “portrait of nature” and “picture of the universe” says Fletcher.

“Summer Marches In,” “What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me,” and “What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me” are orchestra-only. The human voice is introduced in the fourth movement: “What Man Tells Me.” The text, sung by O’Connor, comes from “Midnight Song” of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra. In the

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solo, “I’m asking people to realize that our grief may be deep, but we will also have joy, and it will be better than the grief,” says O’Connor. “In the end, it’s about accepting your feelings and having hope for the

See A Portrait of Nature, Festival Focus page 3

Free Community Mariachi Celebration Returns July 26

BY SARAH SHAW Festival Focus Writer

Building on the tremendous success of last summer, the Aspen Music Festival and School brings back its threeday Mariachi Workshop culminating in a free community concert at 5:30 p.m. on July 26 at the Benedict Music Tent. The lead sponsor of the workshop and community concert is Querencia Private Golf & Beach Club.

A pre-concert fiesta beginning at 4 p.m. on the Karetsky Music Lawn will include food and drinks from Taqueria El Yaqui and Señor Mango, and booths and activities from community partners: the Pitkin County and Basalt Regional Libraries, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen Family Connections, Buddy Program, English in Action, Family Resource Center—Roaring Fork Schools, Latinx House, the Art Base, and Valley Settlement.

As one of the many family-friendly summer offerings of the Festival, the Mariachi Workshop is an exten-

sion of the AMFS’s music education programs offered in schools from Aspen to Glenwood Springs. “Bringing the Mariachi Workshop to the Roaring Fork Valley has been a long-standing dream of ours,” says AMFS Dean of Education and Community Heather Kendrick.

During the school year, the AMFS’s Education and Community team runs weekly after-school and in-school music education programming throughout the valley. More than 400 students participate in programs ranging from beginning strings to choir. “We are boots on the ground,” Kendrick continues. “When we learned from band directors and our teaching artists that introducing mariachi would be a natural extension of our program, it made sense to fulfill that community need.”

Last summer, the Mariachi Workshop launched with 35 participating students. With the additional funding provided by lead sponsor Querencia—a private,

See Music Education, Festival Focus page 3

“ You just look outside the Tent and know that Mahler was in a similar setting when he was writing this.”

Kelley O’Connor guest artist and mezzo-soprano soloist

AMFS Music Director Robert Spano conducts what could be considered the centerpiece of the 2023 Season—Mahler’s Third—on July 30.

The free Community Mariachi Celebration on July 26 is one of the many family friendly offerings of the 2023 Festival.

GRAHAM NORTHRUP

ALEX IRVIN

Mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor is the featured soloist in Mahler’s Third on July 30.

BEN DASHWOOD

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Misha and Cipa Dichter, in Recital

BY JESSICA MOORE Director of Marketing

Week five of the 2023 Aspen Music Festival and School summer season brings to the fore two Harris Concert Hall recitals sure to delight the piano enthusiast. Award-winning French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet offers listeners a program of Ravel and Haydn on Thursday, July 27, and long-time Festival friends Misha and Cipa Dichter return on Saturday, July 29.

Always a favorite with Aspen audiences, Bavouzet has curated what AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration Patrick Chamberlain describes as “a really gorgeous program” of Haydn’s A-flat major Piano Sonata and works by Ravel. In a rare feat, last fall Bavouzet released the final volume of his complete recordings of Haydn’s 62 sonatas, a gargantuan task that shows his affinity for the often-overlooked com-

poser. The New York Times praised Bavouzet’s interpretation as “unmatched in its zest and wit. But it is also substantial, informed, and deeply rewarding.”

Says Chamberlain, “Haydn’s one of those great composers whose music I think we don’t know nearly well enough. Every time I encounter it I’m just amazed at how effortless it was for him to write endlessly beguiling, charming, brilliant music.”

To complement the Haydn sonata, Bavouzet chose Ravel’s nod to the composer with the Menuet sur le nom de Haydn, which will then be followed by three other works by the fellow Frenchman: Jeux d’eau, Sonatine, and Miroirs. “I do think he brings a sensibility and flair and real color to Ravel’s music,” says Chamberlain.

