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.
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Page 2 | Monday, July 23, 2012
FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide
Supplement to The Aspen Times
Artist-Faculty Valdepeñas Says the Clarinet Chose Him for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the inspiration Valdepeñas needed to drop the business classes— Joaquin Valdepeñas, the principal clarinetist for the the only ones in which he got Ds instead of As—and Toronto Symphony Orchestra and an Aspen Music become a music major. “It became clear very quickly to me that I needed to Festival and School (AMFS) artist-faculty member since 1984, wanted to play the trumpet when it was time play music,” Valdepeñas says. “I loved it, and my mother to select a band instrument in seventh grade. But the was very supportive, as long as I was doing what made students were called alphabetically, and all the trumpets me happy.” Valdepeñas says he used to practice all day long were gone by the time his name was called. He ended during the summer, to catch up on starting lessons so up holding a clarinet. Valdepeñas liked being involved in band from the late. Block encouraged Valdepeñas to come to the AMFS, start, sticking with it even after his two best friends quit. where he auditioned with thirty-five clarinet students from top conservatories around But every June, he would return the country, and came out on the clarinet he borrowed from top. the school and not play until “That’s when my eyes opened September. Valdepeñas did up and I thought, you know, if I not have the luxury of private love doing this, I can do this,” lessons. At the beginning of Valdepeñas says. “That was a the year, he would relearn how pivotal point for me.” to play and work his way up Joaquin Valdepeñas Valdepeñas attended the from the back of the section, AMFS Artist-Faculty Festival again as a fellowship but he was never principal student in 1978 and 1979. chair in high school. He didn’t consider becoming a musician when he started college After his second year at Yale University for graduate school, he was offered the position he still holds at the at California State University at Fullerton. “I didn’t come from a musical family, so I didn’t Toronto Symphony Orchestra, as principal clarinetist. know that you could have a life in music,” Valdepeñas Valdepeñas plays in the Grammy-nominated Artists says. “I was accepted to be in the music program as an of the Royal Conservatory (ARC) Ensemble, and he undeclared major, so I was given a half hour lesson a is on faculty at the Glenn Gould School at the Royal week. I was just really blessed that I had, for five years, Conservatory of Music and the University of Toronto. Valdepeñas’s students frequently win auditions for the most amazing clarinet teacher. It just happened that major orchestras, and many come to the Festival to way, like the clarinet choosing me.” His teacher was Kalman Bloch, the principal clarinetist continue studying with him in the summer. GRACE LYDEN
Festival Focus writer
It became clear very quickly to me that I needed to play music.
PHOTO BY SIAN RICHARDS
Joaquin Valdepeñas is principal clarinetist with the Aspen Festival Orchestra, which performs at 4 pm Sundays in the Tent.
“The way he teaches his students to use the air, and give careful attention to the beauty of sound, has changed me as a player,” says Jae-Won Kim, an American Academy of Conducting at Aspen (AACA) fellowship student who has been studying with Valdepeñas for three years at the Glenn Gould School. Connecting with young people comes easily for Valdepeñas. See VALDEPEÑAS Festival Focus page 3
Buy tickets now: (970) 925-9042 • www.aspenmusicfestival.com
Supplement to The Aspen Times
FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide
Sweeney Todd: A Love Story Continued from Festival Focus page 1
Berkeley has set the opera as a play within a play, in which the cast of AOTC students act as inmates putting on a production of Sweeney Todd in their asylum. Sadownik says this adds an additional dimension to the work. “These are people who’ve been tortured and mistreated and neglected, and the people coming to see the show have no idea,” Sadownik says. “It shines a spotlight on those who don’t have a voice for themselves.” Sweeney Todd's music is full of the wit and humor that characterize American musical theater, as is fitting for the AMFS 2012 season theme: "Made in America." But the work is also performed in opera houses all over Europe and the United States. “It’s practically through-composed,” Berkeley says. “There is dialogue, but it’s more sung, and it’s a complex score. A lot of the roles require singing that is more opera than musical theater.” Sadownik says her role in the opera is one of the most demanding she has played to date, but the challenge is how the Festival helps her grow. “The great thing about Aspen is that people like Ed Berkeley and the music staff are incredibly supportive,” Sadownik says. “It’s a very cultivating environment, which is why I have come back for four years. That’s why a lot of people come back. They can take risks and be brave, and they know that they can step off the cliff and people will be there to support them.”
Monday, July 23, 2012 | Page 3
Special Event: Celebrating 50 Years, Aspen Center for Physics, July 24
ALEX IRVIN / AMFS
Violinist Gil Shaham (above), pianist Orli Shaham, and violinist Stefan Jackiw will present an evening of string chamber music at 8 pm on Tuesday, July 24, in Harris Concert Hall to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Aspen Center for Physics (ACP). The three alumni of the Aspen Music Festival and School came to Aspen while their parents participated at the ACP.
