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April 25, 2024

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Music from Haydn to Mariachi on a busy weekend

Boulder Phil, Boulder Chorale and Takács Quartet 

By Peter Alexander April 25 at 10:05 p.m.

It’s spring and thoughts at the Boulder Philharmonic turn to romance.

Their next concert under music director Michael Butterman, titled in fact “Spring Romance,” features a fleet and evocative musical meditation on the season, D’un matin de printemps (Of a spring morning) by Lili Boulanger. 

Also on the program to be performed Saturday (April 27; details below) at Macky Auditorium, Spanish/Mallorcan violinist Francisco Fullana will perform Saint-Saëns’s Violin Concerto No. 3 with the orchestra. The program concludes with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5.

Lili Boulanger

The younger sister of the famous music teacher Nadia Boulanger, Lili died at the tragically young age of 24. The first female winner of the Prix de Rome composition prize, Lili showed precocious musical talent as young as four, when she accompanied her older sister to classes at the Paris Conservatoire. Long overshadowed by Nadia’s success, Lili and her music have become more prominent in recent years. 

Written in 1918, D’un matin de printemps was one of the last works she completed. It was written in versions for solo violin, flute, and piano, for piano trio, and for orchestra. The score’s origin as a solo piece is reflected in passages traded among first chair string players. 

A native of Mallorca, a Spanish island in the Mediterranean, Fullana won an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2018. A versatile performer, he performs both 19th-century Romantic repertoire with major orchestras world wide, and early music that he has played as artist-in-residence with the ensemble Apollo’s Fire.

Dedicated to and premiered by the Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate, Saint-Saëns’s Third Concerto is one of his most frequently performed pieces for violin and orchestra. Characterized by colorful themes and virtuoso flourishes, it has often been chosen by young violinists as a debut concerto. The most striking moment comes at the beginning of the finale, when the violinist plays a recitative-like passage before proceeding to an energetic main theme.

One of the composer’s most popular works, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony is also one of his most emotionally wrought symphonies. Often gripped with insecurity, Tchaikovsky initially thought the Fifth Symphony was a failure. “There is something repellant about it,” he wrote. After Brahms heard it and praised the symphony, however, Tchaikovsky wrote “I have started to love it again.”

The symphony’s dramatic progression has suggested to many listeners that there is an underlying story, or program. The composer, however, insisted that the Fifth—unlike the Fourth and Sixth symphonies—was not programmatic. Regardless of what any listener hears within the score’s drama, however, its emotional force has made it one of the most popular pieces in the orchestral repertoire.

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“Spring Romance”
Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, Michael Butterman, conductor
With Francisco Fullana, violin

  • Lili Boulanger: D’un matin de printemps (Of a spring morning)
  • Saint-Saëns: Violin Concerto No. 3
  • Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5

7 p.m. Saturday, April 27
Macky Auditorium

TICKETS

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While the Boulder Philharmonic is thinking about Spring, the Boulder Chorale and conductor Vicki Burrichter are musically off to Mexico for a Fiesta de las Luces (Festival of lights).

Their next program, to be presented Saturday and Sunday in Boulder and Longmont (April 27 and 28; see below) features Los Coyotes, an award-winning Mariachi Band from Uvalde, Texas, High School, as well as the Boulder Chorale’s children’s choir Bel Canto. The program is a celebration of Mexican culture in music, including both Mariachi music and other Mexican songs.

Los Coyotes, Uvalde High School, Texas

Founded in 1999, Los Coyotes won the Texas University Interscholastic League (UIL) Mariachi Championship in 2023. The outcome of the championship included a powerful feature article in Rolling Stone Magazine one year ago. The article brought out, among other things, the consoling impact of Mariachi music in Uvalde after the school shooting of 2022, and how a small program had grown into state champions under their current director, Albert Martinez.

As part of their visit to Colorado to perform with the Boulder Chorale, Los Coyotes have presented a workshop for local Mariachi students at Longmont’s Skyline High School, and have other appearances planned in addition to their concerts with the Boulder Chorale. Their full schedule is available HERE.

Each performance listed below will be preceded at 3:30 p.m. by a presentation by Burrichter and Martinez.

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Fiesta de las Luces: Songs of Mexico
Boulder Chorale, Vicki Burrichter, conductor
With Los Coyotes, Mariachi band from Uvalde, Texas, High School, Albert Martinez, director;  and the Boulder Children’s Choir Bel Canto

Program of Mariachi music and Mexican songs arranged for chorus

4 p.m. Saturday, April 27 at First United Methodist Church, Boulder
4 p.m. Sunday, April 28, at Vance Brand Civic Auditorium, Longmont

TICKETS

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The Takács Quartet wraps up their 2023–24 season of campus concerts Sunday and Monday (April 28 and 29; see details below). This was the quartet’s 49th season. 

The Sunday performance is sold out, but a few tickets are still available at the time of posting for Monday’s performance, and tickets are also available for the livestream of Sunday’s concert, which will be available online through Monday, May 6.

The program comes from the heart of the Classical/Romantic repertoire, opening with string quartets by Haydn and Schubert. To close out the concert, two additional CU music faculty members—violist Erika Eckert and cellist Meta Weiss—join the quartet to perform Brahms’s String Sextet in G major.

Most of Haydn’s string quartets were published in sets of six, which was the standard for most printed music at the time. Each published set generally has an opus number for the full set, with works numbered 1–6 within the set. The Quartet in D minor, op. 42, is an exception, however, as it stands alone as a single work issued as op. 42. 

