Guest soloists and a Mahler symphony bring 2024 festival to a close
By Peter Alexander July 18 at 3:20 p.m.
The remaining two weeks of the Colorado Music Festival (CMF) will see a series of guest artists—soloists, conductors and chamber musicians—and culminate with a Mahler symphony.
Ending the summer with Mahler has become a tradition at CMF. “It’s quite conscious,” artistic director and conductor Peter Oundjian says. “We did the Third (Symphony), we did the Fifth. The season of ’21 we ended with Beethoven, because couldn’t have a Mahler symphony”—due to onstage seating restrictions during COVID—but otherwise, Oundjian has made Mahler the preferred festival finale.
Before the season-ending concert Aug. 4, CMF still has intriguing programs of both orchestral and chamber music. Next Tuesday (7:30 p.m. July 23; full programs listed below), the Robert Mann Chamber Music Series continues with a concert by members of the Festival Orchestra. The program will include one of the most loved pieces by Mendelssohn, his String Octet in E-flat, written when the composer was only 16.
One week later on July 30, the guest chamber group the Danish String Quartet closes the chamber music series with a diverse program of pieces and movements both familiar and unfamiliar. The Danish Quartet, known for creative programming, was originally scheduled in 2021, but due to COVID restrictions had to wait for the 2022 festival.
This summer’s program opens with the minuet from Joseph Haydn’s late quartet Op. 77 no. 2, followed by Three Pieces for String Quartet by Stravinsky and Three Melodies by the 17th-century blind Celtic harpist Turlough O’Carolan. An early divertimento by Mozart and the Third String Quartet by Shostakovich complete the program.
Pianist Awadagin Pratt will be the guest soloist for the Festival Orchestra concerts July 25 and 26. The first African-American pianist to win the Naumburg International Piano Competition, Pratt has had a protean career, performing with most major American orchestras, appearing on six continents, at the White House by invitation from presidents Clinton and Obama, and on Sesame Street.
Described in the Washington Post as “one of the great and distinctive pianists of our time,” Pratt is known for highly individual artistry and concert dress. A pianist of prodigious technique, he plays a wide ranging repertoire. For his appearance with Oundjian and the Festival Orchestra, Pratt will play a Keyboard Concerto by J.S. Bach and Rounds for piano and string orchestra by Jessie Montgomery. The program will also feature a staple of the large orchestra repertoire, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.
Two guest artists and a guest conductor will be featured on the Chamber Orchestra concert July 28. Conductor Gemma New, hailed as “one of the brightest rising stars in the conducting firmament” by the St. Louis Post Dispatch, is a native of New Zealand where she leads the New Zealand Symphony. She comes to Colorado on her way to conduct the BBC Proms in London Aug. 16.
The program will feature the piano duo of Christina and Michelle Naughton as guest soloists, performing Mozart’s Concerto in E-flat Major for Two Pianos, K365. Other works on the all-Mozart program are Eine kleine Nachtmusik and the “Haffner” Symphony, No. 35 in D major.
The next Festival Orchestra concert brings another outstanding soloist to Chautauqua: violinist Augustin Hadelich, who has become a CMF favorite since his first appearance at the festival in 2018. He appeared from Oundjian’s home by live stream during the COVID-canceled 2020 season, and returned as artist-in-residence in 2021.
This season he will play the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (Aug. 1 and 2) on a program that also includes Two Mountain Scenes by Kevin Puts and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor. The latter, Oundjian says, “is for a lot of people Dvořák’s true masterpiece.
“Obviously the Ninth Symphony (the ‘New World’) is fantastic and the Eighth is so exquisitely beautiful, but Seven is the piece that made him famous. The premiere in London (1885) was kind of an epic moment for him. I have conducted it in a lot of different places, and orchestras love to play it. They know how magnificent it is.”
Puts’s Two Mountain Scenes was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and Bravo Vail! “It’s a real showpiece for orchestra, quite original but not forbidding,” Oundjian says. “You’d think living in Colorado it would be performed more often. It’s a wonderful piece!”
The final concert of the 2024 festival, Sunday, Aug 6, features the final guest artist, soprano Karina Gauvin. A Canadian soprano who has performed with orchestras from San Francisco to Rotterdam, she will sing Ravel’s Shéhérazade and the final movement of the festival-closing Fourth Symphony of Mahler. And in another form of delight, the concert will open with Johann Strauss Jr.s spirited Overture to Die Fledermaus.
Following the pattern of ending the festival with Mahler, it was the Fourth that generated the rest of the program. Oundjian says that work “is in some ways the most fascinating narrative of all (of Mahler’s) symphonies. It’s like poetry. It also has a chamber quality that is very different from all the other Mahler symphonies.
“There’s something both playful and heavenly about the first movement, and something devilish about the second movement, with its falsely tuned violin that represents the devil. And typical of Mahler scherzo movements, where you have trio sections that are very beautiful and elegant. And then a slow movement, you think, ‘OK, this is the most beautiful music that’s ever been written’!”
The finale the gives the whole symphony the character of childish delight. A setting of a poem describing life in heaven, with everyone living “in sweetest peace” and enjoying endless banquets, it is one of Mahler’s most beguiling movements. It is, Oundjian says, a “wonderful image of heaven in this child-like voice, speaking to us from another place.
“I wanted to put (Ravel’s) Scheherazade with the Fourth Symphony. I think Scheherazade is staggering, with orchestration, the colors, harmonies, the way he uses the vocal line and shapes the vocal line. It’s just magnificent. And then to start it with Fledermaus is pure heaven!”
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Colorado Music Festival, Peter Oundjian, music director
Remaining concerts, July 23–Aug. 4, 2024
All performances in Chautauqua Auditorium
Robert Mann Chamber Music Series
Colorado Music Festival musicians
- Joseph Haydn, String Quartet in C Major, op. 20 no.
- Claude Debussy, Sonata for flute, viola and harp
- Felix Mendelssohn, String Octet in E-flat Major, op. 20
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 23
Festival Orchestra Concert
Festival Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, conductor
With Awadagin Pratt, piano
- J.S. Bach: Keyboard Concerto in A major, S1055
- Jessie Montgomery: Rounds for piano and string orchestra (2022)
- Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade
7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 25
6:30 p.m. Friday, July 26
Festival Chamber Orchestra Concert
Chamber Orchestra, Gemma New, conductor
With Christina and Michelle Naughton, piano duo
- Mozart: Eine kleine Nachtmusik, K525
—Concerto in E-flat Major for Two Pianos, K365
—Symphony No. 35 in D major, K385 (“Haffner”)
6:30 p.m. Sunday, July 28
Robert Mann Chamber Music Series
Danish String Quartet
- Joseph Haydn: String Quartet, op. 77 no. 2: III, Andante
- Stravinsky: Three Pieces for String Quartet
- Turlough O’Carolan: Three Melodies
- Mozart: Divertimento in F major, K138
- Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 3 in F major, op. 73
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 30
Festival Orchestra Concert
Festival Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, conductor
With Augustin Hadelich, violin
- Kevin Puts: Two Mountain Scenes (2007)
- Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D Major, op. 35
- Dvořák: Symphony No. 7 in D minor, op. 70
7:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 1
6:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 2
Festival Finale Concert
Festival Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, conductor
With Karina Gauvin, soprano
- Johann Strauss: Overture to Die Fledermaus
- Ravel: Shéhérazade
- Mahler: Symphony No. 4 in G major
6:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 4
Tickets for individual concerts can be purchased from the Chautauqua Box Office.
Sharps & Flatirons 