Supplement to The Aspen Times
FESTIVALFOCUS | YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE
Golda Schultz
After weeks of continued performances in front of her classmates and faculty, Schultz learned her obstacles were “all tied to getting over the mental blocks that prevent us Continued from Festival Focus page 1 from our true gifts as interpreters.” She continues, “I am forCapping off the program with its themes of childhood and ever grateful to the faculty and students who stood by me and imagination is Ravel’s exquisitely orchestrated Mother Goose showed me that fear can never truly win. None of us are alone. Suite, a depiction of several fairy tales That’s the thought that gets me out of which he originally wrote for piano for bed wanting to tell stories through music. None of us are alone. I want to prove that no one is alone.” four hands, for the children of the composer’s friends. On that front, Schultz speaks to the That’s the thought that Despite her sensational career thus question of diversity in classical music gets me out of bed, far, performing hasn’t always come easand whether it’s fair to say the situaily for Schultz. While a student at Rhodes tion is improving. “It is beguiling to think wanting to tell stories University in South Africa, she suffered that things are improving, because that from “fainting goat syndrome”—a severe would give us the sense that we could through music. stage fright that causes her to faint after take our foot off the pedal of change,” Golda Schultz performing. Schultz says she eventually Schultz says. “But we can never think Soprano and AMFS alumna overcame her fear, “with a lot of help we have done enough. I hope things from the supportive music department. are changing, and I see young musicians There was a dean on the music faculty who saw beyond my doing more than I ever imagined possible. Speaking out and fear and challenged me to grapple with it. He told me that my calling for action and then acting themselves as agents of talent was bigger than my fear and I just had to find a way to change.” do it, although the fear would try to get in the way.” After such a long time without live music for many people,
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Schultz says of her upcoming performance, “I think we are all longing to feel connected again without a computer standing between us and an experience.” She adds, “I look forward to seeing faces in the seats again and being able to make eye contact. What people can mainly expect is an evening of joy and gratitude. A celebration of hope that has kept us all going through some very dark times.”
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ALEX IRVIN
The 2010 AMFS production of John Corigliano’s Ghosts of Versailles featured Golda Schultz as Rosina, a role sung by Renée Fleming in the opera’s 1991 premiere at The Met.
ASPEN MUSIC FESTIVAL AND SCHOOL BOX OFFICE: Visit aspenmusicfestival.com to buy tickets or view limited in-person hours! BY PHONE: 970 925 904 | Daily, 12 pm to the start of the day’s final concert, now–August 22 FREE LAWN TICKETS NO LONGER REQUIRED. PLEASE COME AND ENJOY AS YOU WISH!
2021 Festival at a Glance
Photos by Carlin Ma
FUNG:
Continued from Fung Returns page 1
The Aspen Music Festival and School celebrated its return to the Benedict Music Tent with Beethoven’s Ninth—culminating
in “Ode to Joy”—with Music Director Robert Spano and much of the Aspen Festival Orchestra performing “en masque” and the Kantorei Chorus singing not from the choir loft above the orchestra, but from the Tent’s 400 section.
A thunderstorm that
transformed the Tent roof into a percussion section forced a frantic, last-minute move of artists and audience alike from the Benedict Music Tent to Harris Concert Hall at the start of classical singer Julia Bullock’s July 13 recital, but it set the stage for some rare moments of intimacy and delight. Ten days later, when torrential downpour–induced mudslides forced the closure of I-70, The Concert Truck found itself traversing Independence Pass on its way to co-present Music on the GO with the AMFS.
Devotees of Edward Berkeley’s
popular Opera Scenes Master Classes were able to witness the late mentor’s delight during one of those revelatory moments when singers find their characters’—and their own—voices.
NICK LUBY
A ponytail made a rare appearance on the podium
as Aspen Conducting Academy alumna Gemma New established herself as a conductor to watch. Daniil Trifonov electrified the Tent audience with Skryabin’s Piano Concerto in F-sharp minor on July 25.
that Shostakovich’s music had with Leningrad, it was like the music and energy was already there in that place, and the performance was merely tapping into it.” On Sunday, Fung will perform Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme for cello and orchestra. “This work is close to my heart because it is one of the first works for cello and orchestra that I studied intensely during my teenage years,” Fung says. “Musically, the work is characterized by a charmingly classical attitude, inspired by Mozart, but my favorite moments are the bursts of operatic lyricism, which are all Tchaikovsky, and quintessentially Russian.” Also on the program, conductor Hugh Wolff leads the Aspen Festival Orchestra in Jessie Montgomery’s Coincident Dances, where the audience will hear nods to a diverse array of twentieth-century musical genres, and Schumann’s Second Symphony, an uplifting and triumphant piece the composer wrote despite personal Hugh Wolff conducts as struggles with poor health and Zlatomir Fung performs with depression. the Aspen Festival Orchestra August 8. Fung has played with Wolff before as a member of the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra at the New England Conservatory where Wolff served for a year as the interim conductor. He actually took Fung and the ensemble on tour to Argentina in the summer of 2013. “He was one of the first great conductors I had the chance to play under,” Fung said. Recalling the most memorable lesson he’s learned so far throughout his studies, Fung says, “Many of my teachers have come at this same concept from different angles. The most important and impactful thing I have ever learned is that beauty and expression are two different things in music. Beauty can be neutral, sometimes even static, but expression can never be. It always takes a point of view, and that is what we as artists have to strive for in our playing.” Fung continues, “After such a long hiatus from live performances, I’m ready to put my heart on my sleeve. I’m really looking forward to playing for everyone in Aspen.”
