Teachers Association Concerto competition winners will perform with BCO Saturday
By Peter Alexander May 8 at 3:30 p.m.
The Boulder Chamber Orchestra (BCO) will present winners of the 2024 Colorado Music Teachers Association (CMSTA) Concerto Competition on a concert program Saturday (May 11; details below).
Conductor Bahman Saless with the Boulder Chamber Orchestra
The winners in four categories—Piano Elementary, Piano Junior, Piano Senior, and Percussion and Winds—will each play the concerto movement that was required for the competition, with the orchestra (see the concert program below). The BCO music director, Bahman Saless, will conduct.
An annual event, the CMSTA Concerto Competition has three piano categories that are held every year. There are vocal and instrumental categories in alternating years: strings and voice in odd-numbered years, and winds/percussion (one category) in even-numbered years. The competition is for pre-college students up to age 19.
The 2024 competition was held in March, with videos submitted online. A panel of three judges—Saless; Hye-Jung Hong, piano faculty from Missouri State University; and Jason Shafer, principal clarinet of the Colorado Symphony—selected the winners.
The four categories and winners are: —Piano, elementary: Aiden Chan —Piano, junior: Bobby Yuan —Piano, senior: Mercedes Maeda —Percussion and winds: Alexander Zhao, bassoon
The BCO has set up an online auction to raise funds for the concert. The “Colorado Young Stars Award Fund” auction will run through Friday (May 10).
This year marks the first time that the BCO worked with the CSMTA to support the competition and present the winners. In a written communication, Saless commented, “We are looking forward to many years of continued collaboration and hopefully building community support and excitement in the Boulder area.”
Production opened Saturday, continues next week May 7, 10, 12
By Peter Alexander May 6 at 12:10 p.m.
Opera Colorado opened an effective and at times powerful production of Saint-Saens’s Samson et Delilah Saturday (May 4) at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in Denver.
The final production of 2023–24 season, Samson et Delilah will run for a total of four performances, with additional shows scheduled for 7:30 p.m. May 7 and 10, and 2 pm Sunday, May 12.
The production is a traditional take on the story, meaning there are no attempted updatings or imposed psychological meanings. Sets and costumes represent Biblical times—“as much as you can set something in Biblical times and be accurate,” in the words of stage director Keturah Stickann.
Act III of Opera Colorado’s production of Samson et Delilah. Photo by Matthew Staver for Opera Colorado.
The sets by Peter Dean Beck are evocative of the locations without devolving into middle-eastern kitsch. The first act opens on a nicely lit scene of the suffering Hebrews, in a public square under captivity by the Philistines. Here the set leaves plenty of space for the limited action that takes place, which is useful with so much of that act being otherwise static choral singing. Most impressive is the final scene, with the requisite pillars of the temple looming over the stage. The final collapse of the Philistine’s temple is simply accomplished but effective.
Stickann’s staging is never less than serviceable, which is what is needed for an opera with no hidden motives or deep psychological drama: everything that happens is out in the open. In the first act, the limited movements helped vary the stand-and-sing choral material. Repeated raised-arm gestures by the chorus are overdone but expressive of the repeated pleas of the Hebrews. Otherwise, the action moves smoothly.
The second act confrontations of Delilah with the High Priest and with Samson are well dramatized. However, the end of the act does not follow the libretto. In this production, Delilah gives Samson a magic potion, he passes out, and she takes a knife given to her by the High Priest and cuts Samson’s hair. But the libretto is clear: the hair cutting does not take place on stage for the simple reason that she never hears Samson’s secret onstage.
What Saint-Saëns and the libretto indicate is that Delilah and Samson go into her house, where she seduces him and learns his secret during an orchestral interlude. Delilah calls for the Philistine soldiers who take Samson away. It’s not clear if she has cut off his hair in her house, or the Philistines do so later, but it does not happen onstage. That is awkward, but a magic potion is too easy a way out. The composer’s version is better.
Rafael Davila as Samson. Photo by Matthew Staver for Opera Colorado
The final act is the best part of the evening. The first sene, of Samson pushing a mill wheel, is uncomplicated but moving. The destruction of the temple in the final scene works well on stage. Again, there’s not anything complicated to direct: there is a dance (the famous Bacchanale), Samson is brought in and mocked by the Philistines, then he moves between the pillars and brings down the temple. I was happy to see that the child who guides the blinded Samson was not forgotten: Samson sends him out of the temple before it collapses.
