Festivalfocusweek7

YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE

Supplement to The Aspen Times

Don’t miss Sylvia McNair tonight!

FESTIVAL FOCUS Monday, August 5, 2013

Vol 24, No 8

New Emerson Quartet Makes Aspen Début

Sylvia McNair Sings Gershwin, Sondheim, Rodgers, and More!

Monday, August 5 Harris Concert Hall (970) 925-9042 www.aspenmusicfestival.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF LISA MAZZUCCO

GRACE LYDEN

Festival Focus writer

British cellist Paul Watkins was in shock when he received a call a year and a half ago from the Emerson String Quartet inviting him to join the quartet for its 37th season.

Longtime member David Finckel had announced he was leaving at the end of the 2012–13 season, and Watkins would have to move across the Atlantic Ocean to take the job. But the opportunity to join one of America’s premier string quartets, whose recordings he had been listening to for decades, was one he could not turn down. He says he is still pinching himself.

“To sit on stage and realize I’m in the mid-

dle of one of Beethoven’s greatest pieces and playing with the Emerson Quartet, and then realizing I’m in the Emerson Quartet, makes me want to smile the whole time,” Watkins says. “It’s an absolute joy to play with these three gents.”

Watkins moved from London to New York City, and this week, he will visit Aspen for the first time. The new formation of the Emerson String Quartet will make its début appearance at the Aspen Music Festival and School this Thursday, August 8, in Harris Concert Hall. The concert is at 8 pm and features the music of Haydn, Beethoven, and Britten.

Philip Setzer, violinist and founding member of the Emerson String Quartet, says the

group is as thrilled to have Watkins playing with them as Watkins is to have joined.

“Paul’s been amazing,” Setzer says. “He’s incredibly quick in learning everything. He’s a great cellist and a great musician. So far it’s been even better than I could have imagined.” Watkins, who officially became a member of the quartet on May 11, has a tall order in front of him.

“Some of the pieces he’s playing for the first time, and we’re walking out there playing them for the thousandth time,” Setzer says. But “he’s voracious. He wants to learn as much of this music as possible.”

See EMERSON, Festival Focus page 3

Violin Star Sarah Chang Performs Friday GRACE LYDEN

Festival Focus writer

Sarah Chang, widely recognized as one of the greatest violinists in the world, has played almost every major work for violin and orchestra since her début with the New York Philharmonic at age 8. But when she returns this week to the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS), where she was first a student at age 6, Chang will play a piece she started learning just last year: Barber’s Violin Concerto.

The work already holds a special place for Chang.

“It is such a gorgeous concerto,” Chang says. “I am completely in love with this piece.”

Chang will play this work with the Aspen Chamber Symphony at 6 pm this Friday, August 9, in the Benedict Music Tent. James Feddeck, assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, will conduct the program that also includes Elgar’s Sea Pictures and Schumann’s

Symphony No. 3, “Rhenish.” The Elgar song cycle will feature mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, an AMFS alumna who recently won first place in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition and is a student of AMFS artistfaculty member Stephen King.

Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor, calls the Barber concerto “an iconic American concerto.”

“It doesn’t sound contemporary, and that’s what I love about it,” Chang says. “It’s fresh, and it’s new, and it’s definitely a modern piece, but at the same time, it’s totally melodic and harmonious and so easy to listen to. It has these themes that really stick with you.”

The first two movements of the work are lyrical, and then the third movement is “hell on wheels,” Chang says. Not only is it difficult for the soloist, but also for See CHANG, Festival Focus page 3

ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

Sarah Chang (above) will play with the Aspen Chamber Symphony this Friday, August 9, in the Benedict Music Tent.

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FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

Supplement to The Aspen Times

Emily Levin, Harp Fellow, Moves Listeners to Tears GRACE LYDEN

Festival Focus writer

Emily Levin, the 2013 harp fellow for the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS), briefly left Aspen a couple weeks ago to compete in the USA International Harp Competition in Bloomington, Indiana. One of the pieces she played was a Brahms intermezzo, originally written for piano, which she transcribed herself.

After her performance, a man came up to her and told her the piece had made him cry—music to the ears of the girl who believes music is about communication and emotional impact.

“To think that I could touch someone like that really meant a lot to me,” Levin says.