It has been speculated that because it is a relatively simple quartet, Op. 42 might have been part of a planned set of three shorter works that were commissioned by two Spanish nobles, but never completed. It is in the standard four movements, in the order Andante ed innocentemente (walking speed and innocently), Minuet—Trio, Adagio and Presto.

Schubert’s String Quartet in B-flat was written in 1814, when the composer was only 17. It was never published during Schubert’s lifetime, so when it finally came out in 1863, it was given the late opus number of 168, even though it was an early work. Schubert wrote the quartet very quickly, completing the first movement in only four and a half hours, and the entire quartet in nine days. With such speed, it is not surprising that it is one of seven quartets Schubert completed in little more than a year.

Takács Quartet. Image by Amanda Tipton Photography.

All his life Brahms was wary of being compared to Beethoven. That likely why it took him 14 years to complete his first symphony, published when he was in his 40s, and why he destroyed his first 20 attempts at writing a string quartet. It is also sometimes speculated that he completed his two string sextets before his three quartets because they were not easily compared Beethoven’s masterful string quartets.

In any case, the Sextet in G major was written when Brahms was living comfortably near the resort town of Baden-Baden. The first movement contains a musical reference to the first name of the singer Agathe von Siebold, to whom Brahms had been briefly engaged some years before. Her significance to the composer is indicated by the fact that when he finished that movement, her wrote in a letter, “Here I have freed myself from my last love.”

Surprisingly, the Sextet was first performed in Boston in October 1866, a month before the European premiere in Zurich.

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Takács Quartet
With Erika Eckert, viola, and Meta Weiss, cello

  • Haydn: String Quartet in D minor, Op. 42
  • Schubert: String Quartet in B-flat Major, D112
  • Brahms: String Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36

4 p.m. Sunday, April 28 SOLD OUT
7:30 p.m. Monday, April 29

Grusin Music Hall, CU Imig Music Building

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April 24, 2024

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Seicento Baroque Ensemble explores music from the birth of the Baroque

Artistic Director Evanne Browne conducts her last program with Seicento

By Peter Alexander April 24 at 6:20 p.m.

Evanne Browne

Evanne Browne, the first and the fourth director of Boulder’s Seicento Baroque Ensemble, will perform some of her favorite music for her last performances with the group, Friday through Sunday in Denver, Boulder and Longmont (April 26–28; details below).

Browne has announced that she will retire as Seicento’s artistic director following the concerts, which mark the end of the ensemble’s current season. A search is under way for her successor.

Browne founded Seicento in 2011 then left the group when she moved to the east coast in 2017. Two conductors later, she returned to Colorado, and has led the group for the past two years. She says the program was planned in advance and not specifically chosen for her last concert with Seicento. It might well have been, though, as the early years of the Baroque are Browne’s specialty. 

“This is the era that I truly love—the early Italian Baroque,” she says. “This program is a passion of mine (and) was my specialty in my performing years.”

The music she is referring to comes from the period around 1600. The music of the Renaissance had mostly been written for choirs, but starting around 1600 music was written for solo singers with accompaniment of a bass line and simple chords played by keyboard or other stringed instruments. The emphasis in the solo singing was on expression of the text, with vocal lines that required extensive ornamentation.

“It is very virtuosic,” Browne explains. “It really is an approach that where, you have to fill in the blanks.”

To help promote understanding of the style, Browne has been working with four apprentice artists who will be featured on the program, sopranos Ann Jeffers and Andrea Weidemann, and mezzo-sopranos Emily Anderson and Gabrielle Razafinjatovo. 

“I’ve done a lot of that kind of music as a soloist,” Browne says. “It is very virtuosic, and my goal in having the apprentice artists program (was) to pass that knowledge on.”

Because much of the expression in the early Baroque was supplied by ornaments that were not written out, that was where Browne started with the apprentice artists. She started by teaching the most common ornaments, and suggested recordings they should listen to. “They learned the cadential ornaments [for endings of phrases],” she explains. “Then we started filling in thirds, and filling in fourths, and it was so much fun to see them go, ‘Oh!’”

William Simms with theorbo
cornettos

To make an interesting program for both solo artists and the Seciento chorus, Browne selected both solo pieces in a style called “monody”—ornamented solo voice with continuo accompaniment that will be sung by the apprentice artists—and music from the period for the full chorus, including madrigals and a mass setting by Frescobaldi. There are also instrumental pieces played by local performers on Baroque instruments and three guest artists—William Simms on theorbo (a large stringed lute that can play chordal accompaniments), Chuck Colburn on cornetto (a fingered wind instrument with a trumpet-like mouthpiece), and Webb Wiggins on harpsichord.

Browne singles out two portions of the program that bring together the Seicento chorus and the other performers. “Things that I think are spectacular are our set of variations on a tune, sometimes called ‘La Monica’,” she says. “This tune is anonymous, (and) appears in the early 1500s. It appears in France, it appears in Italy, it appears in England, and different composers take that same tune and set it for different instruments.”

Frescobaldi

The set is based around music by Frescobaldi that incorporates the tune within a choral mass. Seicento’s set begins with a unison performance of the tune, followed by the mass with different instrumental versions of the tune interspersed between the movements. “The Mass is gorgeous, it’s a double choir mass,“ Browne says. 

Between movements, she explains, “William Simms is going to play variations on theorbo that were written by Piccini, our cornet player is going to do ornamentation on his own that shows what a performer would have done at the time, and then the violins have a Sonata by Marini that’s also a set of variations. I love this set!”

