Five pieces form the 20th and 21st centuries dazzle audience
By Peter Alexander July 12 at 12:46 a.m.
Last night (July 11) was a wonderful evening for a concert in Boulder: moderating temperatures, gentle breezes, and a late lingering dusk.
Afternoon on the grounds outside the Chautauqua Auditorium.
If you were fortunate enough to be at the Chautauqua Auditorium, only a single helicopter overflight disturbed the mood of an equally wonderful performance of music composed since 1950. The program was played by the JACK Quartet, a group known for their exemplary performances of contemporary concert music.
Last night’s program, titled “New York Stories,” was part of the Colorado Music Festival’s Robert Mann Chamber Music Series. The performances lived up to JACK’s reputation and then some. The five pieces they played were strikingly varied, but the character of every piece emerged powerfully. Every transition was precise and controlled, and the unity of interpretation across the group was magical.
JACK Quartet. Photo by Shervin Lainez.
The concert opened with the only piece not by a living composer, Morton Feldman’s Structures for String Quartet from 1951. No recording can do justice to Feldman’s score, which is marked “as softly as possible.” You have to hear it live in a large hall, where you can physically feel the intimacy of the sound and let yourself be pulled into the world of Feldman’s music. The concentration of the players, and the balance they managed at such low volume was electrifying.
This performance would have pleased John Cage—he of 4’33” of silence—as it requires the listener to acknowledge the sound world around him. The cries of children in Chautauqua Park, the rustling of leaves outside and the murmuration of people inside, all became part of the experience, and served to elevate the music the more intently one listened.
Caleb Burhans. Photo by Liz Linder
Contritus by Caleb Burhans was composed in 2010 to a commission from the quartet. The piece comprises three prayers of contrition that flow together in a single movement. It starts at about the volume of the Feldman, and you realize how intently you are attending to the music when it rises from just audible to a thunderous medium soft (mp).
The control of volume and the emotional ebb and flow here was remarkable, proving again the JACK’s finesse in music of the greatest delicacy. Indeed, if all caps represents shouting, maybe they should rename themselves “jack.” For me, and others I heard from, this was the most moving piece of the evening.
The music of Philip Glass is so well known to followers of new music—from tours by the Philip Glass Ensemble, to movie scores and operas—that his Fifth String Quartet (1991) was the least captivating piece on the program. Yet JACK found entirely the character of Glass’s music, the throbbing pulse, the surge and flows with in energized texture, and the sudden shifts in character.
As ever the music was at time hypnotic, conducive to reflection, always pleasing. But with Glass, I am never sure how much it adds up to. As section follows section, it’s hard to identify an overall structure, even when musical ideas return for the end. But if you enjoy Glass, this was a performance to be prized.
After an intermission, JACK returned to play Caroline Shaw’s appealing Entr’acte. Shaw is one of the most interesting composers working today, one who keeps the listener enough off balance that you never know what could be next. And whatever it is, it usually wears a smile and takes you by surprise.
John Zorn
Entr’acte was inspired by Haydn minuets, and indeed contains Haydnesque moments of gentle humor as the music fades into and out of silence (silence again!). The more you think about Haydn while listening, the more you enjoy the piece. I could not imagine it played with more care , delicacy, or effectiveness.
The program closed with the most “New York” of the five pieces, John Zorn’s The Remedy of Fortune (2016). Here, it helps to know what the piece was composed for the Met Cloisters museum of medieval art and architecture in Upper Manhattan. In this score you can hear the bustle and cacophony of the streets of New York, with moments that recall the calm of the museum and the music of the Middle Ages.
As difficult and disordered as the music sometimes sounds, it was all under the fingers of the JACK Quartet players. One should listen beyond the frantic surface to hear the streams within in the notes. When heard in that spirit the performance was dazzling, and worthy of the cheers and standing ovation from the faithful audience of contemporary music fans. One wishes that more people had heard such a consummate performance, before strolling out into the cooling twilight at Chautauqua Park.
Peter Oundjian leads All-Corigliano program, world premieres for ‘Music of Today’
By Peter Alexander July 7 at 12:10 p.m.
The next two weeks of the Colorado Music Festival (CMF) will see the 2023 season in full swing.
The Robert Mann Chamber Music Series—named in honor of the founding first violinist of the esteemed Juilliard String Quartet—gets underway with performances by the JACK Quartet (July 11; program details below) and the Brentano Quartet (July 18). The performance by JACK also initiates a week of “Music of Today” featuring an all-John Corigliano program by the Festival Orchestra with saxophone soloist Timothy McAllister (July 13) and a program with three world premieres by Carter Pann of CU, his former student Jordan Holloway, and Adolphus Hailstork (July 16).
The festival’s third week embraces more familiar repertoire, with some excursions. The Brentano Quartet embellishes a program of Mozart and Beethoven with works by Scottish composer James MacMillan (July 16). CMF Music Director Emeritus Michael Christie marks his return to Chautauqua Auditorium with Tchaikovsky’s familiar Fourth Symphony and an interesting pairing of piano concertos by Ravel and Florence Price performed by Michelle Cann (July 20 and 21). The week closes with an all-Mozart program led by guest conductor François López-Ferrer and featuring violinist Grace Park (July 23).
JACK Quartet. Photo by Shervin Lainez
Known for their committed performances of new music, the JACK Quartet is the musical heir of the mold-breaking Kronos Quartet. “Kronos really paved the way,” first violinist Austin Wulliman says. “They were role models for people in our generation, and JACK modeled the way we commission (new works) after the way Kronos did it.”
Titled “New York Stories,” the July 11 concert features works by five composers: Morton Feldman, Caleb Burhans, Philip Glass, Caroline Shaw and John Zorn. The program came from “an intuitive feeling about New York, which is a place that is so now,” violist John Richards explains. “Cultural changes begin or are reflected very early on in New York, and I feel the longing for ‘before’ as a part of the experience of ‘now’ in New York.
Caroline Shaw. Photo by Kait Moreno
“This program gets into that, through a beautiful, melancholic longing that’s in Caroline Shaw’s (Entr’acte, which is) also filled with the kind of playful experimentation with form and instrumental techniques that can only be done today. It’s a beautiful marriage of those things.”
The players find the same duality in Zorn’s Remedy of Fortune, which they compare to standing in the Cloisters, a museum of medieval art in upper Manhattan, and hearing the sound of visitors’ cell phones alongside the echoes of medieval music.
Zorn is known for pieces inspired by the frenetic pace of early cartoons, but his latest pieces are more varied. “He draws on so many interesting influences now,” Wulliman says. “I hear the music of Alban Berg at the same time that I hear Art Tatum and Beethoven and medieval music.”
Wulliman suggests that when listening to Feldman’s Structures for String Quartet, you think of a painting rather than a narrative. “That’s a helpful inroad to how to listen to it,” he says. “It’s a visual arts approach to the page, where he’s filling our auditory field with splotches, textures and patterns that weave together.”
The least known composer on the program is probably Burhans, whom the JACK players knew as undergraduates at the Eastman School of Music. “The beauty and the emotional catharsis of that piece is a real lynchpin of the program,” Wulliman says. Richards adds that Burhans “joined the choir at Trinity Church Wall Street (in New York), and this music draws from that experience. There’s a beautiful middle section that grows and grows into a prayerful, ecstatic feeling of release.”