A fine cast gave top-flight performances. As Samson, tenor Rafael Davila made the strongest impression, singing with a solid, heroic-tenor quality. He consistently sang the words expressively, but did not always convey Samson’s internal struggle between his feelings for Delilah and his religious convictions. He was at his best in the final scene, creating great pathos while pushing the mill wheel and ringing out his denunciations of the Philistines at the end.
Katherine Goeldner as Delilah (center) with Philistine maidens and dancers in Act I of Samson et Delilah. Photo by Matthew Staver for Opera Colorado.
As Delilah, Katherine Goeldner brought extensive experience to her performance, including a prior appearance as Delilah at Virginia Opera. She no longer has the bright, focused tone of a young singer, but she had all the strength Saturday night to carry off the climactic moments. She sang with firmness of tone and great expression. And her Delilah is multilayered: aristocratic, calculating in her seduction of Samson, and vicious in her mockery in the final scene.
Nmon Ford was a tall, imposing High Priest, capturing both the authority and the evil implicit in the Biblical narrative. He brought a powerful and orotund, if occasionally rough-hewn sound to his portrayal. In the small part of Abimelech, the Philistine ruler who is killed by Samson in the first act, Christian Zaremba provided a dark, sometimes tight bass. Turner Staton was a solid Old Hebrew in his Act I dialog with Samson.
I am not dance critic, but I thought the dancers were smoothly integrated in the first act, more disconnected in the Bacchanale. The singers of the Opera Colorado chorus gave their lengthy, critical numbers a rich sound and secure ensemble.
The orchestra under conductor Ari Pelto propelled the action effectively, especially in Act II where the woodwinds shone in their prominent roulades. The full orchestral sound and expression supported the story throughout. The only reservation would be the Bacchanale, which was too fast. It is a frenzied dance, but taken too fast it looses clarity and precision, and the sudden tempo change near the end, which should be an explosion of sound and fury, looses its impact. Nevertheless, audience granted the expected spontaneous applause.
Tickets to additional performances may be purchased HERE.
The opera is based on, and different from, the familiar Biblical story
By Peter Alexander May 2 at 4:30 p.m.
The Biblical story of Samson’s betrayal by Delilah, and his violent revenge, is one of the best known dramatic tales from the Old Testament. It has been dramatized many times in film and music.
One of the most successful of those dramatizations will be presented by Opera Colorado over the next two weeks: Camille Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Delilah. The production opens Saturday, May 4, with additional performances May 7, 10 and 12 (details below).
Opera Colorado’s production of Samson and Delilah. Photo by Matthew Staver for Opera Colorado.
Performances will be conducted by Ari Pelto, Opera Colorado’s music director. Stage direction is by Keturah Stickann, with sets by Peter Dean Beck. The role of Samson will be sung by tenor Rafael Davila, Delilah by mezzo-soprano Katherine Goeldner.
The production will be a traditional one, Stickann said. “We are not updating in any conscious way,” she says. “We are set in Biblical times, as much as you can set something in Biblical times and be accurate.”
Most of the opera’s story will be familiar to anyone who knows the Biblical narrative. Samson has superhuman strength. The Philistines want to know the source of his strength so they can defeat him. Eventually Delilah learns that his strength comes from his hair. His hair is cut, he is captured by the Philistines, then blinded and enslaved. In the final act he destroys the Philistine temple.
That much is familiar, but there are some significant differences, particularly in the character of Delilah. In the Bible (Judges 16), she betrays Samson for money—1100 pieces of silver from each of several Philistine officials. In the opera, however, she acts more out of loyalty to the Philistine people and priests and declines gold offered by the high priest.
“If you look at what is written on the page, in the opera, she is very much an agent of the Philistines,” Stickann says. “That is not the way that she comes across in the Biblical story. Ultimately you have to tell the story that’s on the page.”
Rafael Davila (l.) and Katherine Goeldner (r.) as Samson and Delilah in Opera Colorado’s production of “Samson and Delilah.” Photo by Matthew Staver for Opera Colorado.