The final piece on the program, Venga dal ciel migliore (Come from the best heaven) by Giovanni Rovetta, also brings performers together. “That’s a highlight for me because it brings the violins and the soloists and the choir and all the continuo instruments (together), and the cornetto player’s going to be playing. 

“It’s from that transitional time when a piece of music has choral sections that are punctuated by solo sections. The solo sections have all of the ornamentation, a lot of written out runs, and very challenging technical parts, and then the choir comes in and kind of repeats what they said.”

Browne emphasizes how the musical changes at the beginning of the Italian Baroque are still familiar to us today. “We’ve been calling this kind of a revolution in music,” she says. “This is when we change to the melody accompanied by harmonies, which is a big change from Renaissance music.”

Browne and Seicento at a performance earlier this season. Photo by Emily Bowman.

Ultimately, the importance of the “revolution” was in creating a texture and style of music that continues to this day. In fact, any time you turn on the radio you will hear a melody accompanied by harmonies, in popular songs, in jazz, in show tunes—almost anything you hear today, 

As Browne wrote in her press release, “A lead melody supported by harmony and a prominent bass line is still the primary format of today’s music, from classical to jazz to rock and roll.”

And it all started around 1600.

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“Prima Melodia: Birth of Baroque”
Seicento Baroque Ensemble, Evanne Browne, conductor
With sopranos Ann Jeffers and Andrea Weidemann, and mezzo-sopranos Emily Anderson and Gabrielle Razafinjatovo, Seicento apprentice artists.
William Simms, theorbo, Chuck Colburn, cornetto, and Webb Wiggins, harpsichord, guest artists

  • Monteverdi: Movete al mio bel suon
  • Sigismondo d’India: Cruda Amarilli
  • Cipriano de Rore: Ancor che col partire
  • Riccardo Rognoni: Ancor che col partire
  • Alessandro Grandi: Laetamini vos o caeli
  • Monteverdi: Quel sguardo sdegnosetto
  • Francesca Caccini: Maria, dolce Maria
  • Monteverdi: O come sei gentile
  • Girolamo Frescobaldi: Toccata Settima in D minor, Book 2

Variations on a Melody: “Aria della Monica”:

  • Anonymous: Madre, non mi far monaca (unison)
  • Frescobaldi: “Kyrie” from Missa sopra l’aria della Monica (chorus)
  • Alessandro Piccinini: Corrente sopra l’Alemana (theorbo)
  • Frescobaldi: “Gloria” from Missa sopra l’aria della Monica 
  • Une jeune fillette (embellishments improvised on cornetto)
  • Frescobaldi: “Sanctus” and “Agnus Dei” from Missa sopra l’aria della Monica
  • Biagio Marini: “Sonata sopra la Monaca” (two violins and continuo)
  • Luzzasco Luzzaschi: Toccata in e minor
  • —O dolcezz’ amarissime d’amore
  • Giulio Caccini: Amor, io parto
  • Nicolò Corradini: Spargite flores
  • Giovanni Rovetta: Venga dal ciel migliore

7:30 p.m. Friday, April 26, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Denver
7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 27, Mountain View Methodist Church, Boulder
3 p.m. Sunday, April 28, United Church of Christ, Longmont

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April 23, 2024

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CU Eklund Opera presents “American Stories by American Women”

Two short, supernatural operas by Amy Beach and Missy Mazzoli

By Peter Alexander April 23 at 6:30 p.m.

The CU Eklund Opera Program offers American history this weekend, seen through a surreal and supernatural lens.

Two striking operas by American women, both based on important moments in history, form a double bill that will be performed Thursday through Sunday at the Music Theatre in the Imig Music Building (April 25–28; details below). Presented together under the title “American Stories by American Women,” they are Cabildo by Amy Beach (1867–1944) and Proving Up by the living composer Missy Mazzoli. In addition to their historical basis, both operas are ghost stories, but the similarities end there. 

Cabildo is located in New Orleans during the War of 1812 and features the pirate Pierre Lafitte (brother of Jean) and his true love, Lady Valerie, both of whom appear in a dream. In a totally different vein, Proving Up takes place on the harsh Nebraska frontier shortly after the homestead act of 1862, where the fictional Zegner family is struggling to survive while haunted by their dead daughters.

Guest stage director Sara E. Widzer

The operas will be directed by guest director Sara E. Widzer, a member of the faculty at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute and intimacy director and consent consultant for Los Angeles Opera. She has directed opera throughout the United States as well as for companies in Asia. CU faculty member Nicholas Carthy will conduct.

The program originated when Carthy discovered that Amy Beach—a composer that he admires—had written an opera. It was only in manuscript, but he  eventually got a copy. A printed edition has now been published, which Carthy is editing based on the manuscript.

“Beach always wanted to write an opera, but she was afraid of it never being performed because (operatic) forces are too big,” Carthy says. “So she wrote a deliberately small opera, seven people (in the orchestra). And it still didn’t get performed.”

The first performance took place in 1949, four years after Beach’s death. After another 40 years, it finally became known and was produced by Central City Opera in 2017. 

Amy Beach. Photographer: Bachrach

“She was such a fascinating creature,” Carthy says of Beach. “She was an absolute feminist and a suffragette, and she was a member of the Boston Six (a group of composers around the turn of the 20th century), but her husband said she had to be a Boston matriarch and so she couldn’t teach, and she only performed twice a year.”

At that time she was known as “Mrs. H.H.A. Beach.” After her husband died in 1910, she began performing and publishing as “Amy Beach,” and had a substantial career as a pianist. Among her better known works are her Piano Concerto and her “Gaelic” Symphony. 