John Corigliano. Photo by J. Henry Fair
The most distinctive program of the summer is the concert devoted entirely to works by composer John Corigliano. That almost never happens with living composers, conductor and CMF Music Director Peter Oundjian says, but he also likes to remind people that new music today is not as daunting as it once was.
“I remember a time when if you presented one piece of contemporary music you could loose half your audience,” he says. But Corigliano is from “a generation that got a language that was astonishingly contemporary but acceptable at the same time.”
Oundjian wanted to present works from different parts of the composer’s career. “I said to John, ‘I want to do a piece from each of your periods’,” Oundjian says. “’I want to make you into Beethoven, (with) early, middle and late’.”
From the early period, he chose the Gazebo Dances (1972), which was likely inspired by the music of Leonard Bernstein. A suite in four contrasting movements, it has a Bernstein-like energy and flirtation with popular/Broadway idioms, which is not surprising since Corigliano’s father was concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic under Bernstein.
Next is One Sweet Morning (2010), written to commemorate the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York. “Oh boy is it ever incredibly profound and moving,” Oundjian says. “It’s music of staggering beauty and depth, so it’s a fantastic contrast to the Gazebo Dances.”
The concert will conclude with Corigliano’s most recent concerto, Triathlon for saxophone and orchestra (2020). The soloist will be Timothy McCallister, who was featured last summer. “It’s a complete masterpiece,” Oundjian says. “I don’t know how these brilliant composers get their ideas, but it’s an honor to study the works and prepare to conduct them.”
Adolphus Hailstork. Photo by Jin Hailstork.
The centerpiece of the July 16 concert of world premieres will be JFK: The Last Speech, a work for orchestra, soprano and narrator by Adolphus Hailstork. The soloists will be soprano Janice Chandler-Eteme and bass-baritone Eric Owens as narrator.
The libretto incorporates parts of a speech President John F. Kennedy gave at Amherst College Oct. 26, 1963, 27 days before his assassination in Dallas. Kennedy’s speech was given in honor of poet Robert Frost, who had died nine months before. Neil Bicknell, who heard the speech as an Amherst senior, crafted the libretto combining Kennedy’s words, which will be spoken by the narrator, and Frost’s poetry, which will be sung by the soprano.
A project of the Amherst Class of 1964, JFK: The Last Speech will be performed around the country and at Amherst College this fall. Hailstork writes in his program notes, “My writing will reflect the autumn season, the solemnity of the moment, and the unique oratorical gifts of Kennedy the president and the profound literary gifts of Frost the poet.”
Holloway’s Flatirons Escapades was composed for the 125th anniversary of Boulder’s Colorado Chautauqua. A graduate of CU, Holloway recalls in his program notes both his positive experiences in the Chautauqua Park that served as an inspiration for his score, and the healing quality of the space during times of “anxiety and internal chaos” that “are woven into the piece as well.”
Pann was Holloway’s composition teacher at CU. He writes that his Dreams I Must Not Speak “emerged from a cathartic attempt to realize, in music, three dreams I experience during sleep with noticeable regularity. These are not nightmares nor are they pleasant images, but rather odd and somewhat psychedelic scenes that have remained distinct in my awakened conscience over the years.”
Michael Christie. Photo by Eugene Yankevich
For his return to Chautauqua Auditorium, CMF Music Director Emeritus Michael Christie will team up with pianist Michelle Cann to present concertos by Ravel and the remarkable African-American composer Florence Price. A graduate of the New England Conservatory, Price is recognized as the first African-American woman to have a work played by a major orchestra. “Price is one of these people that when an audience member hears the music, people are just bowled over by the inventiveness, by the grandness of it,” Christie says.
Price played her Piano Concerto in One Movement once in 1934, after which it was thought to be lost. However, some parts were found in 2009 at her former summer home, shortly before it was to be demolished, and other fragments turned up later. The score has been reconstructed, and the concerto has had real success in recent years. Curiously, the Concerto in One Movement actually has three movements, played without break
Florence Price
The combination of Price’s African-American heritage and her classical training led to what Christie calls “this wonderful blending of American and European traditions speaking to each other.” And he finds a parallel for that combination in the Ravel Concerto. “You have Maurice Ravel just oozing with American jazz throughout this piece,” he explains.
“You’re looking Florence Price being influenced by Europe and having her own American language, and then Ravel on the other side of the Atlantic, looking at America through the lens of his own language. So the concertos kind of cross each other, over the ocean.”
The Tchaikovsky Symphony that closes the program is a great showpiece for the orchestra, and it’s also one of the most familiar pieces on the summer program. Christie remembers that when he was music director at CMF, he would “throw lots of new things at the orchestra, and they were just exhausted by the end of the summer. I realized over time that balance (between familiar and unfamiliar pieces) is not only for the audience, it’s for the orchestra too.
“It’s always a relief for an orchestra to be able to kick back and play something that they know inside and out.”
# # # # #
COLORADO MUSIC FESTIVAL Performances July 11–23 All performances at Chautauqua Auditorium
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 11 Robert Mann Chamber Music Series: JACK Quartet
Morton Feldman: Structures for String Quartet (1951)
Caleb Burhans: Contritus (2010)
Philip Glass: String Quartet No. 5 (1991)
Caroline Shaw: Entr’acte (2011)
John Zorn: The Remedy of Fortune for String Quartet (2016)
7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 13 Festival Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, conductor With Timothy McAllister, saxophone
John Corigliano: Gazebo Dances (for orchestra) (1974) —One Sweet Morning for voice and orchestra (2010) —Triathlon for saxophone and orchestra (2020)
6:30 p.m. Sunday, July 16 World premieres: Festival Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, conductor With Janice Chandler-Eteme, soprano, and Eric Owens, narrator
Jordan Holloway: Flatiron Escapades (world premiere commission)
Carter Pann: Dreams I Must Not Speak (world premiere commission)
Adolphus Hailstork: JFK: The Last Speech (world premiere)
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 18 Robert Mann Chamber Music Series: Brentano String Quartet
Mozart: String Quartet in D Major, K499
James MacMillan: Memento for string quartet (1994) —For Sonny for string quartet (2011)
Beethoven, String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major, op. 130
7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 20, and 6:30 p.m. Friday, July 21 Festival Orchestra, Music Director Emeritus Michael Christie, conductor With Michelle Cann, piano
Ravel: Piano Concerto in G Major
Florence Price: Piano Concerto in One Movement
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, op. 36
6:30 p.m. Sunday, July 23 Festival Orchestra, François López-Ferrer, conductor With Grace Park, violin
Mozart: Overture to The Impresario K486 —Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major, K216 —Adagio and Fugue in C Minor, K546 —Symphony No. 36 in C Major, (“Linz”) K425
Superstar Joshua Bell shines, dramatic “Pictures” grasp audience
By Peter Alexander June 30 at 1:08 a.m.
The 2023 Colorado Music Festival summer concert series got under way last night (June 29) with an orchestra program that was everything music director Peter Oundjian had promised.
