Author Archives: Peter Alexander

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April 24, 2025

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GRACE NOTES: Curiosity and chamber music

Offerings from the Boulder Symphony and Boulder Chamber Orchestra

By Peter Alexander April 24 at 8:40 p.m.

The Boulder Symphony agrees to disagree for its upcoming Curiosity Concert (3 p.m. Saturday, April 26 at Grace Commons; details below).

Curiosity Concerts are aimed at children ages four to 12, but structured to appeal to the entire family. For April 26, the musical content revolves around a playful showdown between Mozart and “Snooty, Professor of Musical Snobbery.” Through their debates and the sharing of favorite pieces and styles, they will explore the diversity of musical preferences. 

The program under the direction of Devin Patrick Hughes features selections from a wide variety of both classical and popular pieces, including portions of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance” from the Gayane ballet suite, “Fireworks” from Harry Potter and “Enter Sandman” by Metallica.

The music is selected to illustrate various styles, including sad contemplative music, musical madness, the description of weather in music, and how instruments can sing like a human voice. Pop and classical styles will be contrasted with the same tune played in both styles, and the characteristics of film music will be demonstrated. 

The 45-minute program will be preceded and followed by an “instrument petting zoo” provided by Boulder’s HB Woodsongs, allowing children to see and try instruments. 

# # # # #

Spring Curiosity Concert: “Agree to Disagree”
Boulder Symphony, Devin Patrick Hughes, conductor

Program includes music from:

  • Vivaldi: The Four Seasons
  • J.S. Bach: Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major
  • Nicholas Hooper: “Fireworks” from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
  • Samuel Barber: Adagio for Strings
  • Mozart: Presto from the Divertimento in D major, K136
  • Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings
  • Beethoven: Grosse Fuge
  • Khachaturian: “Sabre Dance” from Gayane
  • Richard Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus spake Zarathustra)
  • Mozart and Metallica

3 p.m. Saturday, April 26
Grace Commons, 1820 15th St., Boulder

TICKETS

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The Boulder Chamber Orchestra will wrap up its current season of Mini-Chamber Concerts featuring pianist Jennifer Hayghe as artist in residence Saturday (7:30 p.m. April 26; details below).

Jennifer Hayghe

The program, titled “Chamber Music Diamonds in the Rough,” features four works that are not often performed, in part because of their unusual instrumentation. Two of the composers—Aram Khachaturian and Max Bruch—are known for works that are featured on standard orchestral programs, but the other two—Mel Bonis and Nikolai Kapustin—are unfamiliar to American audiences.

In fact, the music of Mélanie “Mel” Bonis is currently undergoing a period of rediscovery after many years of obscurity. 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 César Franck. 

Mel Bonis

Bonis gave up music for a number of years when her parents arranged her marriage to an older businessman who disliked music, but returned to composition later in her life. Composed in 1903, her three-movement Suite en trio for flute, violin and piano is one of the works she wrote after her husband’s death..

Known for his “Sabre Dance” from the ballet Gayane, his Piano Concerto and other orchestral music, Khachaturian wrote only two pieces of chamber music, both of them during his student years at the Moscow Conservatory. The Trio for violin, clarinet and piano features folk tunes and styles throughout, including highly ornamented passages in the first movement and variations on a folk-like melody in the finale.

The German Romantic composer Max Bruch is best known for his Scottish Fantasy and two concertos for solo violin with orchestra. He wrote his Eight Pieces for clarinet, viola and piano in 1910, when he was 72, for his son who was a professional clarinetist. He used the same combination of clarinet and viola in another work he wrote for his son, the Concerto for clarinet, viola and orchestra in E minor, op. 88.

Kapustin was born in Ukraine in 1937 and studied composition at the Moscow Conservatory. He discovered jazz around 1954 and became known as a jazz pianist and played in a jazz quintet and big band. His music combines elements of classical, jazz and pop styles, but he always insisted that he was a composer, not a jazz musician. “I never tried to be a real jazz pianist,” he once wrote. Composed in 1998, the Trio for flute, cello and piano is one of his most popular chamber works.

# # # # #

“Chamber Music Diamonds in the Rough”
Jennifer Hayghe, piano, with Rachelle Crowell, flute; Kellan Toohey, clarinet; Hilary Castle, violin; and Erin Patterson, cello

  • Mel Bonis: Suite en trio, op. 59
  • Khachaturian: Trio for violin clarinet and piano
  • Max Bruch: Eight Pieces for clarinet, viola and piano
  • Nikolai Kapustin: Trio for flute, cello and piano, op. 86

7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 26, Boulder Adventist Church

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April 23, 2025

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Seicento Celebrates Women of the Renaissance

Program of ‘top-notch’ music by women from from 16th and 17th centuries

By Peter Alexander April 23 at 6:25 p.m.

The music only recently became available for the next concert program by Boulder’s Seicento Baroque Ensemble, but it’s 400 years old.

The program to be performed the coming weekend in Golden, Westminster and Boulder (Friday–Sunday April 25–27; details below) is titled “Renaissance Women” and features works by women composers of the 16th and 17th centuries. Most of them you have probably never heard of, including Maddalena Casulana, Sulpitia Lodovica Cesis and Vittoria Aleotti. Only a few—Francesca Caccini, Barbara Strozzi and Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre—are known at all to students of that era.

“Within the last five to 10 years there’s been an explosion of availability of scores by women composers of the Renaissance and Baroque periods,” Coreen Duffy, Seicento’s director, explains. “Up until now (those scores) were locked away, not published, and/or there were no modern editions available. So a lot of this music nobody knows about.

Coreen Duffy

“A lot of these composers I didn’t know about until I got the idea to start looking. Little by little this is coming to the surface now. So now is a great juncture to perform it, because some of it has been hardly performed in the last 400 years.”

The late Renaissance and early Baroque periods were a time of great cultural and musical flowering in Italy. Consequently it is no surprise that most of the composers—all but de la Guerre—are Italian. With the Italian nobility supporting the musical life of the time, Duffy says that nearly all of the Italian women composers fall into one of two groups. 