Levin received third place at the competition and was the highest ranked harpist from America. The winner was from the Netherlands, and the runner-up was from Italy. But Levin does not compete because she loves trophies and awards. She simply loves to perform.

“You don’t need words to communicate,” Levin says.

“The cliché that music is a universal language is really true. You can express yourself, and people understand what you’re trying to say, and then they take away things from it that you didn’t even fully realize.”

Levin, 22, grew up in Denver and graduated from Indiana University with a bachelor’s of music with distinction and honors history degree. This is her third summer in Aspen, and she is here on a Kay and Matthew Bucksbaum Endowed Fellowship. Levin will enter the Juilliard School this fall to study with AMFS artist-

faculty member Nancy Allen.

Levin chose Indiana University so that she could study with Susann McDonald, a 78-year-old legend in the world of classical harp who has nothing but good things to say about Levin.

“Emily Levin is a wonderfully gifted artist who plays with a rare combination of musical intensity and grace,” McDonald says. “She is also one of the most gracious and warm students I have ever known. She is always there to help a classmate or friend, even when she was coping with enormous pressures of work. She is highly dedicated, and I predict a great future for her.”

Levin has performed solo concertos with the Indiana University Symphony Orchestra, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Denver Philharmonic Orchestra, and Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. The Jerusalem Post commended Levin for her “straightforwardly communicative, emotionally intense expression.”

Levin started taking lessons when she was 5 years old, but she fell in love with the instrument when she was only 4. “My dad was telling me the story of David playing the harp in the Bible, and the next day, I told my mom I wanted to play the harp,” she says.

Unfortunately, Levin’s mother already had her daughter on a waiting list for Suzuki cello lessons and continued to take Levin to cello concerts for a year before finally relenting. “I guess I’m stubborn, because the entire time I refused to think about anything else,” Levin says with a laugh.

As Levin grew older, she knew she wanted to play pro-

PHOTO COURTESY OF ALAIN BARKER

fessionally. First, she wanted to be a veterinarian and a harpist. Then, a ballerina and a harpist. “I’ve always wanted to do music,” Levin says.

Levin’s family bought a minivan so that it could fit a harp, and when they moved to a different part of Denver, they picked a house without too many steps, so that the instrument could easily come in and out.

For Levin, the beauty of the harp makes all the extra efforts worthwhile. She loves the physical connection with the instrument as she plucks its strings. She loves the tone colors she can make by changing her touch ever so slightly. “I just love the instrument,” Levin says.

Levin performs with the Aspen Chamber Symphony at 6 pm, Fridays, in the Benedict Music Tent.

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Supplement to The Aspen Times

FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

Monday, August 5, 2013 | Page 3

CHANG: Barber Concerto Continued from Festival Focus page 1

the ensemble. “Every single person on stage needs to be on their toes,” she says.

Because there are so many dimensions to the orchestral accompaniment, Chang actually learned the piece from the orchestral score.

“It’s not enough for you to just know the solo line because that’s just a fraction of the entire piece,” she says. “With a piece that complicated, you need to know what every single instrument is doing.”

Chang started on a 1/16-sized violin at age 4 and entered the Juilliard School at age 5. She came to the Festival as a student for the first time when she was 6 years old, in 1987, but she had already been to Aspen every summer before that because her father was an AMFS student.

“I really do feel that I grew up in Aspen,” she says. “When it comes to the guest artists, the faculty, the students, the staff, everyone who comes to Aspen is the crèmede-la-crème of the music world, and I feel so fortunate that I was able to grow up in

that environment during the summers.”

Some of Chang’s happiest memories from childhood took place during her summers in Aspen.

There was the time Dorothy DeLay, renowned violin teacher at the AMFS and the Juilliard School, taught Chang how to drive in the parking lot of the Benedict Music Tent when Chang was only 13 years old.

There were the countless trips after every Festival concert to the Baskin Robbins that used to be next door to the downtown popcorn wagon. Chang’s parents always let her stay up past her bedtime for music.

Chang played her début performance with the Aspen Festival Orchestra at age 8, and she expects that some of the audience members on Sunday will have seen every performance she has ever played in Aspen.

“I truly believe they are the best audiences in the world,” she says. “They’re so loyal. There’s something very special in Aspen that pulls people back, and there’s something about the place that’s really magical.”