“I think its important,” he has said, that the festival should open with “a very welcoming opening night.” Which indeed it was: an opening flourish, a warm romantic violin concerto warmly played, and a popular orchestra showpiece. Could you ask for more?
Carlos Simon. Photo by Terrance Ragland.
The concert opened with an exciting piece not even two years old, Motherboxx Connection by American composer Carlos Simon. Commissioned by the Sphinx Organization and the University of Michigan Symphony, it was premiered in January, 2022.
Conceived as part of a multi-movement work titled TALES, Motherboxx Connection evokes, in the words of the composer, “multi-faceted aspects of blackness.” All scurry and brilliance, the score exploits the full orchestra. There are rushing strings; syncopated bursts of sound from the brass; chattering woodwinds; and punctuating percussion. Here it was played with brio and precision, providing a sparkling introduction to the 2023 festival.
The musical high point of the evening came with the introduction of violinist Joshua Bell to play Bruch’s dramatic and lushly Romantic Violin Concerto in G minor. Bell is known for his skill with the 19th-centruy Romantic style, and this concerto, composed in 1866, is a perfect match for his playing.
Joshua Bell. Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco.
From the very first note, deep in the violin’s lower register, Bell’s playing had a penetrating warmth and richness that brought the most lyrical moments to life. Here was the greatest virtue of the performance: the lyrical passages sang, and even the softest moments were well projected. Nor was Bell averse to the more heroic moments of this dramatic work, playing them with flair and intensity.
Conductor Peter Oundjian and the orchestra found all the drama and impact in the score. Bell was so well in accord with their interpretation that when not playing toward the audience, he often turned to Oundjian or the orchestra as if to connect more deeply with the other musicians on stage.
If there were any criticism of the performance, it would be that Bell’s playing was so controlled and lyrically shaped that the blazing finale seemed almost subdued. Indeed, you may hear more fiery performances of the Concerto, but you will never hear one more expressive and deeply felt.
Bell and Oundjian had an orchestral encore prepared, and it was one that spoke to the violinist’s strengths: the “Meditation” from Massenet’s opera Thaïs. Bell’s ability to sustain long, rhapsodic melodic lines and spin the softest phrases into silence made an unforgettable performance.
The concert concluded with Mussorgsky’s great showpiece Pictures at an Exhibition in the familiar Ravel orchestration. Never afraid to use the full force of brass and percussion, Oundjian achieved powerfully dramatic effects. I have never heard a more forthright and forceful opening “Promenade”: more than a stroll through the galleries, this was more of a robust hike. But all the better to contrast with the music that followed.
Conductor Peter Oundjian with the CMF Orchestra. Photo by Michael Ensminger.
From the boisterous “Children’s Quarrel” at the Tuileries, to the lumbering oxcart of “Bydlo,” to the delicate “Ballet of Unhatched Chicks,” Oundjian and the orchestra found a strongly characterized sound for each movement. The catacombs were suitably hushed and eerie, and I’m not sure I have ever heard a more violent “Baba Yaga’s Hut.” The entrance into the final sketch, “The Great Gate of Kiev,” was carefully held back, allowing the music to build over time.
With careful control, the “Great Gate” can hardly fail, and it did not. The climactic final chords had exactly the effect that Oundjian—and Ravel—wanted. The audience went away energized. And the festival is off to a scintillating start.
NOTE: The same program will be repeated tonight (June 30) at 6:30 p.m. Ticket are available from the Chautauqua Box Office.
A FINAL DRAMATIC TOUCH: Only in Boulder? Departing patrons were greeted by blazing lights, flashing police cruisers, and a detour from the sidewalk. During the concert a bear had taken up residence in a tree on the Chautauqua grounds. This was just the extra drama a music festival should have at the base of the Flatirons!
Opening weeks: Joshua Bell plays Bruch, Rachmaninoff turns 150
By Peter Alexander Jun. 27 at 11:25 p.m.
Chautauqua Auditorium
The 2023 Colorado Music Festival (CMF) gets under way at the Chautauqua Auditorium Thursday with what music director Peter Oundjian calls “a very welcoming kind of opening night” (7:30 p.m. June 29; details below).
Peter Oundjian. Photo by Geremy Kornreich
By welcoming, Oundjian probably means comfortable for the audience. Or as he says, “you don’t want to do something too insanely eclectic on the opening night.” And indeed opening night is only a little bit eclectic, with a new piece by American composer Carlos Simon nestled with superstar violinist Joshua Bell playing Max Bruch’s G minor Violin Concerto and Mussorgsky’s evergreen favorite Pictures at an Exhibition in the familiar Ravel orchestral arrangement.
That program will be repeated at 6:30 p.m. Friday. Other events in the opening weeks of the festival are a family concert featuring Peter and the Wolf at 10:30 a.m. Sunday, July 2; and a celebration of the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninoff’s birth Thursday and Friday July 6 and 7, and Sunday, July 9 (times and programs below).
As the 2023 CMF artist in residence, Bell will be featured for the opening night concert, June 29–30; and at the closing two concerts, Aug. 3 and 6, when he will play a pre-premiere read-through of a suite for violin and orchestra that he commissioned from five prominent American composers. While the later concerts explore Bell’s involvement in the music of our time, the opening night performance of the Bruch Concerto showcases his ability with Romantic music.
Joshua Bell. Photo by Phillip Knott
Oundjian has known Bell since he was 14 and values that ability. “He has always had this rare sort of skill, looking back to when people played in a Romantic fashion, with the repertoire that calls for it,” he says. Bell studied with legendary Russian-American violinist Josef Gingold, who was born in 1907 in Brest-Litovsk in what was then the Russian empire and who is considered one of the last links to the Romantic violin style.
“It was a beautiful old-school approach to the playing and the sound production,” Oundjian says of Gingold’s teaching. “The sound, the expressive fingering, finding a way to express like a singer would—that’s what’s so wonderful about Bell’s playing. He’s like a great singer.”
Bell has been unusually successful in the transition from prodigy at 14, and before, to a successful adult artist. “He’s very, very focused,” Oundjian says. “He’s very disciplined in terms of what his goals need to be, very clear I think in his career.”
The Bruch Concerto, written in 1866, is an ideal vehicle for the Romantic style that Bell represents. “It just never stops being stunningly beautiful,” Oundjian says. As for the rest of the opening program, “Carlos Simon is a great way to open it all up—it has drive and it’s surprising and it’s brand new.” And it’s programmed with Pictures at an Exhibition—”one of the most exciting orchestral pieces ever written.”
Carlos Simon. Photo by Terrance Ragland
Simon is currently composer in residence at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and faculty at Georgetown University. He received the 2021 Medal of Excellence recognizing outstanding classical Black and Latinx musicians from the Sphinx Organization, which also commissioned Motherboxx Connection. The title is derived from the work of the cartoonist duo known as Black Kirby, which in turn is a pun on pioneering cartoonist Jack Kirby’s motherbox, a living computer.
Simon writes in his program notes, “To represent the power and intelligence of the motherboxx, I have composed a short, fast-moving musical idea that constantly weaves in and throughout the orchestra. A majestic, fanfare-like motif also provides the overall mood of strength and heroism. I imagine the motherboxx as an all-knowing entity that is aware of the multi-faceted aspects of blackness.”
