Festival Focus week 6

YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE

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FESTIVAL FOCUS Monday, July 29, 2013

Vol 24, No 7

Puccini’s Tragic, Comic Operas This Week style.” Marvel has set both Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi to take place in the 1940s.

Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924), a master “James is a director who likes to go outcomposer of Italian opera best known for side the box,” Berkeley says. “He uses bold Madama Butterfly and La bohème, was ex- strokes and enjoys stretching people.” ploring two extremes of human nature when AOTC student Ashly Evans, 30, will play he wrote Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi, the title role of Sister Angelica in the first two of the one-act operas that make up his opera, and she has an almost uncanny conoperatic triptych Il trittico. nection with her character.

Suor Angelica, Puccini’s personal favorite, “I’m an adopted only child, and I was givis the tragic story of a woman who has been en up as a two-week-old baby,” Evans says. forced into a convent to “My birth parents were repent for her sin of hav14 and 15 when they ing a child out of wedhad me, and my birth lock. Gianni Schicchi is mom was sent away to an over-the-top comedy a Catholic organization, in which members of a a convent. I have a really troubled family are drivstrong connection with en by greed to extreme this opera because it kind measures. Somehow, the of is my life.” opposing stories make a Evans says it is “a little perfect pair. surreal” that she is play“They are designed to ing this role, in part bebe performed together,” cause she only found out says Edward Berkeley, dishe would be playing Sisrector of the Aspen Opera ter Angelica a few weeks Ashly Evans Theater Center (AOTC). ago, when the student AOTC Student “They are morality tales, who was originally cast and that is what pulls them together. The had to leave due to altitude sickness. first one is societal, about the condemnation But Evans, who sings professionally in of Angelica for having a child out of wedlock; Houston, Texas, and is a student of AOTC Schicchi is about greed.” faculty member Stephen King, was a natural The AOTC will present the one-act operas choice for the part.

Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi at 7 pm “I like to sing the repertoire that makes me on August 1, 3, and 5 in the Wheeler Opera feel good, and this is one of those roles,” she House. Both will be directed by James Mar- says. “‘Senza Mamma,’ the aria, is perfect in vel, a stage director whose work has been my voice. I feel like it’s divine intervention called “irreverent and fresh” and “a marvel of that I got this role.”

GRACE LYDEN

Festival Focus writer

I like to sing the repertoire that makes me feel good, and this is one of those roles ... I feel like it’s divine intervention that I got this role.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SHANNON LANGMAN SMITH

Ashly Evans (above) will play the title role in the AOTC’s production of Puccini’s Suor Angelica.

Evans had five days between the Sunday evening she was offered the role, July 7, and the day of the opera run-through with conductor Tomáš Netopil, then three more days to memorize her part before staging began.

For Evans, though, the challenge was not learning her part, but learning to keep her emotions at bay in the opera’s most devastating moments.

Evans has heard many recordings in which Sister Angelica’s voice cracks due to extreme emotion, and she says this interferes with the effect of the music.

“I’m a very, very emotional person, and a very emotional actress, but you can’t let that See PUCCINI, Festival Focus page 3

Bronfman Plays with Festival Orchestra GRACE LYDEN

Festival Focus writer

The story behind Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3, one of his most lyrical, joyful, and neoclassical works, is ironically a sad one.

Bartók wrote the piece in his final months of life, while living in America and dying of leukemia. The work was to be a surprise gift for his wife, also a pianist, on her 42nd birthday, but Bartók died before finishing the last sixteen measures. Although a student finished the work, his wife never performed the piece, as the emotions surrounding the music were too painful.

World-renowned Israeli pianist Yefim Bronfman will perform Bartók’s autumnal work for the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) at 4 pm this Sunday, August 4, in the Benedict Music Tent. Miguel HarthBedoya, who is in his thirteenth season as music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and was

recently appointed chief conductor of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, will conduct.

The concert will open with Strauss’s tone poem Don Juan and will close with excerpts from Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé.

Bronfman says the situation surrounding the composition of the piano concerto is evident in its musical qualities. Bartók is reflecting on the joys and meaning of his life as he “comes to terms with the end of his life,” Bronfman says. “It’s a very nostalgic piece.”

Bronfman notes that the second movement is marked “Adagio religioso,” a reference to religion that is musically expressed through chorale writing, and the middle section of that movement draws inspiration from nature, such as bird songs the composer heard while working in a cabin in North Carolina.

See BRONFMAN, Festival Focus page 3

PHOTO BY DARIO ACOSTA

Yefim Bronfman will play with the Aspen Festival Orchestra at 4 pm this Sunday, August 4, in the Benedict Music Tent.