“Either they were in convents, or they were in the secular world and had connections that allowed them the kind of training they would need to become composers,” she says. Essentially that meant they were connected to one of the noble families such as the Medici, which would allow them to “gain the networking to get their music published and circulated,” Duffy says.

As for the convents, “a lot of these women ended up in convents not because they themselves chose that path, but because they were placed there by their families, to have a secure and safe life,” she says. “They’re writing sacred music, but they’re also writing secular music on poetry that is not devotional— some of it is a little racy. 

“For a lot of them the convent was like a little artists’ colony, a place where they had access to other trained musicians and singers who could perform this music that they were writing. So it was almost like a little sanctuary for them.”

In addition to the full Seicento choir the concert features performances by a smaller ensemble, the Seicento Sirene (Seicento Sirens), a small group of professional singers within Seicento. They emerged when the larger choir didn’t have time to learn all of the music Duffy had selected for the program.

“The idea came from them,” she says. “A couple of members said ’Hey, this music you picked is so good, we want to do it, we already know it, can we please do it?’ 

Maddalena Casulana

“I gave (the smaller group) a name, because once I heard how good they sounded, I was like, this is not a one-off. This will not be the last we hear from the Seicento Sirene. Just wait ’til folks hear them—their three selections are exquisite!”

One composer on the program stands out with six pieces. Though little-known today, Maddalena Casulana was the first woman in the history of European music to have an entire book of music published. Her Primo libro di madrigali (First book of madrigals) from 1568 is dedicated to Isabella de’ Medici, to gain her support. 

“I selected a bunch of (her music) because it’s so darn good,” Duffy says. “It’s gorgeous, all of the things to love about late 16th century music—the chromaticism, dissonance, extreme text painting, based on the Petrarchan style poetry that is full of double entendres and sexual innuendo. It’s everything you would want out of (her male contemporaries) Monteverdi, Gesualdo, Marenzio, all of these folks at the end of (the 16th) century who are doing so much cool stuff.”

Sulpitia Lodovica Cesis (allegedly)

When asked for another piece to call attention to, Duffy hesitates. “There’s so much I don’t even know how . . .” she starts, then says, “Another composer I never heard of until I started this is Cesis. We’re doing her Stabat Mater and that’s gorgeous. The Cozzolani selections are pretty sensational.”

And Barbara Strozzi’s Con le belle (With beautiful women) “is the Barqoue version of (The Clash’s) ’Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ Everyone knows what’s really going on, but the language is perfectly above board so it’s fine.”

But in the end, she says the whole program “is just brilliant. The poetry is brilliant, the music is top notch and these are gems that people haven’t heard. 

“It’s a nice opportunity to hear music that’s been waiting around for 400 years!”

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“Renaissance Women”
Seicento Baroque Ensemble and Seicento Sirene, Coreen Duffy, conductor
With Jeremiah Otto, harpsichord, and Joe Gailey, theorbo
Kevin Wille, guest conductor

  • Sulpitia Lodovica Cesis: Stabat Mater
  • Maddalena Casulana: Amor per qual cagion (Love, why did you put me on this earth)
    —Amor per qual cagion (harpsichord/theorbo in tabulation)
    —Morir no può ‘l mio core (My heart cannot die)
  • Vittoria Aleotti: T’amo, mia vita (I love you, my life)
  • Chiara Margarita Cozzolani: Messa à 4, Kyrie and Agnus Dei
  • Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre: Chaconne in D major from Pièces de Clavecin, Book II
  • Barbara Strozzi: Chi brama in amore (Who yearns for love)
  • Francesca Caccini: S’io men vò morirò (If I leave, I die)
  • Anna Bon: Andante from Sonata in B-flat major, op. 2 no. 2
  • Rosa Giacinta Badalla: Aria from Vuò cercando
  • Casulana: Tu mi dicesti Amore (You told me, love)
    —Come fiammeggia e splende (How it blazes and shines)
  • Aleotti: Io piango che’l mio pianto (I cry that my cry)
  • Isabella Leonarda: Regina Caeli (ed. Meredith Y. Bowen)
  • Casulana: O notte, o ciel’, o Mar (Oh night, oh sky, oh shores)
  • Strozzi: Con le belle non ci vuol fretta (With beautiful women you cannot hurry)
  • Leonarda: Domine ad adiuvandum (Lord, to help, ed. Henry Lebedinsky)

7:30 p.m. Friday, April 25, Calvary Church, Golden
7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 26, Westminster Presbyterian Church
2 pm. Sunday, April 27, Mountain View Methodist Church, Boulder

Livestream also available 2 p.m. Sunday, April 27

In-person and livestream tickets HERE

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April 9, 2025

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GRACE NOTES: B-minor Mass and string quartet with guitar 

LSO presents Bach’s “Magnum Opus,” Takács Quartet partners with Nicoló Spera

By Peter Alexander April 9 at 5:20 p.m.

The Longmont Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and conductor Elliot Moore end their season with one of the most significant pieces by J.S. Bach, his monumental Mass in B minor.

The performance of this large-scale work will be Saturday evening at Vance Brand Civic Auditorium in Longmont (7 p.m. April 12; details below). Moore and the LSO will team up with the Boulder Chamber Chorale, a select group from the Boulder Chorale directed by Vicki Burrichter. Soloists will be soprano Dawna Rae Warren, countertenor Elijah English, tenor Joseph Gaines and baritone Andy Konopak.

Choral settings of the Mass ordinary—the five texts sung every week in Catholic church services, as opposed to texts that vary with the liturgical calendar—had a long history in Europe. However, Bach’s setting is too long to be easily incorporated into a normal service, which is why it is generally performed as a concert piece rather than a liturgical mass.

