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Festival Focus
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Monday, July 14, 2014
Vol 25, No. 4
Robert McDuffie fills in last-minute for Midori jessica cabe
be unable to perform. Because of McDuffie’s last-minute agreement to When violinist Robert McDuffie was fill in on July 20 with the AFO, he is asked to step in for Midori, who had arriving in South Korea later than he to cancel her July 20 appearance with had planned, giving him just enough the Aspen Festival Orchestra (AFO) time to make it to his first rehearsal mere weeks before the performance, there. it was a little bit of luck that made it “He’s putting himself in a very difpossible for him to ficult spot by dosay yes. ing us a favor,” “I didn’t know says Santourian. she was playing “But the concerto Tchaikovsky, and worked out to be I said, ‘I can only the same both here do Tchaikovsky,’” and in Korea, and says McDuffie, who it’s a terrific boon played the comto have a famous poser’s Violin ConAspen alumnus certo in D major available to replace on July 11 in the another famous Dominican RepubAspen alumna. So lic with the Youth it’s a very happy ocOrchestra of the casion.” Americas, and who McDuffie opened will play that same the Festival seapiece again on July son this year with 25 in Seoul, South a recital alongside Korea. “I had no AMFS conducRobert McDuffie AMFS alumnus and guest artist idea that was the tor Robert Spano piece Midori was on piano, before going to be playing anyway, but that’s leaving Aspen for his engagement why it worked out so nicely.” in the Dominican Republic. Now Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice he’ll return to perform with the AFO president for artistic administration as part of a program that features and artistic advisor, says McDuffie is Tchaikovsky’s much-loved work for a “favorite son” in Aspen, so it was a violin. While an emotive, Romantic natural choice to ask him to step in when Midori announced she would See MCDUFFIE, Festival Focus page 3 Festival Focus writer
I have more of a history with Aspen than I do with my own home town in Georgia. It really is a second home in many ways.
alex irvin/amfs
Violinist and Aspen alumnus Robert McDuffie will perform Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major with the Aspen Festival Orchestra on Sunday, July 20, at the Benedict Music Tent.
Student returns, wins competition jessica cabe
Festival Focus writer
Eighteen-year-old Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) student Stephen Kim made Festival history last week. When he won the AMFS Violin Competition on Sunday, July 6, he became the first violin student to win every competition Aspen offers to violinists: the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen (AACA) Violin Competition in 2011, the Dorothy DeLay Prize in 2012, and now the opportunity to perform with the Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra (APO). Kim will play Brahms’s Violin Concerto in D major with the APO at 6 pm on Wednesday, July 16, at the Benedict Music Tent. Paul Kantor, Kim’s teacher at the AMFS for all six seasons Kim has attended, says he has blossomed from a talented twelve-year-old into an incredible artist, even as just a teenager. “When you hear him play, the impression is that he’s
a much older person,” says Kantor. “He’s just a most delightful person to work with because he’s very softspoken, which is hard to imagine when you hear him play because he’s a fire-breathing, passionate communicator with his instrument, but he’s very humble.” That passion also comes out when Kim discusses the piece he’ll play on Wednesday—a piece he says is one of the great violin concertos, both to play and hear. “It’s just a huge piece in terms of size and range of musical ideas and emotions,” says Kim. “There’s so much to love about this concerto both as a violinist and as an audience member. It’s just one of those where both the orchestra and the violin play such an important role. I think the audience can enjoy the grandeur of this piece.” The Brahms concerto was also the piece he and ten other students performed at the Violin Competition, See KIM, Festival Focus page 3
Alex irvin/amfs
AMFS student Stephen Kim, pictured here as the 2011 winner of the AACA Violin Competition, will perform with the Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra on July 16 after winning this year’s Violin Competition.