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Page 2 | Monday, July 29, 2013

FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

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Steven Stucky, Living Composer, Joins Program GRACE LYDEN

Festival Focus writer

When Steven Stucky talks about himself, he is so humble that you can almost forget he is one of the nation’s leading composers.

Stucky has been associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for more than twenty years and worked closely with conductor-composer Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Then-Music Director André Previn hired Stucky in 1988 after he was the only new composer to be featured in the orchestra’s previous season, and Stucky now holds the record for the longest relationship between a composer and an American orchestra.

“Previn had a pile of scores by American composers, and I think mine must have been on top,” he says. “I think it’s a little bit of an accident that I was hired there.”

Stucky is the only one who thinks his success has anything to do with accidents or luck, though.

This summer, Stucky was appointed to join the newly reconceived composition program at the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS), the Susan and Ford Schumann Center for Composition Studies, and he intends to help make Aspen the foremost summer composition program in the world. “I’m not sure we’re not there already, but one always wants to get better,” he says.

In 2005, Stucky won a Pulitzer Prize for music with his Second Concerto for Orchestra, and his first Concerto for Orchestra was one of two finalists for the 1989 prize. In addition to his work with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he has been teaching composition at Cornell

University since 1980.

“It’s very lucky I didn’t have to develop a Plan B because I didn’t have one,” Stucky says.

Stucky knew he wanted to be a composer when he was 3 years old. “My mom used to tell me that I was an abnormal kid who, instead of going out to play with the other kids, would stay in and listen to records,” he says.

His mother only had two records: Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony.

“So that was my repertoire,” he says. “And I somehow thought from an early age, ‘I’d like to do that, whatever that is.’ I really never had any other idea of myself, as far as I can remember.”

Stucky’s musical education took place primarily in the Texas public school system. School choir directors had their choruses sing his music at concerts in middle school and high school, and teachers offered him free lessons when his family could not afford to pay. One viola teacher gave Stucky lessons in exchange for mowing his lawn. Even as a young boy, Stucky says he made a point of “thinking like a composer” on a regular basis.

“Ideally, you compose every day,” he says. “You fit it in however you can. You compose on planes occasionally, or in hotel rooms.”

Stucky prefers to compose in the morning, but he has to work around a packed schedule of traveling and teaching. As an instructor, he never tries to make his students’ pieces sound like his own.

“The best thing is when you suggest an idea to a student and he or she goes away and comes back with

PHOTO COURTESY OF HOEBERMANN STUDIO

something completely different than you suggested,” he says. “It’s more fun to be a catalyst than a dictator.”

Luke Carlson, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the ten students in the AMFS composition program, says Stucky “knows how to listen to the inner workings of a student’s musical language.”

“He is supportive of our work and makes himself available for guidance when we feel in need,” Carlson says. “He is humble and very encouraging when talking about his journey as a musician, sharing the highs and lows as a reminder never to give up and to never stop composing the music we believe in.”

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FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

PUCCINI: Morality in Opera Continued from Festival Focus page 1

affect your voice,” she says. “The main purpose for me is to go out there and sing really well, not to go out there and crack. My goal is to make you cry, not for me to cry.”

Gianni Schicchi, in total contrast, will not leave the audience in tears.

The opera deals with a family whose actions are so devoid of moral awareness that they are hilarious. Berkeley calls it “a comic masterpiece.”

“Suor Angelica will come first because Schicchi is so ridiculous, nothing can follow it,” he says.

The show includes Puccini’s most wellknown aria, “O mio babbino caro.”

AOTC student Calvin Griffin, 24, will play the title role of Gianni Schicchi, a

character who is roped into an absurd plan to impersonate a dead man.

“Calvin has a wonderful voice and a wonderful stage presence,” Berkeley says. “He plays Schicchi with both a great sense of humor and a sense of danger.”

Griffin, who just finished his master’s degree at Rice University in Houston, is also a student of Stephen King. He has played a different role in Gianni Schicchi before but says performing the lead role is pure fun.

“This is what I love to do,” he says.

“I get to communicate with people and tell a story. I get to leave for a while and go into a different world and play. How many people get to go to work and play?”

The designers for both operas are YuHan Huang (scenery), Claire Aquila (costumes), and Lloyd Sobel (lighting).

Aspen Music Festival and School Box Office Hours

Monday, July 29, 2013 | Page 3

Festival Honors Kay and Matthew Bucksbaum

PHOTO COURTESY OF NORA FELLER

A sold-out Aspen Music Festival and School benefit this evening, Monday, July 29, will honor a couple whose sixty-year involvement with the Festival has been truly transformational. Cocktails and dinner will be served in the lovely new buildings, Edlis Neeson Hall and Scanlan Hall, in celebration of the opening of the Bucksbaum Campus.

Harris Concert Hall: 9 am through the intermission of the evening concert, daily.

Wheeler Opera House: 9 am–5 pm daily.