Bach’s manuscript of the B-minor Mass

The structure and composition history of the Mass are complicated. The final work as we know it today comprises the main sections of the Catholic Mass ordinary—Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei—in 27 separate movements for orchestra, choir and soloists. Bach composed the first two portions of the Mass, Kyrie and Gloria, in 1733. These are the portions that are common to both Catholic and Lutheran services and were theoretically usable at the Lutheran Thomaskirche in Leipzig where Bach was employed. 

Bach presented those two movements to the incoming Elector of Saxony, a Catholic ruler, in 1733. He did not compose the remaining portions of the Mass, which were exclusive to the Catholic services, until  the final years of his life. Some of the music was newly composed, but other movements were reworkings of music from earlier cantatas and other works. 

It is remarkable that a piece written over so many years with many different sources would emerge as a unified work universally revered as one of Bach’s crowning achievements. But the entire B-minor Mass was probably never performed in Bach’s lifetime, and clearly would not have been suitable for a service in Bach’s church. It includes music written over 35 years of the composer’s lifetime, assembled and re-appropriated into a final form dictated by the structure of the Catholic Mass, by a resolutely Lutheran composer.

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“A Magnum Opus”
Longmont Symphony Orchestra, Elliot Moore, conductor
With the Boulder Chamber Chorale, Vicki Burrichter, direcotr; Dawna Rae Warren, soprano; Elijah English, countertenor; Joseph Gaines, tenor; and Andy Konopak, baritone

  • J.S. Bach: Mass in B minor

7 p.m. Saturday, April 12
Vance Brand Civic Auditorium

TICKETS

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The Takács Quartet and guitarist Nicoló Spera will come together over the weekend for concerts in Grusin Hall on the CU Campus (Sunday, April 13, and Monday, April 14; details below).

Their joint performance of the Quintet for guitar and string quartet by Giacomo Susani will be framed by two works from the standard string quartet repertoire, Haydn’s late Quartet in G major, op. 77 no. 1, written in 1799; and Dvořák’s Quartet in F major, op. 96, composed during the composer’s visit to the Czech immigrant community of Spillville, Iowa, in the summer of 1893.

Giacomo Susani

Susani keeps very busy, with a performing career on guitar in Europe and the United States, a compositional career, and as artistic director of the Homenaje International Guitar Festival in Padova, Italy. As a performer he has released four recordings on the Naxos label. He conducted the world premier of his Concerto for 10-string guitar and orchestra in Boulder this past December, with Spera and the Boulder Chamber Orchestra. The Guitar Quintet was written in 2016.

Listeners may be familiar with the string and guitar quintets of Luiggi Boccherini, the best known but not the only works for that combination of instruments. There were several written in the 20th century, including one by Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. That work is recognized in the last of Susani’s three movements, “Omaggio a Castelnuovo-Tedesco” (Homage to Castelnuovo-Tedesco). The first two movements are titled respectively “La Tempesta” (The storm) and “Liberamente, non trope lento” (Freely, not too slow).

At the age of 67 Haydn began a set of string quartets commissioned by the wealthy aristocratic patron and music lover Prince Lobkowitz. He completed two quartets of a likely set of six, but other projects intervened before he could complete a larger set. The two quartets were published as Op. 77 nos. 1 and 2, and were his final completed string quartets. He only completed two movements of another planned quartet, published in 1806 as Op. 103.

Spillville, Iowa, in 1895, shortly after Dvořák’s visit

Dvořák wrote many of  his best known pieces in the United States. He spent the years 1892–95 as director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Intrigued by the idea of a village of Czech immigrants on the Western plains, he spent an idyllic summer in the tiny village of Spillville, Iowa, in 1893. While in the United States he wrote his Symphony No. 9, “From the New World” and his Cello Concerto in New York, and a string quartet and string quintet, now known as the “American” Quartet and Quintet, in Spillville.

Spillville was very much a Czech community, with the people speaking Czech and observing Czech customs that Dvořák found congenial. He frequently played the organ at the local church, which is still standing, and made many friends in the community. 

Dvořák was deeply moved in Spillville, especially by the emptiness of the prairie, perhaps reflected in the Quartet’s melancholy slow movement, and the singing of birds, quoted in the scherzo. Attempts to connect the Quartet’s uncomplicated musical style to American influences have met skepticism. The composer himself once wrote, “I wanted to write something for once that was very melodious and straightforward . . . and that is why it all turned out so simply.

“And it’s good that it did.”

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Takács Quartet with Nicoló Spera, guitar

  • Haydn: String Quartet in G Major, op. 77 no. 1
  • Giacomo Susani: Quintet for Guitar and String Quartet
  • Dvořák: String Quartet in F Major, op. 96 (“American”)

4 p.m. Sunday, April 13, and 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 14
Grusin Hall

In-person and streaming tickets HERE.

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April 3, 2025

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“The Wheel of Time” at the Dairy Arts Center

Boulder Bach Festival and the Dairy present orchestral program Sunday

By Peter Alexander April 3 at 5:25 p.m.

Co-presenters Boulder Bach Festival (BBF) and the Dairy Arts Center join together for an orchestral program of wide variety and styles, concluding the BBF’s 2024–25 concert season.

The program, titled “Wheel of Time,” will be performed Sunday in the Dairy’s Gordon Gamm Theater (4 p.m. April 6; details below). The performance features the BBF’s conductorless chamber orchestra, COmpass REsonance (CORE). Soloists will be the BBF’s music director, Zachary Carrettin, violin; Mina Gajic, piano; and Mara Riley, soprano and flute.

Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini

The program features works from the 18th to the 21st centuries, including the first Colorado performance of Overture for a Changing World by Carrettin. Riley will sing two arias, one a sonnet by Petrarch set by Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini, an 18th-century Italian composer, singer and harpsichordist; and the other from an opera by Vivaldi. Riley will also appear with CORE as the flute soloist in a performance of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5.