For the second week of the festival, Oundjian put together programs that recognize the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. Two different programs will be shared over three concerts, July 6–7 and July 9. “The idea of celebrating the 150th birthday is completely obvious,” Oundjian says. “But what was less obvious was how to celebrate this.”
He thought of two things he could bring to American audiences that they might not know. First was that Rachmaninoff lived in the U.S. many years and eventually gained American citizenship; and the second was the playing of Russian pianist Nicolai Lugansky.
“What I decided was to focus on the great orchestral music, which included piano concertos created or premiered in America,” Oundjian explains. “It felt important for everyone to realize that Rachmaninoff, yes he was of Russian descent, but he died in America. In fact he got his American citizenship just weeks before he died. I think it’s important that we realize that this was his country. And this was where he found the most success and, I wouldn’t say happiness, but lack of unhappiness, more like.”
Those American works include familiar audience favorites—the Third Piano Concerto and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini—but also works that are not well known but that Oundjian wants to bring to people’s attention.
“You have his magnificent Third Symphony which is not often played and I so love it, and the Third Piano Concerto, which was premiered by the New York Philharmonic,” he says. “And you have the other pieces written while he was living in America, the Symphonic Dances, which is an absolute masterpiece, and the Fourth Piano Concerto, which you never hear and is stunningly beautiful and the Paganini Variations which we all know and love.
“It just seemed to make up a beautiful week of celebration of Rachmaninoff in America.”
Nikolai Lugansky
For the concertos, Oundjian chose a pianist he has worked with in the past, but who is not well known in the U.S. “Nikolai Luganski is not well known in America, which is a reason that I thought it would be wonderful to bring him here. People should know about him.
“He plays the Rachmaninoff concerti in a style which is in line with the character and the true soul of Rachmaninoff. Rachmaninoff’s music shouldn’t be overzealously expressed, and Luganski’s playing is so powerful, it’s so spiritual—and (he has) a unique approach to Rachmaninoff that has a purity about it that I wanted to emphasize, because Rachmaninoff was a profoundly sensitive person.”
Oundjian is as pleased with the rest of the scheduled festival as he is with the opening concerts. “I was very fortunate that almost everything that we wanted to present became a reality—which is not always the case,” he says.
“People were available, and wanted to do the repertoire, so it came into place quite smoothly.”
NOTE: The remainder of the 2023 Colorado Music Festival will be previewed in subsequent articles.
# # # # #
COLORADO MUSIC FESTIVAL Performances June 29–July 9 All performances at Chautauqua Auditorium
7:30 p.m. Thursday June 29 and 6:30 p.m. Friday, June 30: Festival Opening Program Festival Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, conductor With Joshua Bell, violin
Carlos Simon: “Motherboxx Connection” from Tales: A Folklore Symphony for orchestra
Max Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (orchestrated by Ravel)
Family Concert: 10:30 a.m. Sunday, July 2 Festival Orchestra, Kalena Bovell, conductor With Jennifer Bird-Arvidsson, soprano, and Janae Burris, narrator
Bizet: Carmen Suite No. 1
Eric Whitacre: Goodnight Moon
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: “Danse Nègre” from African Suite
Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf
7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 6 and 6:30 p.m. Friday July 7 Festival Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, conductor With Nicolai Lugansky, piano
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor —Symphony No. 3 in A Minor
6:30 p.m. Sunday, July 9 Festival Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, conductor With Nicolai Lugansky, piano
Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini —Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Minor —Symphonic Dances
2023 Summer Season features three mainstage adaptations of the Bard
By Peter Alexander June 22 at 11:57 a.m.
Central City Opera (CCO) returns to a three-production mainstage season this summer for the first time in more than 10 years with three musical works based on Shakespeare.
Opening Night at Central City Opera. Featured in Central City Opera’s 75th anniversary book, “Theatre of Dreams, The Glorious Central City Opera- Celebrating 75 Years.”
The 2023 Festival season runs from Saturday, June 24, until Sunday, Aug. 6, with the three works performed in rotating repertory (see full list of dates below). The three works are musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet by French composer Charles Gounod, which stays close to the original plot in most respects (opens June 24); an opera by Rossini based on a French version of Othello that differs in significant ways from Shakespeare’s play (opens July 15); and Cole Porter’s Broadway hit Kiss Me, Kate, which uses Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew as a plot device in a broadly comic tale of feuding actors, interlocking love triangles and ruthless but luckless gangsters (opens July 1).
First to open is Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, the closest of the three works to Shakespeare (performances June 24–Aug. 5). First performed in 1859, it was a huge success from the outset, with more than 300 performances over the next decade, and it remains popular today. This is largely due to the combination of a story that is familiar and much loved, and a beautifully written Romantic score.
“The music is fantastic!” director Dan Wallace Miller says. “Of all the adapted Shakespeare, its the one that fits the mold of French grand opera the best. It’s inherently French, and it has the sumptuous, flowing quality you expect.”
Dan Wallace Miller
The opera has most of the major plot points of the play—the hatred between Montagues and Capulets, the Capulets’ ball where Romeo and Juliet fall instantly in love, the balcony scene, the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt, and the deaths of the lovers in Juliet’s tomb. There are only a few differences from the original, Miller says.
For one, the play opens with a scene that is missing in the opera, a brawl between the Montagues and Capulets that sets the tone for the violence between the two families. “The other huge difference,” Miller says, “is that because this is an opera, you gotta have the final duo!” Instead of Juliet waking up to find Romeo’s corpse and then stabbing herself, as in the play, Juliet wakes up as Romeo is not quite dead yet. Only after their duet does he die, and then she kills herself.
Taking inspiration from Wieland Wagner’s minimalist stagings at Bayreuth after World War II, the opera is played in a bare unit set that represents the inside of a mausoleum. Different locations are suggested by changes in lighting, by moss, and by flowers, but the setting also symbolizes the pointless hatred that turns all of Verona into a mausoleum.
“The idea is that the ghosts will keep reliving this tragic story up until the point where humanity itself has forgotten that any of these people ever existed,” Miller says. “The people involved in the conflict don’t know what instigated it in the first place, but it has resulted in centuries of blood and tragedy.”
Miller also stresses that Romeo and Juliet are both children—she is specifically not yet 14, and he is probably a little older. “They are adolescents,” he says. “They are not the platonic ideal of romance. Romeo goes to the Capulet ball, and the first woman he sees he falls in love with. The realization that Juliet is the daughter of his enemy is a further turn-on—lust spurred on by rebellion.”
A challenge to the performers is the contradiction between very young characters and music that requires seasoned professionals. “It’s about adolescent love, but my God it’s so difficult to sing,” Miller says. “It’s absolute fireworks!
“Both Ricardo Garcia and Madison Leonard, who are singing Romeo and Juliet, are just doing a phenomenal job. It is so endearing to see that spark of adolescent glee in every interaction they have.”
# # # # #
Kiss Me, Kate (performances July 1–26) was Cole Porter’s greatest success. It opened on Broadway in 1948 and ran for more than 1000 performances, followed by a London West End production in 1951, and several subsequent revivals up to 2019.