The plot of Cabildo revolves around the pirate Pierre Lafitte and his participation in the Battle of New Orleans. Lafitte fought on the side of major general (later President) Andrew Jackson, for which Lafitte was pardoned. In the opera, Lafitte is mysteriously freed from prison, perhaps by Valerie’s ghost who appears in a dream, making their love the central theme of the story.

As Widzer explains, “at the end of the opera, Mary (the character who dreams of Lafitte and Valerie) says, ‘We don’t have America because of the War of 1812 and General Jackson. We have America because of the importance of love’.”

Switching from New Orleans to the Nebraska frontier of the 1860s, Mazzoli’s opera is the bleak tale of a family trying to establish a homestead under a law that required a sod house, five years of successful harvests and a glass window in order to claim their land. Based on a short story by  Karen Russell, the opera dramatizes the struggles of the Zegner family to “prove up” and receive their land grant. 

Missy Mazzoli at the Kennedy Center for the premiere of Proving Up. Photo by Ser Amantio di Nicolao.

In the opera, the glass window is both a powerful symbol and a central dramatic element. In reality, the homestead act resulted in many people being displaced from the land. “Mazzoli wrote the opera in repose to the housing crisis of 2008,” Widzer explains. 

“When you look at it through the sense of loss and uncertainty—it’s not just a housing crisis. It’s the crisis of 2008 because we lost so many arts organizations and so many people trying to figure out how to save their lives.”

“The music is absolutely fantastic,” Carthy says. “What the music really succeeds in doing is creating a past, a present and a future at the same time. The music has a timelessness, and it has episodes where it comes into focus.”

In her director’s role Widzer sees characters in the music beyond the singers. “We have weather,” she says. “Mazzoli composes weather, Mazzoli composes time. Mazzoli composes the supernatural, loss, excitement.”

While Cabildo has a set that refers to a specific place—New Orleans—the set and staging for Proving Up are abstract. “(The opera) travels through so many locations, to do a traditional set wouldn’t make sense. It blurs reality past, present, supernatural. And the family is so disconnected in their attempt to be whole it just pulls farther and farther apart.”

A common element that ties the production to the Nebraska frontier, where pioneers lived in sod houses, is dirt. “We’re dealing with dirt,” Widzer says. “Sometimes, it’s dust in our show, sometimes it’s the grave of the daughters, sometimes it’s on people’s faces.”

The obvious differences in the two operas give the student singers opportunities to explore different kinds of music and drama. “One of the most important things that we’re always doing, is that you see how the students develop, and how they take on incredibly difficult things,” Carthy says.

“They change the drama and the drama changes them—which is the way it should be.”

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“American Stories by American Women”
CU College of Music Eklund Opera Program
Nicholas Carthy, music director, and Sara E. Widzer, guest stage director

  • Amy Beach: Cabildo
  • Missy Mazzoli: Proving Up

7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 25, Friday, April 26 and Saturday, April 27
2 p.m. Sunday, April 28
Music Theater, Imig Music Building

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April 22, 2024

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Pro Musica Colorado reschedules final concert

Farewell concert for conductor Cynthia Katsarelism orchestra will be Sunday, May 5

By Peter Alexander May 22 at 9:50 a.m.

The farewell concert for the Colorado Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra and conductor Cynthia Katsarelis, originally scheduled for April 6 and postponed by weather and a power outage, has been rescheduled.

The concert will take place at Mountain View Methodist Church in Boulder at 4 p.m. Sunday, May 5. The soloist will be guitarist Nicoló Spera. The program will be the same as originally announced (see below). You may read the full original story HERE.

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“Nicolò!”
Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra, Cynthia Katsarelis, conductor
With Nicolò Spera, guitar

  • Jessie Montgomery: Starburst
  • Joaquin Rodrigo: Fantasía para un gentilhombre (Fantasy for a gentleman)
  • Louise Farrenc: Symphony No. 3 in G Minor

4 p.m. Sunday, May 5
Mountain View Methodist Church, 355 Ponca Place, Boulder

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April 17, 2024

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Grace Notes: Short Operas and Beethoven Symphonies

Boulder Opera’s “Operatizers,” Boulder and Longmont symphonies’ Beethoven 3 and 9

By Peter Alexander April 17 at 4:30 p.m.

The Boulder Symphony will present Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3—known as the “Eroica”—along with Grieg’s Piano Concerto and the “Lullaby” for string orchestra by George Gershwin Friday evening (7:30 p.m. April 19; details below).

Devin Patrick Hughes will conduct. Soloist for the Grieg Concerto will be Canadian pianist Lorraine Min, who has toured and performed extensively in North and South America, Europe and Asia. 

Originally written as a composition exercise on the piano, Gershwin’s “Lullaby” was arranged by the composer for string quartet. He later incorporated the tune into his 1922 musical, Blue Monday. The show was not a success, and it was not until 1967 that it became better known in performances by the Juilliard String Quartet. Today, performances by full orchestral string sections are common.

Grieg composed his Piano Concerto over the summer of 1868, during a vacation in the village of Søllerød, now part of København, Denmark. Although Grieg was never fully satisfied with the score, the concerto has remained one of his most popular pieces. A review of the premiere praised the concerto as “all Norway in its infinite variety and unity,” and fancifully described the  second movement as “a lonely mountain-girt tarn that lies dreaming of infinity.”

Beethoven’s Third Symphony is one of those musical works that are often described as a turning point in music history. It is nearly twice as long as any previous symphony, and indeed heroic in scope and feeling.