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Page 2 | Monday, July 14, 2014
Festival Focus: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide
Supplement to The Aspen Times
Dichter family builds memories at Aspen for forty years jessica cabe
Festival Focus writer
For husband-and-wife piano duo Misha and Cipa Dichter, the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) offers more than an opportunity to perform. For more than four decades, Aspen has served as the setting for personal growth and family memories for both them and their children. Since first coming to the Festival in 1967, the Dichters say they have returned forty more times, including this season, when they’ll perform a recital at 6 pm on Thursday, July 17, at the Benedict Music Tent. “Our memories are just so vast of our visits here,” says Misha, whose sons, both now in their forties, grew up spending their summers in Aspen. “It was touching for Cipa and I that [Aspen] was what our sons considered their magical place, and we saw it through their eyes.” Misha says while the music at the AMFS is always fantastic, the Festival’s welcoming ambiance is what really kept the family coming back year after year. He says the casual atmosphere played a role in allowing his sons to develop an appreciation for classical music. “It was a natural outgrowth of relaxing with the family, having barbecues, going on hikes, and then, ‘Oh, by the way, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is over at the Tent, guys, so let’s just go over there for an hour and a half,’” says Misha. “It was that casual manner that allowed our sons to experience these great works for the first time without the formality of going down to
57th Street in New York and hearing an orchestra at Carnegie Hall.” Just as Aspen has been the catalyst for fond memories for the Dichters, the two pianists have consistently given performances that audiences flock to. The Dichters play two-piano and four-hand repertoire that, according to Misha, lies outside the norm for classical music concerts. They started working on this repertoire as students at the Juilliard School, where they met in the mid-1960s. “It started very naturally,” says Misha. “It was something that we used to do after ten-hour practice days that I hope young people still do. It’s just part of socializing with other pianists. We would just pull the old volume of Schubert four-hand music off the shelf and start playing it.” Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor, says the Dichters have mastered this somewhat uncommon repertoire, and they provide a highly musical experience that both casual and serious classical music fans enjoy. “They can make big sound, and they can make delicate sound; they can make storms, and they can make sunshine with two pianos,” says Santourian. “They have a whole palette of sound, color, and musical expression at their fingertips.” The Dichters’ program this season consists of works by Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saëns, and Dvořák. Misha says he and Cipa often favor Romantic works, making this program—with its lush, emotional
alex irvin/amfs
Husband-and-wife piano duo Misha and Cipa Dichter have been coming to the AMFS for more than forty years. The two will perform a recital on July 17 at the Benedict Music Tent.
music—a particularly good fit for the AMFS season theme of Romanticism. But for Misha and Cipa, the fact remains that Aspen is more than an opportunity to hear and perform great music. The first time they came to the AMFS, they weren’t yet married. With each season since, they have grown as a family. Now, the rest of the AMFS community feels like family to them, too. “We have so many friends here,” says Misha. “When we walk out on stage for a performance, we feel like we know half the Tent.”
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Festival Focus: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide
Supplement to The Aspen Times
MCDUFFIE: AMFS alumnus steps up to plate Continued from Festival Focus page 1
work, the concerto is also, as McDuffie points out, a test of a player’s stamina and maturity. “It’s a treacherously difficult piece to play,” says McDuffie. “It’s a marathon. The first movement is as long as some three-movement concertos. You have to pace yourself. There are so many outbursts of emotion in the first movement that you don’t want to show your cards too soon. You want to build up so it’s paced out in a way that makes for a complete musical expression.” Also on the program that afternoon are two waltzes from Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales and La valse. Santourian says the pieces, particularly La valse, offer commentary on a postWorld War I society. “Not all that glitters is gold, not all that seems well is well,” says Santourian of this work that some see depicts the dissemblance of a key symbol of Europe:
the Viennese waltz. This will be McDuffie’s 39th consecutive season at the AMFS. He first attended the School as a student in 1976, when he was just seventeen. Over the years, he has returned as a guest artist, and he now also teaches through master classes. He says Aspen continues to be a special place for him because of all the memories he’s developed over the years. “Everything keeps me coming back— the memories, the history. I feel like I grew up here,” says McDuffie. “I’ve seen Aspen grow from many perspectives: as a wide-eyed yet cocky student when I came in 1976, to making that transition into being a performer, and now I feel very privileged and honored to serve on the Aspen Long Range Planning Committee. So in a way I’ve experienced the AMFS from almost every angle.” So while beautiful music is the initial draw of the AMFS, artists like McDuffie,
Aspen Music Festival and School Box Office Hours
Monday, July 14, 2014 | Page 3
Free Chamber Music Recital The students of the Finckel-Wu Han Chamber Music Studio will display their talents in a free recital at Harris Concert Hall on July 14.
alex irvin/amfs
The AFO program for July 20 also includes Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales and La Valse, as well as Brett Dean’s Three Memorials.
who return to the Festival for decades, seem to find even more to keep them coming back. “I have more of a history with Aspen than I do with my own home town in Georgia,” says McDuffie. “It really is a second home in many ways.”
Four ensembles will give their ultimate performances after three weeks of intensive coaching with the dynamic David Finckel and Wu Han and AMFS artist-faculty. Works performed will include Beethoven’s Piano Trio Op. 70, No. 1, “Ghost,” Mendelssohn’s Trio in C minor, Brahms’s Trio in C major, and Dvořák’s Piano Quartet in E-flat major. The Chamber Music Studio recital is at 8 pm on Monday, July 14, at Harris Concert Hall.