The show is about actors trying to mount a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew, in which different cast members have different stakes in the show. Producer/director/star Fred Graham needs a success in order to revive a floundering career; co-star and ex-wife Lilli Vanessi is engaged to the influential General Harrison Howell, but also caught between her genuine love for Fred and his arrogant mistreatment of her. Bill, the boyfriend of younger actress Lois Lane, is involved with gangsters who attempt to hold the production hostage for his debts.
Ken Cazan
The entanglement of these different dilemmas creates lively theatrical humor. “The wit of (Kiss Me, Kate) is very sophisticated, acerbic, clever stuff,” stage director Ken Cazan says. “It’s amazing, the whole thing. But some of it’s dated. Something I have to deal with in 2023 is the misogyny that’s just through the roof.”
Cazan points to the original ending of the show, where Lois goes face down before Fred, as a sign of submission. He will talk to the cast and ask how they want to play that scene. “I think we’ll probably do a 180 from that,” he says. “I’m fascinated to talk to Emily (Brockway) and Johnathan (Hays), the two principals, and say, what happens after this?
“It’s up to them to perform it and I don’t want to force them into anything.” So if you want to know how this production turns out, you’ll have to see it!
In addition to the ending, the script is full of lines that are very troublesome in 2023—even the cheery tune sung by the gangsters, “Brush up your Shakespeare.” One line that is almost always changed today is when Lois sings to Bill, “Won’t you turn that new leaf over, So your baby can be your slave?” People from casual friends to CCO audience members to Pamela Pantos, managing director of Central City Opera, have told Cazan that they hate that line. It will be changed, he says, as it almost always is today.
The conception of the female roles is something else Cazan wants to modernize. He specifically mentioned Lauren Gemelli, the actor playing Lois/Bianca. “She’s so often done as a bubble headed sexpot, which is tremendously dated,” he says. “Lauren walked in (to her audition) and you could see the brains behind the manipulation. I’m very excited to work with her.”
The feuding between Fred and Lilli is supposedly based on real life. The show’s original producer, Arnold Saint-Subber, had seen on- and off-stage battles between legendary husband-and-wife actors Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in a 1935 production of Taming of the Shrew. He later asked married writers Bella and Samuel Spewack to write a script based on Lunt and Fontanne, and they brought in Cole Porter to write the music.
It turned out to be a brilliant partnership. “Every song was a hit!” Cazan says. “I love it!”
# # # # #
The final show to open this summer will be Rossini’s Otello (performances July 15–Aug. 6). While based loosely on the same characters, this is not Shakespeare’s Othello that you may be familiar with. First performed in 1820, Rossini’s opera was based on a 1792 adaptation by French playwright Jean-François Ducis.
His Shakespearean adaptations in French included not only Othello, but Hamlet, Macbeth and Roméo et Juliette. Working in the late 18th century, Ducis was subject to the rigid rules of classical French theater, to the extent that some of his plays differed extensively from the original.
For his play, and subsequently Rossini’s opera, Ducis transferred the action entirely to Venice. In other differences, Otello and Desdemona are engaged but not married; Desdemona has another suitor, Rodrigo; Iago, another rejected suitor, pretends to support Rodrigo; and jealousy is less of a motivating factor than the racism that Othello encounters. As director Ashraf Sewailam explains, “Otello is referred to as ‘l’Africano’ multiple times by white characters, so the racist stuff is unambiguous.”
Ashraf Sewailam
To shine a light on the racism, the production has been placed in classical times, where we can more easily notice its impact. “The central idea, staging it in ancient Rome, I credit to (CCO executive director) Pamela Pantos,” Sewailam explains. That setting avoids contemporary political sensitivities, while clearly highlighting racial animus within a diverse society.
The opera is not often performed today, for a variety of reasons. The greatest is simply that it has been overshadowed by Verdi’s Otello, which was first performed in 1887, 67 years after Rossini’s opera. Another reason is that it calls for four virtuoso tenors who can sing in Rossini’s highly decorated style. There are tenors today who can sing those roles, but as Sewailam comments, “they have to get them all four at the same time, obviously.”
Sewailam has sung several roles at Central city Opera, but this will be his first appearance as director. He has directed smaller productions and scenes before—at San Diego Opera and dell’Arte Opera Ensemble in New York, among others—but he says directing a mainstage production in Central City is “a breakthrough for my directing.”
He sees the unfamiliar variant of the plot as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. “It’s a chance to highlight a different version of the plot,” he says. Instead, “the challenge is how the opera is structured musically.” Using singer’s slang, he says “the opera is really a ‘park and bark’ structure”—meaning a series of static arias where singers show off their vocal prowess without advancing the plot. But Sewailam has found plenty in the text for the production to transcend “park and bark.”
Like his fellow directors, he is excited about the singers he will be working with. “The cast is amazing!” he says. “We have quite a few twists and turns. We have a Black Iago, which presents both a problem and an opportunity, to mine the psychology of Iago and see what we can do with it.
“We are not contriving something that’s not there, but we want to mine everything to make it as compelling as possible.”
# # # # #
Central City Opera 2023 Season All performances in the Central City Opera House
Roméo et Juliette By Charles Gounod, Jules Barbier and Michel Carré John Baril, conductor, and Dan Wallace Miller, stage director Performed in French with English supertitles
7 p.m. Saturday, June 24; Friday, June 30 2 p.m. Sunday, July 2; Saturday, July 8; Wednesday, July 12; Saturday, July 15; Friday, July 21; Friday July 28; Sunday, July 30; Wednesday, Aug. 2; Saturday, Aug. 5
Kiss Me, Kate By Cole Porter, Samuel and Bella Spewack Adam Turner, conductor, and Ken Cazan, stage director Performed in English with English supertitles
7 p.m. Saturday, July 1; Friday, July 7; Saturday, July 29; Saturday, Aug. 5 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 5; Sunday, July 9; Friday, July 14; Sunday, July 16; Saturday, July 22; Wednesday, July 26
Otello By Gioachino Rossini and Francesco Berio di Salsa John Baril, conductor; Ashraf Sewailam, stage director Performed in Italian with English supertitles
7 p.m. Saturday, July 15; Friday, Aug. 4 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 19; Sunday, July 23; Saturday, July 29; Sunday, Aug. 6
Portions of a new work—for now The Calling—will be performed June 16 & 18
By Peter Alexander June 14 at 11:25 a.m.
Composer Tom Cipullo is seeking a name for his new opera.
Composer Tom Cipullo (l) and Leigh Holman (r), artistic director of CU’s Eklund Opera program. Photo by Stabio Productions for CU NOW.
Right now it’s The Calling; before that it was The Next Voice you Hear. His work-in-progress is the subject of the 2023 CU New Opera Workshop (CU NOW) in the College of Music, and the first thing Cipullo wanted to do in the workshop was find the right title.
“I think it was the first thing I said when I arrived here,” he says. “I need a better title!” The Calling was suggested by one of the performers, and so far that is the title that everyone likes best.
Conductor Nick Carthy (standing) with pianist Nathália Lato.