Beethoven’s title page to his Third Symphony, with “Bonaparte” forcefully scratched out

When he wrote it, Beethoven famously titled the symphony “Bonaparte” in honor of Napoleon, but scratched out the dedication in his manuscript when the French general crowned himself emperor. It was published in 1806 with the title “Heroic Symphony . . . composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.”

In place of a traditional slow introduction, Beethoven starts the symphony with two brash chords and spins out a lengthy movement starting with only the notes of the tonic E-flat chord. The second movement is an intense funeral march, a much more dramatic and powerful movement than his audience would have expected. In place of the normal minuet, Beethoven composed a rambunctious scherzo. 

In these first three movement, the realm of the symphony has been expanded. The finale is more typical of the times, a set of variations on a theme from Beethoven’s ballet The Creatures of Prometheus. But even here, the number of variations, a fugue on the theme and a section of development represent an extension beyond the normal variation finale of the time. Again, Beethoven expanded the scope of the symphony.

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Boulder Symphony, Devin Patrick Hughes, conductor
With Lorraine Min, piano

  • Gershwin: “Lullaby” for string orchestra
  • Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor
  • Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, op. 55 (“Eroica”)

7:30 p.m. Friday, April 19
Grace Commons Church

TICKETS

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Boulder Opera opens the door on “North American storytelling” with “Operatizers,” a program of five short operas by composers from American master Samuel Barber to contemporary operatic star composer Jake Heggie to Ft. Collins-based composer/songwriter Ilan Blanck.

Subjects of the opera include a parody of television soap operas to various meditations on modern love. Performances Saturday and Sunday (7 p.m. April 20 and 3 p.m. April 21 at the Diary Arts Center) will feature a “Maestro’s Reception” at intermission where audience members can meet cast members and directors and ask questions about the productions. 

Composer Ilan Blanck

The five operas and their plots are described on the Boulder Opera Web page:

  • Avow by Mark Adamo imagines a conflicted bride, her avid mother, the haunted groom, the ghost of his father, and a celebrant who really should make better efforts to remember which ceremony he’s performing.
  • At the Statue of Venus by Jake Heggie tells the story of an attractive woman waiting in a museum by the statue of the goddess of love to meet a man she has never seen before. Will he like her? Will she like him? We all know Mr. Right doesn’t exist – or does he?
  • A Hand of Bridge by Samuel Barber consists of two unhappily married couples playing a hand of bridge, during which each character has a brief aria expressing his or her inner desires.
  • Gallantry by Douglas Moore is parody of hospital soap operas with commercial interruptions.
  • Spare Room with a Shag Rug by lan Blanck is written in English and Spanish, plus a touch of Yiddish, paying homage to the composer’s own Mexican-Jewish heritage.

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“Operatizers”
Boulder Opera Company

  • Mark Adamo: Avow
  • Jake Heggie: At the Statue of Venus
  • Samuel Barber: A Hand of Bridge
  • Douglas Moore: Gallantry
  • Ilan Blanck: Spare Room with a Shag Rug

7 p.m. Saturday, April 20
3 p.m. Sunday, April 21
Dairy Arts Center

TICKETS, including add-on tickets for the Maestro’s Reception at intermission

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The Longmont Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and conductor Elliot Moore conclude their cycle of all nine Beethoven symphonies Saturday (7 p.m. Vance Brand Civic Auditorium; details below) with the massive Ninth Symphony, one of the symphonic icons of the 19th century.

The Longmont Chorale joins the LSO for this performance. Soloists will be soprano Dawna Rae Warren, mezzo-soprano Gloria Palermo, tenor Javier Abreu and bass-baritone Michael Leyte-Vidal. The LSO has performed the full Beethoven cycle over the past five seasons, starting in April, 2018.

Vaughan Williams wrote his Serenade to Music, based on a text by Shakespeare, as a tribute to conductor Henry Wood. Scored for orchestra and 16 vocal soloists, it was later arranged for orchestra with four soloists and chorus. Since the first performance in 1938, it has been loved by singers and audiences both for the sheer beauty of the vocal writing and the harmonies.

Elliot Moore

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the first by a major composer with chorus in addition to orchestra, is one of the most performed and most loved works in the classical repertoire. It was composed in 1822-24, and first performed in Vienna May 7, 1824. 

The orchestra was led by Austrian composer and violinist Michael Umlauf with Beethoven, stone deaf by that time, standing at his side. In one famous anecdote, the composer was unable to hear the cheers of the audience at the end of the performance and the alto soloist, Caroline Ungar, had to take him by the hand and turn him around to see the enthusiasm of the listeners.

The choral last movement uses a text by German poet Friedrich Schiller that celebrates the brotherhood of men: “All men shall become brothers, wherever the gentle wings [of joy] hover. . . . Every creature drinks in joy at nature’s breast.” Because of this message of universal love, the symphony has been performed for many special occasions in history, including the original opening Wagner’s Bayreuth Festspielhaus (festival hall) and for its reopening after World War II, in 1989 to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall, and for the opening of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Japan, and other ceremonial occasions.

Performances of the Ninth Symphony are almost always considered special occasions, and almost always sell out. In addition to its popularity, the symphony has influenced composers from Dvořák to Bartók, and especially the symphonies by the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner.