The other work on the program is Ernest Bloch’s Concerto Grosso No. 1 for piano and string orchestra, featuring Gajic as soloist. Composed in 1925, the Concerto Grosso has an interesting origin. At the time, Bloch was director of the Cleveland Institute of Music, where many students were skeptical of “old” techniques in music, including classical forms and tonality.

Bloch decided to respond to their skepticism by writing a new piece that used a classical form, the concerto grosso, and tonality in a contemporary way. He gave the new piece to the school orchestra, who read it with interest. According to legend, after the reading, Bloch said to the students, “What do you think now?”

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“Wheel of Time”
Boulder Bach Festival COmpass REsonance, Zachary Carrettin, music director
With Mara Riley, soprano and flute, and Mina Gajic, piano

  • Zachary Carrettin: Overture for a Changing World
  • Maria Teresa Adnesi: Non piangete
  • Ernest Bloch: Concerto Grosso No. 1 for piano and string orchestra
  • Vivaldi: Aria from La verity in cement (Truth in contention)
  • J.S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 5

4 p.m. Sunday, April 6, Gordon Gamm Theater, Dairy Arts Center

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April 2, 2025

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Ars Nova Singers meet Steampunk

“Science/Fantasy” program in Lafayette, Denver and Longmont

By Peter Alexander 11:45 p.m. April 2

It all started at a wedding.

The next concert by Boulder’s adventurous Ars Nova Singers and conductor Thomas Morgan is a departure from the usual. Normally devoted to music of the Renaissance and contemporary times, they will perform music from the Victorian era and some contemporary works that refer to advances in technology from different eras. 

Steampunk fashion. Renee Roush, photo by Austin Welch Photography

That curious and interesting program, titled “Science/Fantasy,” will be presented three times, in Lafayette, Denver and Longmont over the coming weekend (April 4–6; details below). The performers will not be the full Arts Nova ensemble, but a smaller group of 11 singers. To bring out the unique nature of the program, they will wear “Steampunk” costumes borrowed from various sources, including the CU Costume Shop.

Steampunk, if you don’t know, is defined as “a sub-genre of science fiction that incorporates retro-futuristic technology and aesthetics inspired by, but not limited to, 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery.” As such it is often connected to Victorian times and styles. (You can learn more about Steampunk HERE.)

The hallmarks of Steampunk style are gears, goggles, pocket watches and Victorian-style clothing: tailcoats with vests, high collars, top hats, cuffs and corsets—modified by individual taste and creativity. For the Ars Nova concerts, if you and a friend put together your own Steampunk outfits, there is a bonus: one ticket will admit two people in Steampunk costume.

But back to that wedding.

“I was invited a couple of years ago to a Steampunk wedding,” Morgan explains. “The entire bridal party and guests were encouraged to come (in costume), and it was so much fun. The environment suggested to me both Victorian music and music that has a rhythmic and industrial feel to it—anything related to flying machines, exploration—the whole era.”

Thomas Morgan sporting Steampunk fashion

The appeal of Steampunk style is not lost on Morgan, who will appear in his own costume. But he wants to clarify that the celebration of Victorian culture does not overlook the drawbacks of the era. “Clearly it was an age of exploitation by colonialists, the subjugation of races by other races and women by men,” he says. 

“But one of the interesting things about (Steampunk) is, it seeks to redeem the past rather than glorify it. Built into the ‘punk’ part of the word, which is more rebellious and anti-establishment, is looking at what would have happened in that era if things had been more egalitarian.”

The program includes works that are genuinely Victorian, specifically music by Hubert Parry, an English composer who lived during the Victorian era. “He certainly represents the height” of that era musically, Morgan says. His “There is an Old Belief” from Songs of Farewell forms “an encapsulation of the musical ethos of the time. The musical language is really beautiful. It gets close to Mahler in many ways, but for voices.”

From a little earlier in the 19th century are two madrigal-like works by Robert Lucas Pearsall, an English composer of choral music who lived much of his life on the European continent. Ars Nova has previously performed and recorded Pearsall’s “Lay a Garland,” which Morgan describes as “one of the really great eight-part choral pieces.”

The program also includes contemporary music that connects with Steampunk ideas. Morgan says that the opening piece, Jennifer Lucy Cook’s “Time,” “is a fast piece on the concept of time, (selected) because clockworks and gear-driven machines are very much a part of the Steampunk aesthetic.”

“Vessels” by Philip Glass comes from his music for the film Koyaanisqatsi, which visually as well as musically portrays the destruction of the natural world through industrialization, something that blighted many Victorian cities polluted by coal-burning factories. The program also includes music by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Francis Poulenc, among others.

The Victorian fascination with flying machines is represented by two pieces, “Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine” by Eric Whitacre and “The Campers at Kitty Hawk” by Michael Dellaira. Whitacre’s piece was written 25 years ago, at the start of the composer’s career, and has become one of his best known works for choir. 

Leonardo DaVinci’s sketches for a flying machine

“It’s a wonderful piece that we haven’t done in a long time,” Morgan says. “A lot of the Victorian writers were interested in Leonardo’s designs and some of those were recreated as people were learning how to fly.”

Morgan reached out to Whitacre about performing his piece in the context of the Steampunk program, and the composer recorded comments that will be played before the performance.

The Steampunk theme “gives us a whole opportunity to play with some of these things,” Morgan says. “We have a couple of staged things that the singers do during the performance.

“It’s an opportunity for us to have a little more fun, as well as mix in some repertoire that we don’t always get a chance to do.”