But whatever you call it, you can catch a preview this Friday and Sunday at the Music Theater in the CU Imig Music Building (7:30 p.m. June 16 and 2 p.m. June 18; admission is free). Portions of the opera-in-progress will be performed by early-career artists from the CU Eklund Opera program under the direction of conductor Nicholas Carthy and stage director Leigh Homan. They will be accompanied by pianist Nathália Kato.
The libretto, written by Cipullo, tells the intertwining stories of three characters: televangelist Pastor Dove; IRS Agent Cordero, who is investigating Dove’s ministry for potential tax violations; and Dolores Caro, an older woman who supports Dove’s ministry.
Two of these characters are based on models. The televangelist was inspired by someone Cipullo won’t name that he saw interviewed about his extravagant lifestyle. “He was so charming and frightening at the same time that I couldn’t take my eyes off of him,” Cipullo says. But he wants you to know he is not trying to mock the televangelist.
“I was trying to tell his side of it,” he says. “He’s giving to people. Maybe it’s worth it for these people, what he’s giving them. (It makes) me think, the preacher actually believes he’s doing good.”
Dolores, the homebound contributor to the ministry, is partly Cipullo himself. She is surrounded by old-fashioned consumer goods and feeling left behind by the 21st century. “There’s a lot of me in her,” Cipullo admits. Like Dolores, “I still have a landline. And I can’t figure out how to work this (smartphone)!”
The character of the IRS agent was suggested to Cipullo, and he is more of an original creation. As someone who grew up religious and knows both the Bible and literature, Agent Cordero is an ideal foil to Dove.
With these three characters it would be easy to write a biting satire, but that’s not Cipullo’s game. “I hope it’s more nuanced than that,” he says. “The biting satirical way is the way that a lot of people in New York would look at people who give to televangelists, but I’m more interested in what the people who listen to these televangelists get out of it.”
When pressed, Cipullo says that The Calling is neither satire nor comedy, but both—and partly tragedy, in a way. “It’s all of these,” he says. “I think it is a commentary on the condition of the country, with tragic and comic overtones. Any good opera that wants to touch your heart has to have light moments in it.”
Getting the right balance of ingredients is one purpose of CU NOW and similar workshops. Composers can hear portions of their new works and see what works and what doesn’t, and to write new material when required. Often the performers themselves provide ideas that end up in the finished work—and not just the title.
When he arrived for the workshop, Cipullo says, “I had specific things that I was concerned about, and I had various epiphanies. I didn’t really have the title, there was too much wordiness and (I was concerned about) the momentum and how to shape it.
Leigh Holman (l) and composer Tom Cippullo (r) during a rehearsalfor ’The Calling.’
“Then there are specific levels—for example, someone’s singing an aria, there are specific musical things. Maybe it’s only a moment, maybe it’s a beat, maybe it’s too long. Maybe something’s wrong. I don’t know what it is, but we have to try to figure out what it is, as a group.”
CU NOW, founded by Holman in 2010, provides a longer working period than most workshops—up to two or three weeks. This gives composers a chance to tackle more changes than they could in a few days, which is valuable to the creative process. Composers who have been part of CU NOW in the past include Cipullo, Kamala Sankaram, Jake Heggie and Mark Adamo.
But Holman makes it clear that CU NOW is first and foremost for the students, giving them experience they will need in their careers. Working with composers, and learning new music on short notice, have become more necessary as more new operas are being produced around the country. At first, she says, the singers struggled to keep up with the changes they had to make overnight.
But “it’s developed now to they’re begging for music,” she says. “They ask, ‘Did you write me any music last night?’ And Tom is writing new music almost every day and sending it to them every morning, and by 2 o’clock they know it already!”
That experience prepares the students for the facts of professional life today. “This is a golden age of American Opera,” Holman says. “The singers, if they’re going to work, they need to have these skills. When we started, there weren’t other universities doing these workshops and now they’re doing them all over.”
And at this point Cipullo speaks up. “But there’s nothing like this one”! he says.
# # # # #
CU New Opera Workshop Leigh Holman, director Nick Carthy, conductor Nathália Kato, pianist
The Calling by Tom Cipullo (portions)
Music Theatre, Imig Music Building 7:30 pm. Friday, June 16 2 p.m. Sunday June 18
Boulder Opera part of collaboration presenting Colorado Sky in Broomfield and Boulder
By Peter Alexander May 31 at 2:00 p.m.
It’s one of those “only in Boulder” things.
The re-introduction of wolves in Colorado, advanced by the narrow passage of Proposition 114 in 2020, led to the composition of an opera. Not just an opera, though: a puppet opera about wolves for families with children ages three and up.
The world premiere production of the new work, Colorado Sky, will be presented Saturday at the Broomfield Auditorium in Broomfield and Sunday at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder as part of what is billed as “the first Colorado Puppet Opera Festival” (June 3 and 4; details below). The music for Colorado Sky was composed by recent CU grad Ben Morris to a libretto by playwright Laura Fuentes.
The story of the opera is about Sky, a re-introduced wolf cub who must make new friends and adapt to his new home. It is presented through shadow puppetry and brought to musical life by three singers, Claire MaCahan, Brandon Tyler Padgett and Sabina Balsamo. The performance will accompanied by the Lirios Strung Quartet, the current string quartet in residence at the CU College of Music.
Conductor Nicholas Carthy, opera music director at CU, wrote about Colorado Sky, “It encompasses everything that opera and modern music need to be. It’s tuneful, it’s accessible, the words are wonderful, the story’s great.”
The opera is 35 minutes in length. Following each performance there will be a 30-minute puppet-making workshop. The production is presented by Art Song Colorado, working in collaboration with the Sohap Ensemble, Boulder Opera, and the Broomfield Council on the Arts and Humanities.
A jazz pianist a well as composer, Ben Morris is assistant professor of composition at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas. His Hill of Three Wishes was premiered by Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra and conductor Cynthia Katsarelis last November.
Librettist and playwright Laura Fuentes lives in Baltimore. She has had a commission from Washington National Opera and participated in College Light Opera Company’s New Works program, and her plays have been recognized in several new works programs and festivals.
# # # # #
Colorado Puppet Opera Festival Art Song Colorado, in collaboration with Sohap Ensemble, Boulder Opera, and the Broomfield Council on the Arts and Humanities Nicholas Carthy, conductor
Ben Morris and Laura Fuentes: Colorado Sky (world premiere; puppet opera)
6 p.m. Saturday, June 3, Broomfield Auditorium, Broomfield TICKETS
1 and 3 p.m. Sunday, June 4, Dairy Arts Center, Boulder TICKETS
AGMA announces the five-year agreement; summer season opens June 24
By Peter Alexander May 21 at 10:15 p.m.
The American Guild of Musical Artist (AGMA), a union representing singers, dancers and others who perform in musical productions, has announced that they have reached an agreement with Central City Opera that will allow the pending 2023 summer season to proceed.
Opening Night at Central City Opera. Featured in Central City Opera’s 75th anniversary book, Theatre of Dreams, The Glorious Central City Opera—Celebrating 75 Years.
