Your weekly CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE
Festival Focus
Supplement to The Aspen Times
James Levine Tribute Dinner Tonight Maestro James Levine—one of the musical forces of our time—returns to Aspen to be honored at a gala dinner tonight. Levine, music director at the Metropolitan Opera for more than forty years, came of age as a young conductor during his fifteen summers in Aspen. All proceeds benefit the Aspen Music Festival and School. For tickets and information, call Jennifer McDonough at 970205-5063.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Vol 25, No. 5
Choruses, singer highlight Mahler Symphony his symphonies, but he took the technique to a higher level. Mahler’s Third Symphony, which “Beethoven is the one who introthe Aspen Festival Orchestra (AFO) duced soloists and chorus in symwill perform on July 27, is a massive phony,” says Santourian. “But Mahler work that takes listeners on a journey and many composers after Beethoven of ascension from Earth to heaven. The were very much enamored of this and hour-and-forty-minute piece consists began to use it in a programmatic, exof six powerful movements, and for pressive sense.” many, the highlight of the symphony For the AFO’s performance of the comes in the fourth piece, the orchesmovement, with the tra will be joined by introduction of the mezzo-soprano and voice. AMFS alumna Sasha “What Mahler Cooke, the Colorado did so brilliantly in Children’s Chorale, many of his symand women’s voices phonic works is of the Aspen Opera to incorporate the Theater Center. human voice,” says “In this particuRobert Spano, Aslar symphony, the pen Music Festival combination of chiland School (AMFS) dren’s and women’s music director voices is very strikand conductor of ing,” says Spano. this performance. “And the solo voice Robert Spano “The fourth moveenters in the fourth Music Director of the AMFS ment, appropriately movement. It’s such called ‘What Mana pivotal moment in kind Tells Me,’ is the moment where the symphony.” the human voice is introduced. It’s just Cooke, who has performed other a special feature of Mahler to incorpo- works by Mahler at the Festival in the rate the human voice into an essential- past, says the inclusion of voice adds ly symphonic experience.” dimension to his already gorgeous Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice symphonies. president for artistic administration “To me, Mahler is one of the greatest and artistic advisor, says Mahler was not the first composer to use singers in See MAHLER, Festival Focus page 3 jessica cabe
Festival Focus writer
When you experience the symphony, you feel this intensification of emotion, depth, and beauty.
alex irvin/amfs
AMFS Music Director Robert Spano will conduct the AFO’s performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony on Sunday, featuring a women’s chorus, children’s chorus, and solo singer.
Opera sets story of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Dorian Gray’ jessica cabe
Festival Focus writer
Lowell Liebermann’s The Picture of Dorian Gray debuted in 1996, but according to Edward Berkeley, director of the Aspen Opera Theater Center (AOTC), the music draws inspiration from the Romantic Era of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. “Dorian Gray was chosen because I had heard Lowell’s work as a composer before this,” says Berkeley, who notes that Liebermann employs the Romantic methods of deep emotional expression with a modern twist. “I thought it would fit well with the ‘New Romantics’ theme for the summer.” The Picture of Dorian Gray is based on the novel of the same name by Oscar Wilde. Written in 1890, it tells the story of Dorian Gray, a young man who sells his soul so that a painted portrait of his will age instead of his own body. He descends into a debauched life of hedonism,
remaining ever-beautiful while his portrait changes grotesquely. “The opera’s focus is on the characters’ relationships and the way they progress because of Dorian not changing while everything else around him does,” says Berkeley. “The dedication in that turn-of-the-century period to aestheticism—a common beauty above all— gives a kind of strangeness to the story, which questions the values of a society.” Singing the part of Dorian Gray is Christian Sanders, a first-time student at the AMFS. He says one of the greatest challenges of the character is to give him dimension when it would be so easy to represent him as pure evil. “When I’m in the audience, I get bored with characters that I don’t like,” says Sanders. “It’s easy to fall into See OPERA, Festival Focus page 3
photo courtesy of christian sanders
First-year AMFS student Christian Sanders sings the part of Dorian Gray in Lowell Liebermann’s opera The Picture of Dorian Gray, which opens at 7 pm on July 24.
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