Stickann said that she and Goeldner, who will sing the role of Delilah, talked at length about the character. “She’s a mata-hari creature in this opera,” Stickann says. “She’s a spy for her people (and) is trying desperately to help her people.”
Goeldner agrees, but also sees many layers to Delilah. “She can be seen as just an evil vamp, but that’s too simple and uninteresting,” she says. “She’s not just sultry, she’s complicated. She’s mostly manipulating Samson. This is the fourth time she has tried to get his secret, and he’s lied to her three times. And yet he keeps coming back for more!
“She does love Samson in a way, but I think it’s the way Carmen loves Don Jose (in Bizet’s opera Carmen)—he’s useful and as soon as he stops being useful she’s done with him.”
Along with Carmen and Amneris in Aida, Delilah is one of the major starring roles for mezzo-sopranos. She dominates the second act and her actions drive the plot. As a result, it is one of the most coveted roles for mezzos.
“Getting to do Delilah once in a mezzo’s career is a huge thing,” Goeldner says. “The second act, you’ve got aria, gigantic duet, another gigantic duet, one of the most famous arias in the operatic repertoire—she’s on the entire time. It is one of the most demanding roles in the mezzo repertoire. It’s far more demanding than Carmen for example, which I’ve done a bunch.”
Her second act aria, “Mon cour s’ouvre à to voix” (My heart opens at the sound of your voice) is one of two frequently performed selections from Samson et Delilah. The other is the frenetic Danse Bacchanale in the third act, usually performed as a ballet as was expected in French opera of the 19th century, and a source of many standard musical gestures associated with the Middle East.
Dancers in Opera Colorado’s production of Samson and Delilah. Photo by Matthew Staver for Opera Colorado.
One of the challenges of presenting Samson et Delilah, and one that is visible to the audience, is that it was originally conceived as an oratorio rather than an opera. That idea survives in the large choral numbers in the first and third acts, which are great music but dramatically static.
“It is the problem of the piece,” Stickann says. “Sometimes the drama comes directly from the music. We do a little movement at the beginning of the long choral pieces, and then we sink into it a little bit. It gets more active, but this is the way that Saint-Saëns designed it. My challenge as a director is to make it work, that it is a seamless piece of theater.”
Stickann is excited about the Opera Colorado production of the opera. “It’s a terrific cast, the chorus is working at peak, and we have some spectacular dancers in this production. (And) The audience in Denver enjoys grand opera.”
Her perspective comes form having worked in 30 states and several countries overseas, and having lived in Missouri, San Diego, New York, and now Knoxville, Tenn. “It’s not just my upbringing in the Midwest,” she says. “It’s my experience in the South, my experience on the West Coat, my experience on the East Coast. These different places have definitely colored the way that I work.
“Every one of them has given me something, every one has a different way of being, [and] I grow a little bit more every time I move.”
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Samson et Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns Libretto by Ferdinande Lemaire Opera Colorado Ari Pelto, conductor; Keturah Stickann, director
7:30 p.m.Saturday, May 4, Tuesday, May 7 and Friday, May 10 2 p.m. Sunday, May 12
Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Denver Performing Arts Complex
Programs feature piano quartet, acrobatics and film music
By Peter Alexander May 1 at 4:38 p.m.
The Boulder Piano Quartet presents it’s final concert of the 2023-24 season Friday featuring music by Dvořák and the 19th-century French musical prodigy Mélanie Hélène Bonis Domange, known as Mel Bonis (7 p.m. May 3 at the Academy University Hill; further details below).
This will be the fourth and final performance this concert season to feature a guest violinist with the Quartet, appearing in place of their former violinist Chas Wetherbee, who died in 2023. The guest violinist for this performance will be Hilary Castle Green.
Mel Bonis
This program is the second time that the Boulder Quartet has played music by Bonis, who is virtually unknown in the United States. About a year ago in May 2023, they played her Second Piano Quartet. This year they are playing her First Quartet in B-flat major.
Born in 1858, Bonis taught herself to play piano and entered the Paris Conservatory at 16. She was in the same class with Debussy, and studied composition with Cesar Franck. At the time women were not expected to be composers, and Bonis was urged by her parents to marry an older businessman. Because he didn’t like music, she gave up composing for a number of years.
