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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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January 13, 2025

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Michael Butterman returns to Boulder Phil

Concert features world premiere, Bluegrass violin concerto, “New World” Symphony

By Peter Alexander Jan. 13 at 12:30 a.m.

Michael Butterman returned to the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra yesterday (Jan. 12) to conduct an interesting and worthwhile program, having missed the fall season due to cancer treatments.

Newly bald from chemo therapy, Butterman was welcomed by the Macky Auditorium audience with cheers and applause. He led the full program with his usual energy.

First was the world premiere of Wind, Water, Sand by Stephen Lias, inspired by Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park. It is the third national park-inspired piece by Lias premiered by the Phil, after Gates of the Arctic (2014) and All the Songs that Nature Sings (Rocky Mountain, 2017). Unlike those works, Wind, Water, Sand does not have images to accompany the score. Lias has explained that he wanted this work to spur the listener’s imagination, instead of being linked to specific images of the park.

He also said the music expresses the flow of the three elements that created the park—the wind, the water, and the sand. There are closely related musical ideas that flow at various speeds, just as the three elements flow at different rates within the park.

The score opens with energetic ideas that are wonderfully evocative of motion. The intricate, rippling quality of these opening gestures suggest the wind flowing over the dunes, or the ripples of the stream that runs alongside the dunes. Thereafter, the orchestral sound is colorful and suggestive, but rarely specific enough to signal wind or water. 

The bustling opening gives way to a greater stillness, punctuated by outbursts of sound that I found evocative more of a summer storm than any of the three elements. Exciting contributions from the percussion animate this section, along with dramatic gestures from the brass that evolve into something that seems grander than sand dunes. 

Whatever one imagines, the piece is well structured from beginning to end. With its busy opening, its central section that grows in grandeur, and a return to the opening soundscape, it creates a satisfying whole.

People around me talked of the score having a cinematic quality—I heard mentions of Indiana Jones and Studio Ghibli; clearly the music struck home. On the basis of its musical qualities alone, Wind, Water, Sand deserves a future in concert halls.

Next Butterman introduced violinist Tessa Lark, who performed a piece written for her by Michael Torke. Titled Sky: Violin Concerto, it combines the structure and musical drama of the classical concerto with musical styles that reflect Lark’s fiddling skills from her native Kentucky.

Lark occupied the concerto’s unique sound world like it was home—which in a way it is. She played the dazzling first movement with fire and a Bluegrass virtuosity that elicited spontaneous applause between movements. The wistful second movement—as it is labelled in the score—presents a series of meditative ideas skillfully knit together. And the final movement, now “spirited,” gave Lark the chance to play flashy fiddling licks with energy and bravura. 

The performance was not always ideally balanced in Macky’s uneven acoustic, but that seemed not to detract from the listeners’ enjoyment. Lark’s energetic body language, including bends and emphatic stomps, added to the overall excitement. The audience called Lark back for an encore that combined her country singing skills with down-home fiddling. 

The concert concluded with another piece from America, if not by a living American: Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.” Butterman and the orchestra gave an expressive performance, marked by strategic variations of tempo. If a little more than I would like, these touches marked out the expressive contours of the familiar symphony. 

The best moment was provided by the brass chorale at the outset of the second movement, resonant and reverent. The movement also featured an eloquent English horn solo on the famous “Goin’ Home” theme that was later adopted into a pseudo-spiritual by one of Dvořák’s pupils. Butterman tore into the final movement at a speedy pace, but again used strategic variations of tempo to outline the expressive contours. 

The winds played strongly throughout, giving the symphony a muscular core, but occasionally overpowering the strings. All the wind solos were well played, including the treacherous horn solos and lovely contributions from the flute and clarinet. 

CORRECTION 1/13: The composer Stephen Lias’ name was incorrectly listed as Michael in the first version of this review.

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January 8, 2025

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Michael Butterman returns to Boulder Phil

Conductor will lead premiere of new work by Stephen Lias on program “From the New World”

By Peter Alexander Jan. 8 at 12 noon

Michael Butterman, music director of the Boulder Philharmonic, returns to the Macky Auditorium stage to conduct the orchestra’s concert Sunday (4 p.m. Jan. 12; details below) after an absence of several months while he underwent cancer treatments at his home in Shreveport, La.

In addition to Butterman’s return, the concert is noteworthy in featuring two works by living composers, one of them a world premiere, and the much loved Symphony “From the New World” by Antonín Dvořák. The world premiere, Wind, Water, Sand by Stephen Lias, is a musical tribute to Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park—his third national park-based score to be premiered by the Phil. Violinist Tessa Lark, who combines her Grammy-nominated skills as a classical soloist with prowess as a bluegrass fiddler, will play Michael Torke’s Sky: Violin Concerto, which was written for her.