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“Science/Fantasy”
Ars Nova Singers, Thomas Morgan, conductor

  • Jennifer Lucy Cook: “Time”
  • Philip Glass: “Vessels” from Koyaanisqatsi
  • Ralph Vaughan Williams: “The Vagabond”
  • Robert Lucas Pearsall: “Sir Patrick Spens”
    —“Lay a Garland”
  • Charles Hubert Hastings Parry: “There is an old belief” from Songs of Farewell
  • Francis Poulenc: “Sanglots,” from Banalités
  • Bob Chilcott: “Sun, Moon, Sea, and Stars”
  • Eric Whitacre: “Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine”
  • Michael Dellaira: “The Campers at Kitty Hawk” from USA Stories
  • Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley: “Pure Imagination” (arr. Yumiko Matsouka)

7:30 p.m. Friday, April 4, Center for Musical Arts, 200 E. Baseline, Lafayette
5 p.m. Saturday, April 5, St. Thomas Episcopal Church, 2201 Dexter St., Denver
3 p.m. Sunday, April 6, Stewart Auditorium, Longmont

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March 27, 2025

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Boulder Phil presents Rachmaninoff and music of two festivals

Guest pianist Alessio Bax and soloists from orchestra in the spotlight

By Peter Alexander March 27 at 5:50 p.m.

Two works inspired by festivals will form bookends for the next Boulder Philharmonic concert, at 4 p.m. Sunday (March 30; details below), with a big, popular Romantic piano concerto in the center.

The Piano Concerto No. 2 by Rachmaninoff fills the central position. Guest artist Alessio Bax is the soloist and Michael Butterman will conduct.

The frame for the concerto will be provided by PIVOT by Anna Clyne, inspired by experiences at the Edinburgh Festival; and Stravinsky’s Petrushka, the brilliant score to a ballet that takes place during the Shrovetide festival in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Anna Clyne

The common inspiration of a festival is what suggested to Butterman that Clyne and Stravinsky would make an effective framework for the program. “When we were thinking about programming Petrushka, it struck me that some of the swirling, calliope-like music in the opening section is kind of echoed in Anna Clyne’s PIVOT.

“It’s a piece that I’ve done once before, in Shreveport. You feel that you are walking through a space in which there are different happenings going on. You pass one, (with) a particular tempo and mood, and you turn around and you are facing something else entirely.”

The composer’s description of PIVOT closely matches Butterman’s. “It’s the idea of opening up doors as if you were going down a musical corridor,” she says. “You open one door and there’s a trapeze artist, and another there’s a lady singing an aria. PIVOT really takes you on lots of twists and turns in what’s actually a very short piece.”

It also reflects Clyne’s experience as an undergraduate student in Edinburgh in the 1990s, with a bit of history and folk music thrown in. “I really wanted to evoke a sense of celebration drawing on my experiences living in Edinburgh and being there during the festival,” she says. “Every nook and cranny becomes a venue, be it music, theater, comedy, dance—it’s every art form you can imagine.

“There’s a tune that I borrow called ‘The Flowers of Edinburgh,’ which is a traditional folk tune of Scottish lineage and also a tune that shows up in American folk music. PIVOT was co-commissioned between the Edinburgh International Festival and St. Louis Symphony, so I wanted to find music that brought those two countries together.”

The historical aspect comes from a pub where local musicians meet to share folk music. The pub is called The Royal Oak today, but 200 years ago it was called The Pivot. Thus the title both reflects the nature of the music and recalls the history of a musical venue in Edinburgh.

Original design by A. Benois for Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka

At the opposite end of the program, Stravinsky’s Petrushka is a brilliant, colorful description of the crowds at a Russian Shrovetide (Mardi Gras) festival with various dances—some using Russian folk tunes—as well as drunken revelers, organ grinders, a dancing bear, and most central to the story, a puppet theater with three puppets that dance at the command of a magician.

One of the puppets is Petrushka, who is killed by another puppet as the fair is closing for the night. As the ballet ends, night descends over the empty square. Petrushka’s ghost appears above the theater as the magician runs off in fear.

“This is really a piece in which you need to have a sense of what is happening and what Stravinsky is evoking,” Butterman says. “It works very well as concert music, but it really is a full ballet score. Understanding the dramatic context is critical.”

The score notably includes a major piano part in the orchestra. “It is the most virtuosic orchestral piano part that I can think of, in the whole repertoire,” Butterman says. “It’s absolutely critical to much of the piece.” 

The Phil’s piano and keyboard position is currently vacant, and the solos in this case will be performed by Cody Garrison. A practicing dentist in Denver, Garrison works at Metropolitan State University as accompanist in the brass and woodwind departments. He also serves as pianist for Opera Colorado and staff accompanist for the Boulder Symphony, where he played Liszt’s Todtentanz (Dance of death) with the orchestra last season.

There are important solo parts for other members of the orchestra. Two in particular stand out in scenes for the three puppets: flute, which will be performed by visiting principal Hannah Tassler, and trumpet, which will be performed by principal player Leslie Scarpino.

Alessio Bax. Photo by Marco Borggreve.

The Rachmaninoff concerto is the most familiar piece on the program. It had a large impact on the composer’s career, since its success helped him overcome the failure of his First Symphony a few years before. Technically demanding of the pianist, the Concerto is also very tuneful and has become one of the most popular piano concertos in the standard repertoire.

“There’s no question why it’s so winning,” Butterman says. “It has lots and lots of virtuosity, and (Rachmaninoff) had the incredible gift for writing melodies that go straight to the heart, that have both a soaring, noble quality and more than a tinge of melancholy.”

The soloist, Alessio Bax, began his career in Italy, but is distantly related to the English composer Arnold Bax. Butterman relishes working with him. “I did this very same piece with him last season in Shreveport, and I find him an elegant player, yet full of the kind of passion that you want in this piece. I feel like I know where he’s going with a phrase, so from my perspective, it was a dream to lock in with him.

“I thought it was a very effective and memorable performance, so I’m expecting we’ll have a similar experience in Boulder.”

# # # # #

Masterworks Concert
Boulder Philharmonic, Michael Butterman, conductor
With Alessio Bax, piano
Orchestra soloists Cody Garrison, piano; Hannah Tassler, flute; and Leslie Scarpino, trumpet

  • Anna Clyne: PIVOT
  • Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor
  • Stravinsky: Petrushka (1947)

4 p.m. Sunday, March 30
Macky Auditorium

TICKETS

Correction: Typo corrected the headline, 3/28. The soloist’s name is Alessio Bax, not Max as spell corrector incorrectly changed it.