Many of Ravel’s better-known orchestral works were originally written as piano pieces that the composer then embellished, so “at his heart, Ravel was really a piano composer and wrote these wonderful works that show off how the piano can act like an orchestra,” Chamberlain explains.

The wealth of sparkling piano repertoire continues later in the week with duo Misha and Cipa Dichter performing a recital of Debussy, Liszt, and two-piano arrangements of Infante and a suite from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Through this varied program, Misha Dichter hopes “that our audience will hear the widest possible range of the piano, going from the transparency of Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque for one instrument to the orchestral explosions in the works for the two pianos.”

Well-known and beloved by Aspen audiences, the Dichters first began coming to the Festival in the summer of 1974. “We have vivid memories of our now-adult sons spending

whole summers here with us in a place that we found as welcoming as any place on earth,” says Misha.

The AMFS is deeply woven into the fabric of the Dichter family with many fond memories of their visits but one that stands out, recalls Misha, is a particular Sunday Festival Orchestra performance, “probably around 1976, and our now50-year-old son was sleeping on my lap while Lee Luvisi was playing a beautiful Beethoven Emperor Concerto. As the slow movement began, our son began to snore, first very faintly, then becoming louder. By the middle of the movement I had the choice of letting him snore away or risk waking him. I chose the latter, and I was soon running up the aisle carrying a wailing young man!”

Says Chamberlain, “I think the beauty of Aspen is the chance to encounter these great artists over so many years, and the Dichters are part of that.”

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French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet offers listeners a program of Ravel and Haydn on Thursday, July 27.

COURTESY PHOTO

Long-time Festival friends Misha and Cipa Dichter return to play a recital in Harris Concert Hall on Saturday, July 29.

COURTESY PHOTO

Mariachi: Music Education Takes Center Stage

masterplanned community in Los Cabos, Mexico, where cultural experiences and philanthropy are encouraged—the program is now able to accommodate more than twice as many students. This summer, 85 middle and high school students have registered and there’s a waiting list.

Educators from the valley are invited to work alongside a team of statewide mariachi teaching specialists, with a longterm goal of developing more support and training for local music teachers so they can start programs in their own schools, explains Education and Community Coordinator Veronica Lopez. “Professional development and family assistance are a large part of the ongoing mission for these programs,” she says.

To that end, events for parents are also built into the curriculum of the three-day workshop. “We want families to meet our guest artists and teachers, learn what students are doing, and how they can support them,” says Lopez. “We’ve heard from so many families about their memories of growing up with this music.”

Incorporating time for families to tell their own stories about mariachi was paramount to this year’s event. Calling

it an “intergenerational conversation around mariachi music and culture,” participants and their families are invited on stage during workshop sessions to share their experiences with mariachi music. “It is a special tender moment for parents and community members,” says Lopez. Mariachi specialists from around the state—such as Isahar Mendez-Flores, program director of the Colorado Youth Mariachi Program—are on hand to help students learn everything from fundamentals to performance techniques and teach them how to play traditional instruments like the guitarrón and vihuela. “It’s a process that makes the educational experience that much richer for the students,” Kendrick says.

The workshop culminates in a free community concert at the Benedict Music Tent that includes a student performance and performances by Denver-based Mariachi Sol de Mi Tierra and Aspen Santa Fe Ballet Folklórico. Kendrick’s excitement for the program is palpable. “Last year, we had all the families on stage, dancing and singing together. It was just such a beautiful feeling to see so many friends and families from so many different backgrounds interacting and having a good time together.”

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Conlon’s Recital Brings Music of Jewish Composers to Light

BY SARAH SHAW Festival Focus Writer

Known as a beloved conductor and Aspen Music Festival and School alumnus, James Conlon offers something new to Aspen audiences with a recital showcasing the fruits of his project entitled Recovered Voices on Wednesday, July 26 in Harris Concert Hall.