Michael Butterman with the Boulder Phil, before his recent illness

Butterman is eager to return. “I  want to get back to making music,” he says. “I’ve completed the chemo therapy regimen with good results. My immune system is going to be subpar for a few months and I have to be cautious, (but) other than that, I can go about my business.”

Noting the visible effects of his chemo treatments, he names some famous bald conductors. “It’s a different look,” he says. “I pass the mirror every now and then, and I’m like, ‘who was that person?’”

Lias, whose Web page identifies him as an “adventurer-composer,” has written more than 20 concert works inspired by America’s national parks. Two that have been premiered by the Boulder Phil—Gates of the Arctic (2014), inspired by a residency in that Alaskan park, and All the Songs that Nature Sings (2017), inspired by Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park—were accompanied by visual images of the respective parks. 

Stephen Lias at Great Sand Dunes N.P. in 2023 Photo by Peter Alexander

Wind, Water, Sand, however, does not have accompanying photos or videos. “I enjoy writing music that has imagery synchronized to it,” Lias says. “But Michael (Butterman) agreed at my request that this piece would not have imagery. 

“In this case, both because of the location and because of the musical challenge, I wanted to tap into the audience’s imagination, which is what we do when we listen to Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony or the Strauss Alpine Symphony. We allow our imagination to provide the imagery, and that was the direction that I wanted to go in this piece.”

Lias spent more than a week as a guest of Great Sand Dunes National Park in the spring of 2023. This was not a residency, but a one-time project between Lias, the park and the Boulder Philharmonic. Park officials “were very generous in allowing me access to the park, the museum and the staff there,” he says.

“What I wanted was to be completely open to the place (and) the experience there,” he said during his 2023 visit to the park. “I’m creating what I think of as ‘idea soup‘. I’m letting it stir, and we’ll see what it turns into.”

The flow of sand and water at Great Sand Dunes N.P. Photo by Peter Alexander

What turned into the basis of his score was the flowing motion of the wind across the dunes, of the water that runs beside the dunes, and of the sand as it forms the dunes—hence the title, Wind, Water, Sand. “All of those are doing the same thing at different paces and at different scales, from the very slow to the very fast, from the microscopic to the gargantuan,” Lias says. 

While those are separate elements in nature, they are not represented by separate musical ideas. “Rather than make a wind theme and a water theme and a sand theme,” Lias explains, “I focused on a group of ideas that go both slow and fast. There are little ornate, intricate elements in certain parts of the music that are re-used as whole notes as bass lines for other places in the piece.They are all participating in the same dance.”

An eclectic composer, Torke has written music influenced by minimalism, operas influenced by rap and disco, a rock opera version of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione de Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea), music inspired by his synesthetic experiences of music and color—and now a Bluegrass concerto. Sky was commissioned in 2018 by a consortium of 11 orchestras around the country, including the Albany Symphony, with whom Lark played the premiere. “Tessa just owns that piece,“ Butterman says.

Lark grew up in Kentucky, where she studied the Suzuki method and performed with her father’s Bluegrass band. She later studied at the New England Conservatory and Juilliard, and while playing a Stradivari violin on loan she was inspired to record an album titled Stradgrass Sessions combining her classical and Bluegrass skills.  

Tessa Lark

In his program notes, Torke writes “The inspiration for this concerto came from Tessa Lark . . . Banjo-picking technique given to the solo violin was the departure point in the first movement. For the second movement my source material was Irish reels, the forerunner of American Bluegrass. The template for the third movement was fiddle licks with a triplet feel. In each case I wrote themes of my own in these styles, and developed the ideas into a standard ‘composed’ violin concerto.”

Butterman describes Sky as having “a great deal of complexity in terms of the way the parts work with one another. It’s a workout for the orchestra, no question, but very successful with the audience.”

In the context of the two newer pieces, Butterman thought that Dvořák’s “New World” was the perfect compliment. “All of these pieces are American in one way or another,” he says. “The closest connection is between Torke and Dvořák. Dvořák was looking to show Americans how to celebrate our cultural richness through development of the spiritual, and also what he thought were native American elements. And in the Torke we have a Bluegrass influence.

“The Torke and the Dvorak, in spite of them being a hundred and however many years apart, come from similar motivations. And (Lias’s) piece is inspired by a beautiful slice of our American landscape (that) people in Colorado will appreciate and understand.”

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“From the New World”
Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, Michael Butterman, conductor
With Tessa Lark, violin

  • Stephen Lias: Wind, Water, Sand WORLD PREMIERE
  • Michael Torke: Sky: Violin Concerto
  • Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 in E minor, “From the New World”

4 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 12
Macky Auditorium

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September 25, 2024

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Boulder Symphony presents “America-Centric” concerts

Symphony by Florence Price is the “American anchor” of programs Saturday and Sunday

By Peter Alexander Sept. 25 at 11:25 a.m.