According to AGMA’s release, dated May 18, “The American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA) and Central City Opera (CCO) reached a new five-year collective bargaining agreement, beginning May 19, 2023, and running through September 1, 2027.” Significantly, the release also states that “AGMA was also able to insist that the agreement cover this season, rather than starting in September.”
This means that the current summer festival season, running from June 24 through Aug. 6, will proceed as scheduled. As of this date, CCO has not made an announcement concerning the agreement, nor have they responded to requests for comment. Information on the 2023 summer festival and access to single ticket sales may be found HERE; summer subscriptions are available HERE.
As reported earlier, CCO and AGMA have been in negotiations for a new contract since Nov. 1, 2022. The previous contract expired near the end of last season, in August 2022. Since then the company and union have traded accusations, but in the past week both sides agreed to meet with professional mediators from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.
On May 8, CCO offered a four-year contract that did not include the current summer. The next day, May 9, AGMA’s Board of Governors authorized a possible strike that would have interrupted or canceled the summer season. On May 11, the two sides held a 14-hour negotiating session with federal mediators. A week later, May 18, AGMA announced the new five-year collective bargaining agreement (CBA).
AGMA’s announcement quotes their national executive director, Sam Wheeler: “This was a long and challenging negotiation, but, in the end, we were able to reach an agreement that protects the welfare of artists working at CCO.” You may read the full statement from AGMA HERE.
Brahms and Bonis at the Academy; Beethoven, Britten and Korngold downtown
By Peter Alexander May 18 at 1:10 p.m.
The Boulder Piano Quartet will perform a piece by one of the most interesting composers you’ve never heard of—Mel Bonis, aka Mélanie Hélène Bonis Domange— as part of a concert Friday at the Academy in Boulder (7 p.m. May 19; details below).
Oh, and there will be some Brahms, too—someone who is slightly better known to music lovers today.
To be specific, the program comprises Bonis’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in D major and Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor. The concert will feature performers Alex Gonzalez as guest violinist, with regular Boulder Quartet members Matthew Dane, viola; Thomas Heinrich, cello; and David Korevaar, piano. Gonzalez substitutes for the late Chas Wetherbee, a member of the quartet who died Jan. 9.
Born in 1858, Bonis was a child prodigy who taught herself to play piano. She entered the Paris Conservatory at 16, where she studied with Cesar Franck and was in the same class with Debussy. To satisfy her parents’ conservative sense of priorities she married a businessman who apparently didn’t like music, and consequently she gave up composition. Later she re-encountered a former classmate and ex-lover who was able to encourage her composition and connect her with publishers. Both her composing and her affair with the former classmate blossomed as a result.
When Saint-Saëns heard some of her music around 1901, he is supposed to have said “I never imagined a woman could write such music!” After her husband’s death in 1918, Bonis devoted herself fully to composition. The Second Piano Quartet, written in 1927, is one of her later pieces which she described as her “musical legacy.”
Brahms wrote his Piano Quartet in G minor 1856–61. It was premiered in his hometown of Hamburg in 1861 with Clara Schumann playing the piano part. Brahms himself later played it for his Vienna debut as a performer. The Quartet is best known for its finale, marked Rondo alla Zingarese, based on the Roma dance-music style that was often mistaken for Hungarian folk song.
# # # # #
Boulder Piano Quartet
Mel Bonis: Piano Quartet No. 2 in D major, op. 124
Brahms: Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, op. 25
7 p.m. Friday, May 19 Chapel Hall, The Academy University Hill
The Boulder Symphony and conductor Devin Patrick Hughes open their concert Friday (7:30 p.m. May 19 at Grace Commons Church) with another interesting composer, and one who should be better known, Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
Music from Korngold’s score for the 1940 film starring Errol Flynn, The Sea Hawk, opens the program, which also features probably the best known symphony of all time, Beethoven’s Fifth. Between these works violinist Yumi Hwang-Williams and violist Andrew Krimm will appear as soloists for Benjamin Britten’s Double Concerto for violin and viola.
Korngold was one of many composers who came to the United States to escape the Nazi regime in Germany and Austria. Hailed as a child prodigy, the had a thriving career in Austria as a composer of operas and other major works. He moved to Hollywood in 1934, where he wrote the scores to 16 films, including several Errol Flynn adventure epics such as Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk.
His concert music has recently enjoyed a revival, and Opera Colorado recently presented his 1920 opera Die tote Stadt (The dead city), written when the composer was 23. The Sea Hawk was the last of his scores for a “swashbuckler.” It is considered one of his best film scores, and it was a recording of that score and others by Korngold that sparked a revival of interest in his film music in the 1970s.
Britten’s Double Concerto ranks alongside Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante as one of a very few works for solo violin and viola. Written in 1932 when Britten was 18, it was later rejected by the composer and not performed in the composer’s lifetime. However, a copy survived in a reduced score and the rediscovered concerto was premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1997.
Nothing in classical music is more recognizable than the opening gesture of Beethoven’s Fifth—three shorts and a long, the four-note motive that came to stand for “Victory’ in World War II (based on the morse code signal for V, dot dot dot dash). The piece has become so familiar that it is easy to forget how tightly it is constructed, with the four-note motive running throughout in various forms, and the thrilling transformation from C minor to C major representing a kind of musical victory of its own.
Hwang-Williams has been concertmaster of the Colorado Symphony for 20 years and recently released two CD recordings of music by Korean composer Isang Yun. Krimm came to Colorado as a member of the award-winning Altius Quartet, the former quartet-in-residence at the CU, and is currently executive director of the Boulder Symphony.
# # # # #
Boulder Symphony, Devin Patrick Hughes, conductor With Yumi Hwang-Williams, violin, and Andrew Krimm, viola
Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Film music from The Sea Hawk
Benjamin Britten: Double Concerto for violin and viola
Film, chamber music, songs, and the massive Second Symphony May 17–21
By Peter Alexander May 16 at 11:15 p.m.
They just keep coming back.
They don’t build nests, but like the swallows to Capistrano, every May a group of musicians return to Boulder. They come here to play in the annual Colorado MahlerFest, for the 36th time this year.
Kenneth Woods with the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra. Photo by Keith Bobo
This year’s festival, titled “Rise Again,” runs from Wednesday through Sunday, and includes events at Mountain View Methodist Church, the Boedecker Theater at the Dairy Arts Center and Macky Auditorium (May 17–21; full programs and details below).
As it has from the very first MahlerFest, this year’s event culminates in the performance of a major orchestral work: the Symphony No. 2 in C minor that features orchestra, chorus and vocal soloists (3:30 p.m. May 21 in Macky). It is the chorus of the Second Symphony that provides the festival title when they sing “Rise Again! You shall rise again!” This theme is also featured in the other work on the Sunday concert program, “Phoenix Rising” by the living Scottish composer Thea Musgrave.
Original poster for Mahler’s 1905 Lieder Concert
Preceding the Sunday performance of “Mahler and Musgrave,” there will be a free symposium titled “Authors and Editors” focusing on the featured work and other aspects of Mahler’s life (9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, May 20, at Mountain View Methodist, with lunch break).