It’s a unique project Conlon has championed over the course of his career. “He has made it a personal mission to highlight and bring to audiences music that was suppressed under the Nazi regime, either because the composers were of Jewish descent or, in some cases, lost in concentration camps,” says AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration Patrick Chamberlain.

On the program are works by Schulhoff, Zemlinsky, and Schoenberg—composers who, to this day, have not received the recognition due them because their music was banned. “The mission to call the names and the music of composers who were suppressed under the Nazi regime to the world's attention is a subject of critical moral, historic, and artistic importance to any serious citizen concerned with historical justice and classical music,” Conlon says. “Though it is a mission to reverse this miscarriage of justice and neglect of existing music, it goes beyond the personal, and will continue beyond my lifetime.”

Of the three composers whose works are on the program, two—Alexander Zemlinsky and Arnold Schoenberg—emigrated to the U.S. Both Viennese, they were brothers-in-law and close friends. Zemlinsky, according to Conlon, was Schoenberg’s only teacher and mentor: “Although Schoenberg was relatively the most successful and influential of the three, much of his music and his story remains comparatively unfamiliar to many music lovers.”

The third, Erwin Schulhoff, was Czech and perished of tuberculosis in a Bavarian concentration camp. Conlon

describes his string sextet as “the work of a trailblazing outsider who marched to the beat of his own drum throughout his shortened life.”

Conlon will conduct a select ensemble of AMFS students in Schulhoff’s String Sextet, Zemlinsky’s Maiblumen blühten überall featuring soprano Marissa Moultrie of the Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS program, and Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 in E major. In addition to conducting, Conlon will act as host, providing the musical and historical context for each composer and piece.

Long an advocate for silenced voices, Conlon’s focus on Jewish composers oppressed or erased by the Nazis helped lead to the establishment of the ZieringConlon Initiative for Recovered Voices at the Colburn School.

As to this curated Aspen program, Conlon says that “ all classical music lovers can welcome this concert as an opportunity to familiarize themselves with a small fraction of the music that was banned by an exclusionary, repressive regime. With the resurgence of dangerous authoritarianism around the world, this should be important and relevant to all.”

“Conlon will go into history for his work on behalf of composers whose work was silenced by the Nazis,” says AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher. “No one has the ear that James Conlon has, and he chooses this music with the audience experience in mind.”

Mahler 3: A Portrait of Nature

Continued from Festival Focus page 1

future. You’re reflecting on your own life and own situation. It’s always meaningful.”

A large chorus joins in the fifth movement, “What the Angels Tell Me,” singing text from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. “What Love Tells Me” closes the monumental symphony. Unlike his Second Symphony, which closes with a large choral and orchestral movement, this movement is simple, omitting the mezzo-soprano soloist and chorus—a powerful choice, says O’Connor. “I’m almost always drawn to tears when I hear the last movement. It’s wonderful to end on this note of melodic beauty. To come back to the basic idea of ‘this is what love is.’ At the end, I feel like I’ve had a deep conversation with Mahler. We all—the orchestra, the audience—we all just feel fulfilled.”

“A performance of [Mahler’s Third Symphony] is an event, and a definite signature highlight for the summer,” says Chamberlain. “Mahler’s music is deeply connected to nature, and you hear it in all of his music, but you really hear it in this symphony.” And while 100 minutes may seem daunting, “you don’t feel the passage of time in a good performance,” he says.

Spano and O’Connor will collaborate again for a recital in Harris Hall on August 2, performing a selection of works by Debussy, Crumb, Carter, Schumann, and a work that Spano wrote for O’Connor, Sonnets to Orpheus

“I just love making music with him. He’s so intuitive, he knows me so well, he knows my voice so well. And, he’s an incredible pianist—even though he won’t tell you that!” says O’Connor. A few of the works on the program may not be familiar: “I love introducing music to people that they don’t know, but end up loving,” says O’Connor.

James Conlon conducts Recovered Voices on July 26.

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Arrive early at 4 p.m. to enjoy food and activities with community partners and at the pre-concert fiesta on the Karetsky Music Lawn outside the Benedict Music Tent.

TESSA NOJAIM