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Beethoven Cycle: Symphony No. 9
Longmont Symphony, Elliot Moore, conductor
With the Longmont Chorale, Nathan Wubbena, conductor 
Soprano Dawna Rae Warren, mezzo-soprano Gloria Palermo, tenor Javier Abreu and bass-baritone Michael Leyte-Vidal

  • Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music
  • Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D minor (“Choral”)

7 p.m. Saturday, April 20
Vance Brand Civic Auditorium

TICKETS (Note: This concert is close to selling out. Availability of tickets cannot be guaranteed.)

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April 15, 2024

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Pro Musica Colorado will reschedule ‘farewell concert’

Please note that the final concert by the Colorado Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra with conductor Cynthia Katsarelis and guest soloist Nicolò Spera, originally scheduled for April 6, was postponed due to inclement weather and the widespread power outage on that date. The concert will be rescheduled pending the availability of the musicians and the venue. The new date will be announced as soon as arrangements have been confirmed.

You may read the original story here. This is the full program for the concert:

“Nicolò!”
Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra, Cynthia Katsarelis, conductor
With Nicolò Spera, guitar

  • Jessie Montgomery: Starburst
  • Joaquin Rodrigo: Fantasía para un gentilhombre (Fantasy for a gentleman)
  • Louise Farrenc: Symphony No. 3 in G Minor
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April 10, 2024

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Ars Nova features guest composer and conductor

Joan Szymko will lead her own works in Boulder and Cherry Hills Village

By Peter Alexander April 10 at 5:15 p.m.

Composer Joan Szymko has set to music poems by several of the leading poets of our times, including Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry. 

A conductor as well as composer, Szymko will lead Boulder’s Ars Nova Singers in performing her own works Friday in Boulder and Saturday in Cherry Hills Village (7:30 p.m. April 12 and 13; details below).

Joan Szymko

As a composer, Szymko does not limit her choice of texts to widely honored, prize-winning poets. As she herself points out, she also has set poems from the middle ages and by grade school students. Stressing the breadth of her inspiration, she has written, “My goal is to compose music that invites the audience in while challenging the notion that accessibility and musical integrity are incompatible concepts. 

“I have composed choral music to be performed with actors, poets, Taiko drummers, modern dancers, aerialists and accordion players. I have set texts by fourth graders and Pulitzer Prize winners, medieval mystics and contemporary poets. I am drawn to texts that invoke divine grace, speak to the universal yearning for good and that nurture a compassionate heart.”

Szymko grew up in Chicago and studied choral music at the Chicago Musical College at Roosevelt University and the University of Illinois at Urbana. She currently lives in Portland, Ore., where she served on the choral music faculty at Portland State University. She recently retired as artistic director of Portland’s Aurora Chorus, and holds workshops with choirs around the United States and abroad.

Her works have been commissioned by groups ranging from professional choruses to church and community choirs. They have been published by Oxford University Press, Walton Music, Roger Dean Publishing, and other leading publishers of choral music. 

The program that Ars Nova will present features Szymko’s “It is Happiness,” based on poems by Oliver including the much loved “Wild Geese,” as well as Berry’s popular “Peace of Wild Things,” a text by Teresa of Avila, and other diverse sources.

# # # # #

“Bloom”
Ars Nova Singers, Joan Szymko, guest conductor
With the CU Treble Choir and instrumental soloists

  • Joan Szymko: Vivos Voco (I call out to the living; text by Julian of Norwich)
  • —“How Did the Rose” (text by Kim Stafford)
  • —Lo Lefached  (Be not afraid; text by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov)
  • —Nada te turbe (Let nothing disturb you; text by Teresa of Ávila)
  • —Invitation to Dance  (texts by Hafiz, adapted by Daniel Ladinsky)
  • —Where is the Door to the Tavern?
  • —Until
  • —The God Who Only Knows Four Words
  • —Ubi Caritas (Where charity is)
  • —It is Happiness (poetry by Mary Oliver)
  • —Be It Therefore Resolved (poetry by Kim Stafford)
  • —The Peace of Wild Things (poetry by Wendell Berry)
  • —Look Out (poetry by Wendell Berry)
  • —It Takes a Village
  • —We are All Bound Up Together (text by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper)

7:30 p.m. Friday, April 12
First United Methodist Church, Boulder

7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 13
Bethany Lutheran Church, Cherry Hills Village

TICKETS including livestream of Saturday’s performance

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April 2, 2024

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Works with piano, cello and clarinet on chamber program

Mini-Chamber 4 with pianist Hsing-ay Hsu and BCO members

By Peter Alexander April 2 at 11 a.m.

The Boulder Chamber Orchestra (BCO) will present their 2023-24 artist in residence, pianist Hsing-ay Hsu, performing with members of the orchestra on a mini-chamber concert Saturday (8 p.m. April 6; details below).

Pianist Hsing-ay Hsu

The performance, titled “Mixed Timbres,” will be the fourth and final mini-chamber concert of the 2023-24 season. The program features works for piano with clarinet and cello, with cellist Chas Bernard and clarinetist Kellan Toohey from the orchestra.

Beethoven’s Op. 11 is the earliest work on the program, and one of the earliest works for the combination of piano, clarinet and cello. It is sometimes known as the “Gassenhauer Trio,” taken from the popularity of the theme that Beethoven uses for variations in the final movement. In Vienna, a Gassenhauer (from Gasse, an alleyway) referred to a simple song that was so popular that it was heard all over town. 

The theme Beethoven used was taken from a popular music theater work, L’amor marinaro (Seafaring love) by Joseph Weigl. The same tune was used for variations by several other composers, including Paganini and Johann Nepomuk Hummel.