Aspen Music Festival and School Box Office Hours

ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

Above: Renowned violinist and AMFS alumna Sarah Chang performing during the 2010 season.

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

Wheeler Opera House: 9 am–5 pm daily.

Composer Showcase Highlights Program

EMERSON Continued from Festival Focus page 1

GRACE LYDEN

Festival Focus writer

Composing is often a private process, and audiences seldom have the opportunity to witness it firsthand. This Sunday morning, though, the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) will present a new event giving a behindthe-scenes look into the mysterious world of the classical composer.

This summer, the AMFS reconstituted its composition program, the Susan and Ford Schumann Center for Composition Studies, into an eight-week intensive that gives students the opportunity to study with six to eight highly accomplished, professional composers and work more closely with the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen (AACA) Orchestra.

The Composer Showcase this Sunday is a component of the new program and will feature four works by students in the program. The pieces will be performed by the AACA Orchestra.

Each performance will be followed by audience questions and feedback from a panel including AMFS Music Director Robert Spano, AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher (also a composer), Pulitzer-Prize-winning composer and AMFS composition faculty member Steven Stucky, and award-winning AMFS composition faculty member George Tsontakis.

Two guest composers will also be on the panel: John Harbison, winner of both a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship, and John Corigliano, who has also won a Pulitzer Prize, as well as the Academy Award for Best Original Score for the film, The Red Violin.

Fletcher says the event will spotlight an aspect of classical music that many audience members have yet to explore.

“We want to involve the whole Festival more in the work of composers,” Fletcher says. “Opera Scenes and our regular master classes give a window into the actual work of performing musicians, but composers’ work is

less understood.”

After each work is performed, members of the panel will make suggestions and even ask the students to try new approaches with the orchestration of each piece.

This portion, like a master class, will give the audience a glimpse into the revision process of classical composition.

Fletcher notes that even Beethoven “really struggled with the form his music would take” and says this element of the Showcase will challenge the notion that classical music is “carved in stone.”

Before this summer, the composition program was two half-sessions: one with master classes and one with private lessons. Now, the selective group of ten composers comes for eight weeks and receives both, as well as opportunities for their music to be read by the AACA Orchestra.

Stucky says the partnership with AACA is a key feature of the revamped program, as it allows the students to develop connections not only with faculty, but also future colleagues.

“One of the advantages of having the students here for eight weeks is that they form relationships with the AACA conductors and the young musician-performers that they can pursue much longer,” he says.

Stucky was affiliated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for more than twenty years and says the most transformative part of his own education occurred during orchestra rehearsals.

“It’s very easy to sit in isolation and have fanciful ideas about how things might go, but if you’re sitting in rehearsal two or three times a week for twenty years, watching how conductors interact with orchestras, how players interact with each other, how players learn about music, you become more realistic about writing for real people,” he says.

The Composer Showcase is free and will begin at 9 am this Sunday, August 11, in Harris Concert Hall.

Watkins says his favorite pieces that he is working on with the Emerson String Quartet are Beethoven’s three “Razumovsky” quartets, the first of which is on the Thursday program. Written at the commission of a Russian ambassador, the quartet contains references to Russian folk tunes, and Setzer says the first movement is “one of Beethoven’s sunniest works.”

The program will also include Haydn’s String Quartet in G minor, which is one of Haydn’s most experimental works, and Britten’s String Quartet No. 3. Both are not only new pieces for Watkins, but also new pieces for the quartet.

Watkins says he is “particularly pleased” about playing the Britten.

“He’s a composer who is very close to my heart, and that’s not just because I’m a British guy,” Watkins says. “I’ve always had an affinity for his music, and this quartet is a twentieth century masterpiece.”

The quartet was the last work Britten completed before he died.

“He knew he was dying; he knew this would probably be his last work,” Setzer says. “It’s a very beautiful, very powerful experience to hear this piece.”

For Setzer, it is also a powerful experience to be in Aspen. He first came to the Festival in 1968 as a student. He was with the Emerson String Quartet when they played the first notes in Harris Concert Hall. After so much history here, he is eager and ready to begin the quartet’s new era.

“We spent a year talking a lot about the past with David leaving, but now we’re looking ahead,” Setzer says. “We’re very happy, really couldn’t be happier with Paul, and I know he is, too. We’re looking forward to sharing that excitement with the audience and our friends.”