YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE
FESTIVAL FOCUS Supplement to The Aspen Times
Monday, July 23, 2012
Vol 23, No. 6
AOTC Performs Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd of people struggling just to survive and in the midst of that, a lot of them are looking to connect and find love “Sweeney Todd:” The name sends shivers down the with someone,” Berkeley says. “Because of how difficult spines of those familiar with the story of the murderous it is to do that, they become demented and desperate as barber, whose customers become meat pies sold just people. That is what leads the piece to becoming so dark.” below his shop. But there is much more to the story of There is no character who better embodies this mentalSweeney Todd. There is horror, there is humor, and there ity than the desperate Mrs. Lovett, played by Stephanie is romance. Sadownik, who is currently pursuing a graduate degree at “All the characters in Sweeney are actually looking for the University of Southern California. This is Sadownik's love, and the way they try to find it becomes twisted be- fourth summer with the AOTC. cause of the world they live in,” Mrs. Lovett is a widowed pie says Edward Berkeley, longmaker who has harbored a time director for the Aspen love for Sweeney Todd since Opera Theater Center (AOTC), he was banished from London which is part of the Aspen Mufifteen years before the opera sic Festival and School (AMFS). takes place. Sadownik says The AOTC will perform SteMrs. Lovett’s loneliness and phen Sondheim’s Sweeney unrequited love make her willTodd, the Demon Barber of Fleet ing to do “literally anything.” Street, directed by Berkeley, on “Out of necessity and out Thursday, July 26; Saturday, of coincidence, Sweeney Todd July 28; and Monday, July 30, and Mrs. Lovett become murEdward Berkeley at the Wheeler Opera House. derers and promulgate canniAOTC Director The opening performance at balism, but she really is some8 pm is part of the AMFS’s annual black-tie opera gala, one who doesn’t have malice to start off with,” Sadownik and all other performances start at 7 pm. says. “It just happens as a consequence of circumstances.” Sweeney Todd tells the tale of Benjamin Barker, a wrongSadownik says the opera is more than a horror story, ly imprisoned man who now returns to London. With the with themes that are relevant even today. help of a besotted pie maker, Mrs. Lovett, Barker, now “What a man can do to another man in desperate times known as Sweeney Todd, opens a barbershop where his and when they have been downtrodden all their life—that customers are killed and baked into pies. It is Barker’s is an overarching morality that can be seen in the story,” way of seeking justice in a world that has wronged him, Sadownik says. “It’s harder to be an altruistic person at yet it leads him down a gruesome path he never imag- that point. When you have been treated unkindly your enined and eventually spirals out of control. The opera takes tire life, it’s much easier to be unkind, rather than turn the place during the Industrial Revolution of the mid-nine- other cheek.” teenth century. “There’s hunger; there’s unemployment; there are a lot See SWEENEY TODD Festival Focus page 3 GRACE LYDEN
Festival Focus writer
All the characters in Sweeney are actually looking for love, and the way they try to find it becomes twisted because of the world they live in.
ALEX IRVIN / AMFS
Edward Berkeley, longtime director of the Aspen Opera Theater Center, is directing the AOTC's production of Sweeney Todd and has set it inside an insane asylum, as a play within a play. Performances are on July 26, 28, and 30 at the Wheeler Opera House.
Bronfman Plays Brahms’s Concerto No. 2 GRACE LYDEN
Festival Focus writer
Brahms waited twenty years after writing his Piano Concerto No. 1 to start the second, and the composer himself premiered the tremendous work—four movements compared to the typical three of the Classical and Romantic periods—in 1881. It was an immediate success. Israeli pianist Yefim Bronfman will perform Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major at 4 pm this Sunday, July 29, with the Aspen Festival Orchestra (AFO) in the Benedict Music Tent. Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto is so difficult, the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) vice-president for artistic administration and artistic advisor, Asadour Santourian, says that Bronfman is one of the few pianists he would even ask to play it. “The Brahms Second, the work itself, is more symphonic than the traditional concerto relationship of solo instrument to orchestra,” Santourian says. “This obbligato, featured instrument is much more a part of the texture of the orchestra than in dialogue with the orchestra, so in order to be heard, you need a titan to
really speak the part.” Santourian notes that Bronfman is capable of being both audible and sensitive. “Yefim Bronfman can make a very, very big-boned sound, and it is always warm, and it is always elegant, and it is always idiomatically correct, so regardless of the demands of this great, symphonic work, he’s able to be the protagonist of the piece and come through the orchestral sound,” Santourian says. “He dares to tread where angels fear to tread.” Bronfman, an Avery Fisher Prize and Grammy Award winner, has performed all over Europe, and he recently played Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the orchestras of Atlanta, New York, and Los Angeles. But even the virtuosic pianist says playing Brahms No. 2 is no small task. “Everything is difficult about this piece,” he says. “It’s one of these monsters that are very difficult to contain, but I do the best I can. It’s like a journey. You go, but you don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s full of surprises, but you hope to make it where you want to go.” See BRONFMAN Festival Focus page 3
PHOTO BY DARIO ACOSTA
Yefim Bronfman will play Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 2 at 4 pm this Sunday, July 29, in the Benedict Music Tent.
Buy tickets now! (970) 925-9042 or www.aspenmusicfestival.com