A recent trend that continues in the 36th MahlerFest is the expansion of the repertoire to composers associated with, or in some way influenced by, Mahler. This development has been driven by artistic director Kenneth Woods, who took over MahlerFest from Robert Olson, the founding director, in 2015. Woods has said that his aim in expanding the repertoire is for the audience to hear more than works by Mahler and to provide context for the Mahler works that are performed.
This year’s concerts leading up to Sunday will present a symphony by Hans Gál, an Austrian composer of the generation after Mahler, and a chamber version of the first act of Wagner’s Die Walküre, which influenced the opening of the Second Symphony (7:30 p.m. Wednesday); a program of solo works (3 p.m. Thursday); a screening of Ken Russell’s loosely biographical 1974 film Mahler (7 p.m. Thursday); a chamber concert of music by Ernst Bloch and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, described in the program as “Mahler’s Musical Heirs” (7:30 p.m. Friday); and a concert recreating a program of Mahler’s song cycles that the composer conducted in Vienna in 1905 (7:30 p.m. Saturday).
Full program listings and details for each concert are given below.
But back to the swallows. One of the most notable aspects of the MahlerFest has been how many musicians develop a deep loyalty to the festival and return year after year. There is even one orchestra member—assistant principal string bass player Jennifer Motycka—who has played in every single MahlerFest, and many others play year after year.
Festival Artist Lauren Spaulding
One of these is violist Lauren Spaulding, who this year is a “Festival Artist”—performers who are chosen to lead orchestral sections or appear as soloists. “There’s something so engaging about playing Mahler with a bunch of cohorts,” she says. “Mahler demands a lot of flexibility and brings a little bit of the European musical traditions that you don’t really see these days in the States with the kinds of demands that they put on auditions— in time and in tune and correct and exactly right with the metronome.”
That flexibility and playing with like-minded musicians are key for Spaulding. She remembers a performance in 2019 of Mahler’s song cycle “Songs of a Wayfarer” as a moment of illumination. “It was beautiful, and playing it with musicians who are so flexible was a humbling experience for me. (That) opened my eyes to the fact that music is living poetry.”
She also singles out artistic director and conductor Kenneth Woods for praise. “Ken is amazing,” she says. “He’s a big reason I keep coming back. He follows what’s on the page, but man does he like make it live!”
For his part, Woods points to the ”friendly social environment within the orchestra, which I think partly comes from people who want to be here. And also just the fact that Boulder’s a fantastic place to spend a week! Everyone’s excited to get here, see the mountains, hear the music, and to see their friends.”
Woods believes that the collegial atmosphere comes partly from the Festival Artists. “We’ve chosen those people very, very carefully that they’re not just really good musicians, but that they’re great colleagues,” he says. “They’re there to inspire but also to encourage and to engage.”
Kenneth Woods
Woods and Spaulding both credit the varied repertoire for attracting musicians. “From day one I wanted to stay true to the core aspects of the festival but to really broaden the repertoire and increase the ambition,” Woods says. “For those who want to push themselves and explore new repertoire, this is a great place to do it.”
It’s definitely the expanded repertoire that brought tenor Brennen Guillory back for his second MahlerFest. He sang the tenor solos in Mahler’s Lied von der Erde (Song of the earth) in 2018, and this year he will be featured as Siegmund in the chamber performance of Wagner’s Die Walküre Act I Wednesday.
“Siegmund is a great role!” he says. “It’s one of those things I really love to sing. It’s a very rewarding piece, it’s kind of got everything.”
Like Spaulding, Guillory says that the conductor is also part of the attraction. “I’ve been working with Ken on and off for probably 20 years,” he says. “He’s a really great conductor to work with—very collaborative, very generous, patient, and he knows the music in and out.”
Finally, Woods wants you to know that the repertoire, while diverse, is more than a potpourri. The programs have been put together with a theme that runs through the festival. “I tried to program the festival so that the introduction of the human voice in (Mahler’s Second Symphony on Sunday) grows out of what we’ve heard earlier in the week. Both (Wagner’s Walküre Wednesday) and the Liederabend (Saturday) are intended to give a sense of Mahler’s roots.”
Woods details the connections between Mahler’s conducting of Wagner and his musical forms, between the Second Symphony and Walküre specifically, and between the songs he wrote and the music in his symphonies. “It’s lovely to see how vocal music informed his writing for the orchestra, and also the close relationship between song and symphony.
“That sense of Mahler the conductor and how that affects his work as a composer is always interesting to me.”
# # # # #
MahlerFest XXXVI: “Rise Again” Main Events
“Opera and more: Wagner and Gál” Colorado MahlerFest Chamber Orchestra, Kenneth Woods, conductor With Stacey Rishoi, soprano, Brennen Guillory, tenor, and Gustav Andreassen, bass
Hans Gál: Symphony No. 4 (U.S. premiere)
Wagner: Die Walküre, Act I (Arr. for chamber orchestra by Francis Griffin)
7:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 17 Mountain View Methodist Church
“Solo Journeys” MahlerFest Festival Artists: Zachary DePue, violin; Parry Karp, cello; Hannah Porter Occeña, flute; Daniel Silver, clarinet; and Lauren Spaulding, viola
Luciano Berio: Sequenza I for flute
Egon Wellesz: Rhapsody for solo viola, op. 87
Olivier Messiaen: Abîme des oisseaux (Abyss of the Birds) from Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the end of time)
Max Reger: Suite in D minor for solo cello
Erwin Schulhoff: Sonata for solo violin
3 p.m. Thursday, May 18 Mountain View Methodist Church
Ken Russell’s Mahler Screening of Ken Russell’s 1974 film Mahler
7 p.m. Thursday, May 18 Boedecker Theater, Dairy Arts Center
“Generation Next—Mahler’s Musical Heirs” Zachary DePue and Caroline Chin, violin; Lauren Spaulding and Aria Cheregosha, viola; Parry Karp and Kenneth Woods, cello; and Jennifer Hayghe, piano
Ernst Bloch: Suite for cello and piano (trans from the Suite for viola)
Erich Wolfgang Korngold: String Sextet in D major, op. 10
7:30 p.m. Friday, May 19 Mountain View Methodist Church
MahlerFest XXXVI Symposium—Authors and Editors
Renate Stark-Voit, editor of the critical edition of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2
Joseph Horowitz, author of The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York
Kenneth Woods, MahlerFest artistic director
April Fredrick, soprano, opera, concert and recording artist
Mahler’s Liederabend Recreation of Mahler’s concert in Vienna, Jan. 29, 1905 Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra, Kenneth Woods, conductor With April Fredrick, soprano; Stacey Rishoi, mezzo-soprano; Brennen Guillory, tenor; and Gustav Andreassen, bass
Mahler: Selections from Das Knaben Wunderhorn (The youth’s magic horn)
—Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the death of children)
—Rückert-lieder (Songs after Rückert)
7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 20 Macky Auditorium
Stan Ruttenberg Memorial Concert: “Mahler and Musgrave” Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra, Kenneth Woods, conductor With April Fredrick, soprano, and Stacey Rishoi, mezzo-soprano Boulder Concert Chorale, Vicki Burrichter, director
Thea Musgrave: Phoenix Rising Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C minor (“Resurrection”)
Sharps & Flatirons 