The Boulder Symphony opens a new season this weekend with what conductor Devin Patrick Hughes calls “a very America-centric concert.” Performances at the Gordon Gamm Theater of the Dairy Arts Center will be at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday (full program and details below).

Boulder Symphony and conductor Devin Patrick Hughes

The most obviously American work on the program—in effect the American anchor to the concert—is the Symphony No. 1 by Florence Price. A prodigy who gave her first piano performance at the age of four and later attended the New England Conservatory, Price was the first African American woman to have music played by a major symphony.

Completing the program are two works by European composers with American connections: The Slavonic Dance No. 1 by Dvořák, who lived in the United States in the 1890s and whose “New World” Symphony inspired Price and other African American composers at the turn of the 20th century; and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, which was premiered in the U.S.

Soloist for the concerto will be Artem Kuznetsov, 2024 winner of the the International Keyboard Odyssiad & Festival in Ft. Collins. The Boulder Symphony has maintained a close relationship with the competition for a number of years by annually presenting the winner on one of their concerts.

Born in Arkansas, Price moved north during the “great migration” of the 1920s and settled in Chicago. She studied composition and organ and worked as an organist for silent films. In 1933 her First Symphony was premiered by the Chicago Symphony at the Century of Progress World’s Fair. 

Florence Price (photo colorized)

“Florence Price is the quintessential American composer,” Hughes wrote in an email. “Her music takes from the melting pot of our culture, from spirituals and gospel, and blends them with the great European masters to create a unique American voice.”

Her total output includes four symphonies, a piano concerto, two violin concertos, and other works for orchestra, in addition to choral, vocal and piano pieces. In 2009 dozens of works by Price were discovered at her summer home, which had been abandoned for many years. Among this collection were the two violin concerto and the Fourth Symphony—works that would have been lost had the manuscripts not been found.

The First Symphony is in the traditional four movements. Price drew on her African-American heritage with pentatonic, spiritual-like melodies and a lively, syncopated third movement. Titled “Juba Dance,” it evokes a dance and rhythmic accompaniment performed by African slaves throughout the New World.

Another important influence is Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony, “From the New World.” Not only are both works in E minor, Price scholar Rae Linda Brown wrote that “an examination of Price’s symphony reveals that she had thoroughly studied Dvorak’s score.”

Among the most popular of Dvořák’s works, the two sets of Slavonic Dances were originally composed for piano four hands and later set for orchestra by the composer. It was the publication of the first set for piano four hands in 1878, facilitated by Brahms, that established Dvořák as an important and recognized composer. The first dance is a Furiant, an energetic Bohemian dance marked by shifting accents and alternating duple and triple time.

Dvořák’s connection to the American theme of the concert is through his years living in New York and his 1893 visit to the Czech village of Spillville in Iowa. His interest in African American and other American musical styles was very influential at the time.

As Hughes wrote, “Dvořák is at the crossroads of European and American voices. His symphonic work and educational initiatives in America in the 1890s paved the way for a new American school that recognized the importance of African American folk music as the future of an American school.”

Pianist Artem Kuznetsov

Tchaikovsky wrote his First Piano Concerto in 1874-75. He hoped that the great Russian virtuoso Anton Rubinstein would play the premiere, but Rubinstein criticized the score when he saw it. As a result the premiere was played by the German pianist Hans von Bülow in Boston. Rubinstein later took back his criticism of the concerto and promoted it through performances. Today it is one of the best known piano concertos.

Continuing the American connection among the composers, Tchaikovsky came to the United States and conducted on four concerts in Carnegie Hall, including the hall’s opening night May 5, 1891—shortly before Dvořák arrived in the U.S.

A native of Balashov, Russia, Kuznetsov has won several international competitions in addition the International Keyboard Odyssiad. He holds Master of Music degree and Artist Diploma from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. He has performed across the United States, in Russia, Germany and the Netherlands.

The weekend’s concerts are the first in a series of three orchestral programs to be performed by the Boulder Symphony at the Dairy Arts Center, each including a work by an American composer. The season culminates in May with performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, presented in collaboration with Kim Robards Dance; you may see details on the orchestra’s Web page, along with information on their Curiosity Concerts for young people.

The Boulder Symphony also offers a music academy that is open to all talented students regardless of ability to pay. “Boulder Symphony created our Music Academy so every child could have access to musical instruments and instruction,” Hughes wrote. “Those who contribute to our scholarship program give the dream and promise of a lifetime of music-making to all kids in Boulder County.”

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Boulder Symphony, Devin Patrick Hughes, conductor
With Artem Kuznetsov, piano

  • Dvořák: Slavonic Dance No. 1 in C major, op. 46 no. 1, “Furiant”
  • Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor
  • Florence Price: Symphony No. 1 in E minor

2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28
2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29
Gordon Gamm Theater, Dairy Arts Center

TICKETS

CORRECTION: The first concert on Saturday, Sept. 28, is at 2 p.m., not 4 p.m. as originally posted.