Later she met a former classmate who encouraged her and connected her with publishers, which led her to begin writing music again. She wrote the First Piano Quartet soon after, in 1901. When the composer Camille Saint-Saëns heard the Quartet, he is supposed to have said “I never thought a woman could write such music.” After her husband died in 1918, Bonis devoted herself to music.
Dvořák won the Australian State Prize for composition—in effect a grant to allow artists the time for creative work—in 1875. At 34 years of age he was still relatively unknown to the larger musical world, even though he had written four symphonies, seven string quartets, three operas, and other works. During that year he wrote a number of larger pieces, including his Symphony No. 5, his Serenade for Strings and the Piano Quartet No. 1 in D major.
The Quartet is in the standard classical chamber-music structure of three movements, arranged fast, slow, fast. Unlike other quartets of the time, the piano is not placed separate from, or against the strings, as if it were a chamber concerto. Instead the four parts are more fully integrated. Though only three movements, the Quartet is an expansive work. It was not performed for nearly five years, however, having its premiere in Prague in 1880.
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Boulder Piano Quartet: Matthew Dane, viola, Thomas Heinrich, cello, and David Korevaar, piano, with guest violin Hilary Castle Green
Mel Bonis: Piano Quartet No. 1 in B-flat major
Dvořák: Piano Quartet No. 1 in D major, op. 23
7 p.m. Friday, May 3, Academy Chapel Hall, Academy University Hill Admission free with advance reservations
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The Boulder Philharmonic will continue its relationship with the performing group Cirque de la Symphonie with two performances Saturday in Macky Auditorium (2 and 7:30 p.m. May 4; details below).
Classical music’s answer to Cirque du Soleil, Cirque de la Symphonie presents aerialists, jugglers, ribbon dancers, acrobats, contortionists and other acts to the accompaniment of classical music performed live on stage. Macky Auditorium will be especially rigged for the aerial acts, and the front of the stage reserved for other performers. The performance of selected short classics will be conducted by Renee Gilliland, associate director of orchestras at CU Boulder.
Renee Gilliland
This will be the fifth time that the Boulder Phil has hosted Cirque de la Symphonie at Macky. Their last previous appearance was in 2018. While limited tickets are still available for both scheduled performances Saturday, previous Cirque performances have sold out.
Gilliland earned a Doctor of Musical Arts in orchestral conducting and literature from CU Boulder, a Master of Music in viola performance with an outside area in conducting from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and a Bachelor of Music in music education and certificate of violin performance from the University of Texas at Austin Butler School of Music. She was also awarded an Artist Diploma in orchestral conducting from the University of Denver where she was assistant conductor of the Lamont School of Music Symphony and Opera Theater orchestras.
She was formerly music director of the CU Anschutz Medical Orchestra and associate conductor of the Denver Philharmonic.
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“Cirque Returns” Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, Renee Gilliland, conductor With Cirque de la Symphonie
NOTE: Indications of which pieces are played by the orchestra alone without Cirque performance added 5/2.
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The Longmont Symphony Orchestra (LSO) concludes its 2023-24 concert season Saturday (May 4) with “A Tribute to John Williams,” featuring the music of one of Hollywood’s greatest film composers.
John Williams
The Pops Concert, at 7 p.m. in Longmont’s Vance Brand Civic Auditorium, will be under the direction of the LSO’s music director, Elliot Moore. The program will include music from the soundtracks for Star Wars, Jurassic Park, E.T. and Harry Potter, among other popular films.
With more than 1100 tickets already sold, there are only a few seats left at time of posting. Because of the size of crowd expected, the LSO advises attendees to arrive early. Overflow parking from the Skyline High School lot will be available at the Timberline School lot, on Mountain View Avenue.
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Tribute to John Williams Longmont Symphony Orchestra, Elliot Moore, conductor
Music of John Williams
7 p.m. Saturday, May 4 Vance Brand Civic Auditorium, Longmont
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)
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
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
TICKETS for live performances and for online stream of Sunday’s performance
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 Sonataby 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)
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
TICKETS, including live stream of Friday’s performance
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
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)
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”)
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.)
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)
Sharps & Flatirons 