Brahms’s Trio op. 114 is one of four chamber works the composer wrote for clarinet in the last decade of his life. All were written for the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, whose playing inspired Brahms to resume composing after he had planned to stop writing new pieces. Brahms’s admiration for Mühlfeld’s playing was reflected in the comment of one of the composer’s friends who wrote that in the Trio, “it is as though the instruments were in love with each other.”

Like the Trio of Brahms, Fauré’s D minor Trio was one of his last compositions. Although Fauré originally planned the Trio for piano, clarinet and cello, it was published as a traditional piano trio, with violin in place of the clarinet. In that form it was premiered in 1922 by the leading piano trio of the time, that of Alfred Cortot, Jacques Thibaud and Pablo Casals. The BCO Mini-Chamber performance of the first movement restores the instrumentation that Fauré first imagined for the trio.

Emily Rutherford’s “Morning Dance” for piano, clarinet and cello was commissioned by BCO clarinetist Kellan Toohey in 2017. A native of Colorado, Rutherford is a graduate of Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Calif., and the Longy School of Music in Los Angeles. Her works have been performed in California and by Denver’s Stratus Chamber Orchestra.

# # # # #

“Mixed Timbres,” BCO Mini-Chamber 4
Hsing-ay Hsu, piano, Chas Bernard, cello, and Kellan Toohey, clarinet

  • Faure: Trio in D minor, I. Allegro ma non troppo 
  • Beethoven: Trio in B-flat for piano, clarinet and cello, op. 11
  • Brahms: Trio in A minor for piano, clarinet and cello op. 114
  • Emily Rutherford: “Morning Dance” (2017)

8 p.m. Saturday, April 6
Boulder Seventh-Day Adventist Church, 345 Mapleton Ave.

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Colorado Pro Musica presents farewell concert Saturday

NOW RESCHEDULED for 4 p.m. Sunday, May 5

By Peter Alexander April 2 at 10 a.m.

Boulder will have one less orchestra after this weekend.

Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra strings with conductor Cynthia Katsarelis. Photo by Glenn Ross.

The Colorado Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra will play their last concert Saturday (7:30 p.m. April 6; details below), after 17 years of steadfast leadership from conductor and artistic director Cynthia Katsarelis. Katsarelis recently moved from Colorado to South Bend, Ind., where she is on the faculty of Sacred Music at Notre Dame University.

With Katsarelis, Pro Musica’s philosophy has been to to introduce composers from under-represented groups while featuring local soloists. In keeping with this approach, the final program will present two works by women—Starburst by living composer Jessie Montgomery to open the concert, and the Symphony No. 3 by 19th-century French composer Louise Farrenc—and a soloist from the CU faculty, guitarist Nicolò Spera playing the Fantasía para un gentilhombre (Fantasy for a gentleman) by Joaquin Rodrigo.

Montgomery’s Starburst is a short but colorful piece for strings composed in 2012 that has become a popular concert opener. The composer just won a Grammy for her Rounds for piano and orchestra, in a recording by pianist Awadagin Pratt and the ensemble A Far Cry. Pratt will perform Rounds at the Colorado Music Festival this summer (July 25 and 26 at Chautauqua Auditorium).

“It’s become a canonic piece, and it’s a really fabulous opener,” Katsarelis says of Starburst. Pro Musica played it once before, but “it’s good to repeat repertoire sometime,” she says, “especially if it’s right for the program and to highlight the Grammy win.”

 Rodrigo wrote his Fantasía para un gentilhombre in 1954 for the celebrated guitarist Andres Segovia, who gave the premiere in 1958. It has four movements based on dances written for guitar by the 17th-century Spanish composer Gaspar Sanz. 

Nicolò Spera

It has become one of the best known concertos for classical guitar. Katsarelis and Spera selected it for this concert, in part because she feels that it fits well with Ferrenc’s symphony. “When you’re working with a soloist, you want to give them the choice and then see whether it fits what you are already thinking,” she explains. 

“It works really well with Ferrenc because it is a neo-classical work built on 17th-century pieces,” Katsarelis says. “Ferrenc was an extremely well versed composer, and another part of her was involved in reviving early music for keyboard. Her husband was a publisher, and together they did like 15 volumes of treasures for the keyboard, all stuff that wasn’t being played at the time.”

Ferrenc studied both piano and composition in Paris. A successful concert pianist, she was appointed professor of piano at the Paris Conservatory in 1852, the only woman to hold that rank in the 19th century. Known as an excellent teacher, she had many students who had distinguished careers.

As a composer, she stuck to the traditional forms for the symphony, of which she wrote three, and other genres. “She had modern sensibilities, like Mendelssohn and Schumann,” Katsarelis says, but “she doesn’t go the way of program music. Even though she doesn’t write programs, her themes seem to be kind of epic.”

The symphony is in four movements, following the standard pattern of the 19th century: An opening fast movement in sonata form, followed by a slow movement, a scherzo and a finale. 

“The first movement has two introductions, a slow one that introduces melodic and harmonic ideas, and then a fast introduction whose main role is to build up the energy to the exposition,” Katsarelis says. “The first theme has the feel of a rustic dance, and the second major theme is like a lyrical waltz.

Cynthia Katsarelis. Photo by
Glenn Ross.

“The second movement is what you expect, a slow movement (with) long gorgeous melodies. The third movement is a scherzo, fast and kind of breathless. While it’s moving it’s going through really distant keys, but that gives it the sheen of color, and then the finale has soaring melodies.”