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March 26, 2025

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Boulder Symphony weekend concerts will be recorded

U.S. premiere, arias by Rossini and Puccini, and Beethoven’s countryside

By Peter Alexander March 26 at 5:10 p.m.

The composer Peter Drew came late to a musical career.

After some inconclusive experiences in music as a youngster, he worked a succession of jobs including taxi driver and cruise-ship host and eventually settled in as a teacher. Feeling something was missing, he bought a clarinet and decided to take music more seriously. He played both classical and jazz and studied musical composition.

To make a long story short, his first symphony was recorded in 2022 by the Zagreb Symphony, with positive reviews. And now it will have its U.S. premiere by the Boulder Symphony Saturday and Sunday (March 29 and 30; details below).

Composer Peter Drew

Devin Patrick Hughes will conduct the performances, which will also include arias by Rossini and Puccini sung by soprano guest artist Anastasia Antropova. Beethoven’s “Pastoral Symphony” rounds out the program. Parma Recordings will record the performances.

Drew titled his First Symphony “Reminiscence.” He calls it a pastiche, based on music that had an impact on him and listing the specific sources for each movement. For example, the first movement is titled “Journey” and includes music reflecting Villa-Lobos’ descriptive piece for orchestra Little Train of the Caipira, as well as folk songs that recall Joseph Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne.

The second movement, “Pictures in an Album,” refers to Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, along with traces of Copland-esque Americana. The third movement evokes J.S. Bach while the finale, “The Return,” revisits ideas from the first movement.

Soprano Anastasia Andropova

Russian soprano Anastasia Antropova graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 2017 and since has performed extensively in Italy. She will perform Rossini’s “Una voce poco fa” (A voice spoke to me), the iconic aria of Rosina in The Barber of Seville; and Puccini’s poignant aria from Madama Butterfly, “Un bel di” (One fine day).

Boulder Symphony’s publicity material quotes Antropova commenting on “these iconic arias, each revealing a distinct operatic world. The fusion of music and text bring these characters to life, allowing me to fully immerse in their emotions.”

Beethoven Symphony No. 6 in F major, known as the “Pastoral Symphony,” is one of the composer’s more cheerful even-numbered symphonies, all of which are in major keys. It was made popular when it was used in Walt Disney’s animated musical film Fantasia, with a setting of pastoral scenes from Greek mythology.

Unlike most Beethoven symphonies, the Sixth has specific descriptive titles for the movements, all derived from the composer’s own excursions into the countryside outside Vienna. The five movements are titled “Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside,” “Scene by the brook,” “Merry gathering of country folk,” “Thunder, storm,” and “Happy and thankful feelings after the storm.”

The first performance took place in 1808 as part of a notorious four-hour concert that included premieres of the Fifth and Sixth symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Choral Fantasy, along with selections from other works by Beethoven and improvisation at the piano by the composer. 

Held in an unheated hall, the program strained the audience’s attention. One attendee wrote afterwards, “There we sat, in the most bitter cold, from half past six until half past ten, and confirmed for ourselves the maxim that one may easily have too much of a good thing.”

Of course the Boulder Symphony performance will neither take place in a cold hall nor last four hours. And the good things it offers—a U.S. premiere, two beloved arias and a musical tour of the Austrian countryside—are pleasantly varied.

# # # # #

Boulder Symphony, Devin Patrick Hughes, conductor
With Anastasia Antropova, soprano

  • Rossini: “Una voce poco fa” (A voice spoke to me) from Barber of Seville
  • Peter Drew: Symphony No. 1 (“Reminiscence”), American premiere
  • Puccini: “Un bel di” (One fine day) from Madama Butterfly
  • Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 in F major, op. 68 (“Pastoral”)

7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 29
2 p.m. Sunday, March 30
Gordon Gamm Theater, Dairy Arts Center

TICKETS

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March 17, 2025

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Coming opera seasons in Colorado

CU Eklund Opera and Opera Colorado announce 2025–’26 seasons

By Peter Alexander March 17 at 5:43 p.m.

Leigh Holman stepped before the rich, ruby-red curtains at Macky Auditorium yesterday (March 16) afternoon and spoke to the audience.

The occasion was the final performance of CU’s production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance. Holman is the director of the Eklund Opera Program at CU-Boulder, and in addition to welcoming the full house in Macky, she made an announcement of interest to opera lovers in the area. She named the works in Eklund Opera’s 2025–26 season—or most of them.

Leigh Holman

The fall production, she said, will be one of the most successful operas of the past 25 years, Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking. Premiered in 2000 by the San Francisco Opera it has since been performed in dozens of productions, at CU in in 2007, Central City Opera in 2014, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Houston Grand opera, in university and regional productions around the country, and major houses around the world. 

Based on the memoir of the same name by Sister Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking features a  libretto by playwright Terrence McNally. The plot revolves around Prejean’s death-row ministry with a convict who was executed for murder in Louisiana in 1984.

Homan then announced that in April, 2026, the Eklund program will present Leoš Janáček’s folk-ish Cunning Little Vixen, a charming and harsh tale of life in the animal world. Finally, she said that the third production, appearing in the March time slot, would be a musical comedy presented in conjunction with the CU program in musical theatre. Contractual obligations, common with the performance of musicals, prevent the release of the show’s title at this time.

Opera Colorado in Denver also has announced the operas that will be their main stage productions in the 2025–’26 season. November will see performances of Verdi’s La Traviata, and in May Opera Colorado will present Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. In the meantime, there will be semi-staged concert performances of Verdi’s Il Trovatore featuring a full cast with the Opera Colorado orchestra and chorus, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 26, and 2 p.m. Sunday, May 4, in the Ellie Caulkins  Opera House at the Denver Performing Arts Complex. 

Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Denver

The company’s Calendar of Events lists the dates for all performances and access to the box office for the purchase of individual tickets for the remainder of this season, as well as subscriptions for the ’25–’26 season. 