Harris Concert Hall: 9 am through the intermission of the evening concert, daily. Wheeler Opera House: 9 am–5 pm daily.
Choong Mo Kang teaches for third season KIM: Plays with APO 2011 to teach at the Juilliard School. Now, Kang spends his summers teaching young students at the AMFS who feel the same way about Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) artist- playing piano as he felt as a child. “I just thought that I would naturally become a faculty member Choong Mo Kang was never able to attend the School as a student. So when the South pianist,” says Kang. “Not because I was confident Korean pianist was invited to teach at the AMFS, he about playing, but because I couldn’t detach jumped at the opportunity. Now in his third season classical music from my life.” Prior to his joining the AMFS faculty, Kang taught as an artist-faculty member, Kang plays a large role in educating the next generation of classical at festivals in Japan, South Korea, and Germany. He says the students have different musicians. dispositions in each setting, and “Everybody knows about the what keeps him coming back to Aspen Music Festival because Aspen is the positive attitudes of of its various concerts with tophis students here. notch artists, as well as the scale “The students here are very of the festival and the great open-minded and very flexible,” faculty,” says Kang. “So when says Kang. I was asked to join, I was really Kang will teach a Harris thrilled.” Concert Hall Master Class at Kang was raised in a musical 1 pm on Tuesday, July 15. He family. He says he can’t even says his master class will require remember the first time he heard a different approach from classical music because it was teaching students one-on-one, always a part of his childhood but his attention to all factors of thanks to his father’s old LPs. musicianship will still be a part of He does, however, remember his lesson. the composer responsible for his Choong Mo Kang Asadour Santourian, AMFS early interest in piano. AMFS artist-faculty member vice president for artistic “When I first heard piano administration and artistic music, it was Chopin,” says Kang. “I just was so crazy about it. So I said to my dad, advisor, says Kang’s attention to detail and thorough ‘I would like to learn the piano,’ and that’s how I observations of his students’ playing make him an asset to the faculty. started.” “After hearing his students here over the past three Kang graduated from Seoul National University before coming to the United States in 1983 to years, I think Choong Mo’s astute and insightful earn his master’s degree from the San Francisco observations as a teacher—from the point of idiomatic Conservatory. He earned his Artist Diploma from expression on the keyboard, to technical discussions, the Peabody Conservatory and was appointed to to musical and artistic values of the material that they the Peabody piano faculty. He returned to South are discussing—bring something important to the Korea in 1993 before coming back to the U.S. in Festival and to the students,” says Santourian. jessica cabe
Continued from Festival Focus page 1
Festival Focus writer
I just thought that I would naturally become a pianist. Not because I was confident about playing, but because I couldn’t detach classical music from my life.
which was open to the public. The morning of the contest, the students were told which part of the piece they would need to play for the judges. It amounted to about ten or fifteen minutes on stage, according to Kim, before the judges deliberated and chose a winner. Kantor says he worked on the Brahms concerto with Kim during just a couple lessons prior the competition. “He had two lessons on it, which is as close to nothing with a piece like that as you can get—it’s a gigantic 40-minute concerto,” says Kantor. “And maybe that’s the most wonderful part: It’s a testament to Stephen, not to anything else.” Kim has been attending the AMFS since 2009, when he was just twelve years old. Most recently, he’s finished his first year at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. AMFS Vice President and Dean of Students Jennifer Johnston says Kim’s growth as a musician is a result of his hard work, and that work is really beginning to pay off. “His impressive focus and intensity for such a young man has resulted in incredible accomplishments here at Aspen and in the musical world,” says Johnston. Kim began playing violin when he was three-and-a-half years old, at his mother’s encouragement. His older brother and sister both played violin, so he says he was surrounded by classical music from the time he was born. Kim says his decision to pursue a career in performance came gradually over time. “I don’t know if there’s a certain point exactly when I decided I wanted a career in music, but it’s just something that I really grew closer to as I got older,” says Kim. “In high school, of course, I had to make a decision on what I’d do after graduation. I just love playing the violin, so it’s what I decided to do.” A part of Kim’s love for performance comes from his time spent at Aspen, where he has had opportunities to play with some of the best young artists and professionals in the world. These opportunities are what keep him coming back. “It’s just so inspiring,” says Kim. “It’s amazing to see everyone coming together here for the thing they love, which is music.”
Page 4 | Monday, July 14, 2014
Festival Focus: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide
Supplement to The Aspen Times