Now settled in South Bend, Katsarelis has already started to build bridges with the local musical community. She has already conducted the South Bend Symphony in a concert with soloists from Notre Dame, and she has plans to continue that collaboration. Looking ahead, “we have aspirations for some pretty big stuff,” she says of her work the the orchestra. “We agreed that we had similar aspirations, and everybody wants more, so that’s really great.”

In the meantime, Saturday’s concert will be a farewell for Boulder for Katsarelis and the Pro Musica. “The plan was to have a really great season and to end with a bang and a party, and to be really proud of everything we accomplished,” Katsarelis says. “I’ll miss the musicians in the orchestra. I’ll miss the patrons and the donors, and the whole vibe of discovery that we always had. 

“My heart is full of gratitude. I want it to be a happy farewell, with happy memories of all that we accomplished.”

* * * * *

“Nicolò!”
Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra, Cynthia Katsarelis, conductor
With Nicolò Spera, guitar

  • Jessie Montgomery: StarburstJoaquin
  • Rodrigo: Fantasía para un gentilhombre (Fantasy for a gentleman)
  • Louise Farrenc: Symphony No. 3 in G Minor

NOW RESCHEDULED:
4 p.m. Sunday, May 5
Mountain View Methodist Church, 355 Ponca Place, Boulder

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March 22, 2024

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Alison Moritz looks back and ahead

New artistic director at Central City has experience and hopes for CCO

By Peter Alexander March 22 at 6:20 p.m.

Alison Moritz’s career in opera started with a hot-air balloon.

The new artistic director of Central City Opera (CCO), Moritz saw her first opera in St. Louis when she was nine. It was Offenbach’s La belle Hélène, a very Parisian spoof of the the story of Helen of Troy. At nine, the innuendo did not make much of an impression. 

“I think the sexual politics went over my head,” she says. “I was just impressed by the hot-air balloon onstage!”

Alison Moritz: Destined for opera?

Balloon or no balloon, she might have been destined for a career in opera. That first experience really clicked with someone who says she was “an indoor kid [who] loved everything artistic. I was really obsessed with story and picture and music.”

Her first ambition was to be a film animator. “I did see an opera when I was nine, and the whole world just made sense to me,” she explains. “It just felt so magical and exceptional, but also incredibly familiar.”

That early sense of familiarity soon led to a near obsession with opera. “When I was in 8th grade I saw my first production of Traviata and I went back and saw it five times! My parents went with me to the first two performances, and after that they would drop me off in the parking lot and say, ’See you three and a half hours.’ 

“I used to say I had to work in opera because I couldn’t afford to see opera as much as I wanted to. I had to find a way to sit in—I never get tired of it.”

Her path into directing was not something that she saw from the outset, however. “Initially, it was not clear what my contribution [to opera] could be,” she says. “When you’re not a singer, at the time I was growing up, there were fewer roles for women in production, there were fewer roles for women in leadership.”

Moritz attended Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied music and art history. She did some work in art administration, and production work backstage, but she thought that might be a hobby and she would work in another field. An internship with Opera America gave her insight into the American opera scene, and while living in New York she attended all the opera and theater that she could afford in standing room.

A turning point came when a friend who went to some performances with her, but did not work in opera, told Moritz, “The way you think about this is someone’s job.”

“That was the first time that I thought maybe I could do this,” she says. “I was really lucky—I went back to school to get  a degree in opera stage direction at the Eastman School of Music. When I arrived there I knew a lot about opera but I had very little experience. And I’m proudly grateful that they saw potential in me, and fostered that.”

From Eastman her career as a stage director has only grown. Today, she can claim directing credits from Lyric Opera of Kansas City, the Glimmerglass Festival, Opera Omaha, Ravinia, Tanglewood, Portland Opera and Opera Colorado, among many others. 

Moritz says that she approaches her work principally through the music. “My job as a director is to really help contemporary audiences see what’s so special about the music,” she says. “It’s really key for the director to bring the story and the visuals and the relationships amongst people and ideas together, so that we’re making a case for these beautiful documents. That’s always been my approach.”

She believes that growing up a Midwesterner—“in a flyover state,” she says—affects her perspective on opera. “I’ve never had the point of view that the only great opera in America is in the largest coastal companies. They’re incredibly important, but to be able to produce things locally and regionally I think is important, and fundamental to what makes Central City such an exciting place to work and to watch opera.

“The other Midwestern thing about me is I’ve always been creative, but through the lens of pragmatism. I know the cost of wood when we’re building the set. We’ve got to make some nitty-gritty decisions in order to be able to make great art. The Midwesterner in me is always looking to see how long will this take to rehearse, how many days do we need to do X, Y and Z, and that keeps me pretty grounded.”

For the coming summer, Moritz already has long established engagements at Cincinnati and Glimerglass in upstate New York, but after this year her new job will mean she has to forego summer directing jobs outside Central City. “This year there’s a little bit of a time-share, [but] I’m really confident that I’ll be able to spend meaningful time with the audiences at the top of the mountain,” she says. “For future seasons, I will be at Central City the entire summer.”

Central City Opera House. Photo by Ashraf Sewailam.

Looking ahead, Mortiz envisions creating cooperative relationships with other opera companies where she might have directing work outside of the Central City season. “I’m excited about the prospect of creating more co-productions [with other companies] and being able to bring the best of American opera here to Central City,” she says. “I’m really optimistic and excited about the future. I’m really happy to have my boots on the ground and to get to work. 

“We’re all very excited to re-imagine and to dream and continue creating a great atmosphere at Central City for both artists and audiences.”

NOTE: Information Central City Opera’s summer 2024 festival season can be found on the CCO Web page.