Central City Opera House

Central City Opera’s summer 2025 season has already been announced, but if you missed it, this year’s summer festival at the Opera House in Central City will feature Rossini’s Barber of Seville, Aleksandra Verbelov’s contemporary The Knock, inspired by events during the 2003–’11 Iraq War, and the 1959 Broadway hit Once Upon a Mattress, recently revived in New York and Los Angeles to great acclaim.

The full summer calendar, and access to the purchase of subscriptions and group bookings can be found HERE. Individual tickets will go on sale April 1.

Not in Colorado but within a reasonable day’s drive for people in the Boulder area, the Santa Fe Opera presents productions in a unique and stunning outdoor theater in the New Mexico mountains. Productions for the summer of 2025 will be Puccini’s La Bohème, Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro (Marriage of Figaro), Verdi’s Rigoletto, Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw and Wagner’s Die Walküre. 

Santa Fe Opera. (c)Bob Godwin/rgbphotography@mac.com

The full calendar for the Santa Fe Opera is located HERE. Tickets can be purchased through the company’s 2025 Season page. 

NOTE: At the request of the Eklund Opera Program, a quote that that could potentially identify the musical to be presented in March, 2026, was removed from the fifth paragraph of this story as of March 13, 2025.

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March 12, 2025

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Eklund Opera presents Gilbert & Sullivan

The perennially popular Pirates of Penzance puts in at Macky for the weekend

By Peter Alexander 10:40 p.m. March 12

CU’s Eklund Opera Program will present Gilbert and Sullivan’s hilarious Pirates of Penzance Friday through Sunday in Macky Auditorium (March 14–16; details below), and conductor Nicholas Carthy wants everyone to know what to expect.

“It’s a comedy,” he says. “This is not (Shakespeare’s) Henry V! It’s supposed to be ridiculous.”

Reese Phillips as Major-General Stanley. Photo by Andrew Konopak.

And ridiculous it is, in some ways. If you don’t know the story, the callow youth Frederic has been apprenticed to a band of soft-hearted pirates through a confusion between a “pirate” and a ship’s “pilot.” He is bound until his 21st birthday, but because he was born on Feb. 29, that won’t happen until he is in his 80s. 

Due to his exaggerated sense of duty, Frederic cheerfully agrees to remain with the pirate band for 60-plus more years, even though he has to postpone marriage to his true love Mabel, one of many wards of the pompous Major-General Stanley. After misadventures with the curiously ineffective pirates and the bumbling police, the day is saved when Frederic’s nursemaid Ruth reveals that the “pirates” are actually noblemen.

Davian Raggio (Frederic), Madison Falkenstine (Mabel). Photo by Andrew Konopak.

When they declare their loyalty to Queen Victoria, the way is cleared for Frederic and Mabel to marry.

The CU production is stage directed by Leigh Holman, director of the Eklund Opera Program, with choreography by Laura Malpass. The production uses the same sets as previous CU performances in 2014, but with new costumes by Holly Jenkins Evans and new lighting design by Jonathan Dunkle. 

“It will look different,” Holman says, “but in terms of interpretation, we took the same approach as last time. There are many different levels where the show can entertain. There are Gilbert & Sullivan fans that know all the intricacies, and there are people that will learn it as they’re sitting there. Other people will see the slapstick, and they’ll enjoy it too.”

The show must have wide appeal, since it has been selling exceptionally well. According to Holman, “the last show that reached this (many) ticket sales was West Side Story.”

There are several specific aspects of Pirates that Holman and Carthy hopes the audience will recognize. For one, there are clues that the pirates are really from the upper class. For one, “they’re drinking sherry at the beginning,” Carthy says. “If they were real pirates they would be drinking rum.”

At the same time, there is sharp satire of the upper classes. As Carthy puts it, the performers are “having a nod and a wink at the audience, saying, ‘we know what these people are like, and you do too, don’t you?’ Both the audience and the people onstage are in on the joke.”

That pointed satire explains why Gilbert’s text was not popular with the Queen and nobility, even though Sullivan’s music was. “These little barbs against royalty were what Queen Victoria disapproved of,” Carthy says, “which is why Sullivan got knighthood and Gilbert didn’t.”

In one example, the Pirate King, himself a noble, takes a particularly brutal jab at the rigidly “respectable” upper classes. Speaking of piracy, he says, “I don’t think much of our trade, but compared with respectability, it is relatively honest.”

James Robinson (Pirate King), Davian Raggio (Frederic), Carrina Macaluso (Ruth). Photo by Andrew Konopak.

Satire of the upper classes appears in all cultures. It is central to much British literature, but also dates from Roman and Greek theater into the 20th-century. “Gilbert and Sullivan’s policemen are exactly the same as Monty Python’s policemen,” Carthy says. “They are of a particular class and accent—that is a thread through the ages.”  

It is also important to know that Sullivan aimed higher than writing popular potboilers. “Sullivan wanted to be a serious composer and ended up hating Gilbert,” Carthy says. “He wanted to stop (working with Gilbert), but then he lost money in a market crash and had to sign on for another five years.”

Musical evidence of Sullivan’s aspirations is found in throughout the show. “There are little bits of Sullivan as a serious composer, and not just this sort of thing, that we remember him for,” Carthy says, singing an oom-pah accompaniment.

In some places, there are even traces of serious opera, including hints of Donizetti and Rossini. Holman finds these passages especially expressive. “The love duet (between Mabel and Frederic) is beautiful,” she says. “It’s the most sincere thing in the show. That piece is just gorgeous.”

She also hopes you will notice the choreography. “It’s a beast to choreograph, with so much movement,” she says. “Malpass has taken predominantly non-dancers and done amazing jobs with them. (In this show), there’s always something to see, lots of physicality (as well as) great singing!”