Garrick Ohlsson Plays Chopin, Beethoven BRONFMAN Continued from Festival Focus page 1

GRACE LYDEN

Festival Focus writer

Aspen audiences will have the opportunity to hear critically-acclaimed pianist Garrick Ohlsson, winner of the 1970 Chopin Competition and the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, completely in his element this week when he gives a recital of Chopin, Beethoven, and Schubert for the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS).

“This is really a dipped-in-gold classical recital,” says AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher.

Ohlsson will play at 8 pm on Thursday, August 1, in Harris Concert Hall.

The repertoire will show a dimension of Ohlsson that many in Aspen have not seen yet. Ohlsson has been to the Festival just twice before, and last year, he performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, a strong and powerful work that is famous for its difficulty.

“Garrick traverses the repertoire fluently,” says Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor. “He speaks Mozart and Beethoven just as well as he speaks Scriabin and Rachmaninoff. He has the ease with which to scale down or scale up his physical powers.”

This particular program will highlight Ohlsson’s lyrical genius, Santourian says.

The recital will open with what Ohlsson calls a “clever juxtaposition” of Beethoven and Schubert. He will start with Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in D major, “Pastoral,” and then continue with Schubert’s Fantasy in C major, the “Wanderer Fantasy.”

“The Beethoven Sonata is Beethoven in a very lyric, pastoral mood—Beethoven wearing Schubert’s coat,” Ohlsson says. In contrast, the Wanderer Fantasy is a stormy, heroic piece. “We think Schubert is this lyric composer, and yet here, he’s got Beethoven’s coat on.”

Ohlsson learned the Pastoral Sonata for the first time in 2005, when he was performing the entire cycle of Beethoven’s piano sonatas.

“For Beethoven, it’s very gentle,” Ohlsson says. “It’s pastoral in nature, not only in title. There’s no storm, no heroism, and that makes it warm and wonderful. Of course, it doesn’t go on for twenty minutes without a few clouds, but there are no storms.”

The Wanderer Fantasy, though, “storms the heavens and also the depths of despair,” Ohlsson says. “It is so orchestral and Lisztian in texture that he asks more than

ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

Above: Garrick Ohlsson performing in the 2012 Festival season.

the instrument can deliver or perhaps more than a single pianist can deliver. It really stretches you to the limit.”

The second half will include Chopin’s Fantasy in F minor and Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor. Both pieces are familiar material for Ohlsson, who has performed Chopin’s entire repertoire for piano.

“These works are war horses, and we don’t schedule war horses frivolously,” Santourian says. “We are looking to the master to inform us and illuminate us, because he has something to say about them. We should not take his interpretation for granted. There will be surprises.”

The program will also include music of Charles Griffes, a rarely heard American composer whom Ohlsson calls “an American impressionist.” He will play The Night Winds, Barcarolle, and The White Peacock and says all three are “incredibly graceful to the ears.”

“I’m very excited for our audience to get to know this composer and this music because they’re beautiful little gems that Garrick is going to inform us about,” Santourian says.

Throughout the concerto, there are also references to Hungarian folk music.

Harth-Bedoya calls this “the friendliest of the concertos that Bartók wrote.”

“It’s definitely not what you expect from Bartók,” Bronfman says. “That incredible, barbaric quality just doesn’t appear in this piece. It’s free of all those emotions and more about looking back.”

Bronfman says the challenges of the piece are similar to those of playing Mozart.

“Don’t underestimate this piece because it’s one of the most beautiful concertos,” he says. “This is the Mozart of Bartók. It has fewer notes than other Bartók compositions, but each note has a lot of meaning. Every note counts.”

Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor, says this performance will show Aspen audiences a new side of Bronfman.

“The stretch as a pianist comes from the colors he has to draw as opposed to power he has to provide for the concerto,” Santourian says. “It’s not a power concerto. It’s much more contemplative.”

Strauss’s Don Juan and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé will be similarly thought-provoking for the audience.

Harth-Bedoya says Don Juan is “a piece that reflects human circumstances, human emotions, and human feelings. And if you combine Don Juan and Daphnis, you have the greatest love stories of all.”

The program will also feature AMFS artist-faculty member Joaquin Valdepeñas playing Movements for a Clarinet Concerto, a work derived from sketches by Benjamin Britten and completed by Colin Matthews in 1990.

Britten starting writing the work for clarinetist Benny Goodman, but his sketches were impounded

by U.S. Customs in 1941. Britten was being watched by the FBI at the time, and the government feared the score contained a secret code. When the Freedom of Information Act finally returned the fragments to him, he was too busy writing his opera, Peter Grimes, to finish the clarinet concerto.

“It’s quite beautiful, and I’m very happy we’re giving it the light of day,” Santourian says.