Joyce Yang Performs Beethoven No. 2 Bronfman: Continued from Festival Focus page 1
GRACE LYDEN
Festival Focus writer
Pianist Joyce Yang was nine years old and practicing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 when an extraordinary feeling came over her. She describes a sensation as if the music had begun to dance around her on its own, no longer the product of her hands. “In the midst of the practice session, I stopped playing and suddenly felt like I heard something for the first time,” Yang says. “This is the piece that caught me. My hands could create something beautiful, and it connected with my ears. It was this incredibly ecstatic moment for me. It was my glimpse of beauty that I knew I could only get if I really put every filament of my energy into it.” Yang, now twenty-six, still remembers the experience vividly. Though she moved on to other repertoire a few months later, she started relearning the piece last year and PHOTO BY OH SEUK HOON will perform the concerto at 6 pm Friday, July 27, in the Joyce Yang will perform Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2, the Benedict Music Tent, with the Aspen Chamber Symphony piece that made her fall in love with music, at 6 pm this Friday, (ACS). The concert is part of the Aspen Music Festival and July 27, in the Benedict Music Tent. School (AMFS). Yang was a student at the AMFS in 2004, at the age of of inevitability,” Yang says. eighteen, and she won the Silver Medal at the Van Cliburn Yang says she tries hundreds of interpretations in the International Competition in 2005. She has returned to the practice room, but she never knows what will arise in Festival as a guest artist every year since and maintains a performance. constant performing schedule with orchestras around the “I walk onto the stage knowing my hands are able to world. She received the prestigious Avery Fisher Career sketch it exactly the way my mind, my head, my heart is Grant in 2010. inspired to go in that exact moment,” Yang says. “People People often ask Yang when she knew she wanted to be think I practice it and get it perfect and then go onstage. a musician, and she says her experience with Beethoven’s For me, I’m going on stage with a paintbrush and a blank Second Piano Concerto is part of piece of paper. the answer. Ludovic Morlot will conduct “This moment, discovering I the program, which also includes could turn what I’m doing into Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin something beautiful, it was a big and Mother Goose Suite, and realization,” she says. “It was a Roussel’s Symphonic Fragments moment where music became from Le festin de l’araignée (The something I could not be without. Spider’s Feast), op. 17. It was the instant high for that few Santourian says Morlot, who is seconds I remember, and it’s been French, excels with this repertoire. a love affair since then.” “Ludovic’s sensibilities lie with Though published second, the the beauty of his country, so he Concerto No. 2 was the first piano offered us a beautiful French concerto Beethoven wrote, and program,” Santourian says. “Like Joyce Yang it reflects the orderly and elegant all French music, it’s always these style of the Classical Era more than intangible sounds that are more his later concertos, says Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice cloud and perfume than symphonic. This music is elusive, president for artistic administration and artistic advisor. and it requires an interpreter who can illuminate the score Yang says the piece sounds like chamber music and from within.” works well with a smaller ensemble such as the ACS. She Yang will collaborate with Morlot for the first time at the recently played the work in Budapest with an orchestra of July 27 concert, and she says opportunities such as this twenty and no conductor. But Yang says that amidst its are what she loves most about the Festival. light-hearted charm, the work still has “all the extraordinary “In Aspen, I am exposed to the greatest minds year elements of Beethoven.” after year,” Yang says. “Every year in Aspen, there is this “This piece is playful in many ways, but only a great wealth of diverse musicians and the greatest artists all just composition like this can portray playfulness with a sense melting together on stage. It’s extraordinary for me.”
People think I practice it and get it perfect and then go onstage. For me, I'm going on stage with a paintbrush and a blank piece of paper.
Bronfman says that Brahms was at his most mature composing stage when he wrote the concerto. The piece opens with a French horn solo, which the piano answers, and the work continues in this way, with the piano part mimicking or shadowing lines played by soloists in the orchestra, almost like chamber music. This creates a challenge not only for the pianist, but also the ensemble. “What’s hard about it is to make it a unified experience,” Bronfman says. “You should hear them blend into each other. Piano is sometimes part of the orchestra, and the orchestra somehow should fit into the piano, as well.” The celebrated music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony, Manfred Honeck, will conduct the July 29 program, which also includes R. Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), op. 40. A Hero’s Life is an autobiographical work. Santourian calls the piece a “self-portrait” in which the hero-composer “takes on and slays his naysayers,” that is, the critics of his music. Strauss is depicted in virtuosic violin solos throughout the work, which will be played by AFO concertmaster and AMFS artist-faculty member Robert Chen. “It is the envy of all concertmasters to play those violin solos,” Santourian says.
Valdepeñas: Continued from Festival Focus page 2
“I think it’s something natural, that they feel comfortable with me,” Valdepeñas says. “I think I’m good at it, and I don’t mean to say that in a narcissistic way. But when I look back at my teaching career, I feel like I have touched so many lives.” His students agree. “I couldn't be more grateful to have his guidance and support,” says AMFS student Afendi Yusuf, who has a Vincent Wilkinson Foundation Fellowship. “He is a profound artist and an infinite source of inspiration.” Valdepeñas is married to violinist Mi Hyon Kim, and they have two sons, who are now twenty-one and seventeen. Josué and Alejandro play the cello and violin, respectively, and are studying at the Festival this year. But the boys have come to Aspen “all their lives, even as babies in diapers,” Valdepeñas says. “This is where the bottle went. This is where the pacifier went. This is where they got pottytrained. This is where it all happened for them, too.”