Carthy admits that Pirates does not always conform to modern sensibilities. “It’s a piece of its age,” he says.  But he believes its comedy is universal, transcending Victorian sensibilities. “It’s quirky but it works, and it suggests a little depth,” he says.

“Above all, it knows what its audience wants.”

# # # # #

University of Colorado Eklund Opera
Leigh Holman, stage director; Nicholas Carthy, conductor

  • W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan: The Pirates of Penzance

7:30 p.m. Friday, March 14, and Saturday, March 15
2 p.m. Sunday, March 16
Macky Auditorium

TICKETS

NOTE: The spelling of Eklund Opera was corrected March 13. The original story incorrectly had the spelling as Ecklund.

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March 5, 2025

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GRACE NOTES: “The Feminine Divine” and string quartets

Boulder Bach’s CORE and the Takács Quartet fill the weekend

By Peter Alexander March 5 at 5:20 p.m.

COmpass REsonance (CORE), a string ensemble that began as the resident Baroque orchestra of the Boulder Bach Festival, will present a program of music by four women composers of the Baroque era on Saturday (4 p.m. March 8; details below).

Titled “The Feminine Divine,” the program features works by Barbara Strozzi (1619–1677), Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665–1729), Francesca Caccini (1587–1641?), and Isabella Leonarda (1620–1704). The performance will be directed by Zachary Carrettin and feature soprano Sarah Moyer and mezzo-soprano Claire McCahan. 

Other guest artists will be Minneapolis-based harpsichordist Tami Morse and cellist Joseph Howe, performing with members of CORE. Carrettin will perform as violinist.

Composers Barbara Strozzi and Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre

The most renowned composer on the program, Strozzi published eight volumes of music during her lifetime, and at one point had more secular music in print than anyone else in Europe. She accomplished this as an independent artist, without the usual aristocratic support that most musicians of her era depended upon.

Strozzi first came to prominence as a singer, having been recognized for her virtuosity in her teens. Her first volumes of published music, titled Bizzarrie poetiche (poetic oddities), appeared before she turned 20. Although she dedicated her volumes of published music—all but one using secular texts—to prominent members of the nobility, she never received regular patronage from any of them.

Jacquet de la Guerre came from a family of musicians and instrument makers. An accomplished harpsichordist who performed at the French court of Louis XIV, she composed vocal music, including dramatic cantatas and songs, as well suites for harpsichord and sonatas for violin and harpsichord.  

Francesca Caccini was the daughter of the important composer of early operas, Giulio Caccini. She spent most of her life in service to the Medici Court in Florence. Most of her music has disappeared, including several staged works written for the court. Today she is remembered as the first woman to write an opera, and for a collection of solo songs and duets with basso continuo.

The least known of the four women composers, Leonarda spent most of her life in an Ursuline convent in Novara, Italy. While living in the convent she wrote about 200 compositions, including vocal motets, and instrumental sonatas that are notable for their unusual structure of as many as 13 separate movements. 

# # # # #

“The Feminine Divine”
Compass Resonance Ensemble (“CORE”)
Zachary Carrettinn, director and violin; Tami Morse, harpsichord; and Joseph Howe, cello
With Sarah Moyer, soprano, and Claire McCahan, mezzo-soprano

Music by Barbara Strozzi, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Francesca Caccini, and Isabella Leonarda

4 p.m. Saturday, March Dairy Arts Center

TICKETS

# # # # #

The world renowned Takács Quartet, comprising artists in residence and Christoffersen Fellows at CU-Boulder, is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary year.

Between teaching duties and an international touring schedule, they will present one of their campus concerts Sunday and Monday in Grusin Music Hall (March 9 and 10; details below). After 50 years, one of the original members of the Takács still plays with the quartet, cellist András Fejér. Currently performing with him are violinists Edward Dusinberre and Harumi Rhodes, and violist Richard O’Neill.

Paul Hindemith. Portrait by Rudolf Heinisch

Joining them for the March program, soprano and CU music faculty member Jennifer Bird-Arvidsson will perform Hindemith’s Four Songs, Melancholie, with the quartet. Bartók’s String Quartet No. 3 and Beethoven’s String Quartet in F major, op. 135, complete the program.

Hindemith served as a German soldier in the trenches near the end of Word War I. After the war he set four poems from a book by Christian Morgenstern titled Melancholie. The poems and the music reflect Hindemith’s feelings in the years after war, when he wrote to a friend “Everything is dreary and empty. I am deathly sad.” Hindemith dedicated Melancholie, one of his earliest and least known works, to a friend who died in the war.

As the last of his string quartets, Beethoven’s op. 135 comes from the opposite end of the composer’s life from Hindemith’s songs, and stands opposite to them in mood. Surprisingly one of Beethoven’s most cheerful and straightforward works—coming after other late quartets that explore unusual musical forms complex musical styles—Op. 135 shows the standard four movement layout for quartets, symphonies and other works.

Beethoven wrote to his publisher that this would be his last quartet, and headed the last movement “Der schwer gefasste Entschluss” (the difficult decision), suggesting that it was hard to give up a genre that he had explored throughout his life. Below that written title, the movement begins with three three-note motives that form its major themes. Under the musical notes, Beethoven wrote “Muss es seen? Es muss sein! Es muss sein!” (Must it be? It must be! It must be!)

The central piece on the program is Bartók, whose music has also played a central role in the 50-year history of the Takács Quartet, founded by four Hungarian string students. They have recorded the full set of six quartets twice and performed them frequently on tour. The shortest of Bartok’s quartets, the Third has a single movement divided into four parts that do, and don’t, recall the standard four-movement structure. 

# # # # #

Takács Quartet
With Jennifer Bird-Arvidsson, soprano

  • Paul Hindemith: “Melancholie,” Four Songs, op. 13
  • Bartók: String Quartet No. 3
  • Beethoven: String Quartet in F Major, op. 135

4 p.m. Sunday, March 9
7:30 p.m. Monday, March 10

Grusin Music Hall

In-person and streaming tickets available HERE.