2023 Aspen Music Festival Ushers in 53 Days of Music on June 29

LAURA SMITH, VP of Marketing and Communications

The Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) opens its 74th season on Thursday, June 29, beginning a 53-day-palooza of live music, which brings together classic favorites, brilliant contemporary finds, and rarely-heard gems under the 2023 season theme, The Adoration of the Earth

Opening with Stravinsky’s pulsating The Rite of Spring, the eight-week festival crams in a flood of thrilling musical experiences. From fierce contemporary voices like composers Jimmy López Bellido and Anthony Davis; pillars of tradition such as Beethoven, Mozart, and Debussy; evenings of passion projects like James Conlon’s Recovered Voices of the Holocaust and Darrett Adkins’s all-Elliott Carter recital; and pure fun in Broadway star Audra McDonald and a night of Star Wars and other film music by John Williams, it is no exaggeration to say there is truly something for everyone.

A festival that presents both an evening of Elliott Carter and the film music of John Williams? “It’s quintessentially Aspen,” says Patrick Chamberlain, AMFS vice president for artistic administration. “Carter and Williams—in my mind those are two equally great American composers whose musical language could not be more different, whose popular aesthetic could not be more different, and yet we are devoting evenings to each of them. That actually sums up Aspen more than anything else in a way.”

Another anchor of the season theme is Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony (June 30), which AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher notes as a seminal work in this realm. “The Pastoral Symphony is one of the first large-scale pieces of music in our tradition that was specifically and explicitly about nature. It was in a pivotal moment in terms of the enlight- enment and the oncoming industrial revolution that Beethoven thought, ‘I don’t like the city. I love nature, and I love going out into nature. I’m going to recreate that experience for people so they can have it in the concert hall.’ Since then, this has become a trope for creative artists.”

Other works evoking the theme include Mahler’s Third Symphony (July 30) and Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) (July 23), Debussy’s La mer (August 13), Renée Fleming’s recital with works from her new Grammy-winning album Voices of Nature: The Anthropocene (July 15), several works by “atmospheric artist” John Luther Adams, and the season closer, Haydn’s The Creation (August 20).

Says Fletcher, himself a composer, “The Creation is absolutely one of Haydn’s most superior works. My own teacher regarded Haydn as the most underappreciated composer in the entire world of classical music. If you don’t know the work already, you’ll think, ‘Where was this music all my life? It’s so fabulous.’ Imagine being an artist, a composer, and thinking, ‘I guess I’ll write a piece about everything.’ Then doing it.” Notes Chamberlain, “It’s the first time we’ve done this work in Aspen. It is a piece that really has everything: storytelling, great music, tremendous orchestration. It’s a really fitting celebration of what’s beautiful in this world.”

Perhaps more even than the music, it’s the great artists who define an Aspen summer. Old friends and new, emerging talents and those at the pinnacle of their careers, musicians come from around the world to be a part of the Festival experience. “Artists connect to what we do here in a way that I think is different than their typical gig. The spirit of what we do with the school, the interaction with students, the inspiration of the natural surroundings, the quality of our facilities, the way we take care of them, all those things really make it something else, make a difference,” says Chamberlain.

New talents appearing this summer include soprano Angel Blue, violinist Maxim Vengerov, recent international piano competition winners Eric Lu and Yunchan Lim, saxophonist Jess Gillam, and Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev who returns after an outstanding debut last year.

On the other end of the spectrum, many of the 2023 artists have decades-long relationships with the AMFS such as conductor James Conlon and violinists Robert McDuffie and Gil Shaham. Pianists Misha and Cipa Dichter have been coming for more than 40 years; AMFS artistfaculty member and pianist Anton Nel will be celebrating his twenty-fifth summer in Aspen.

The Emerson String Quartet ends an era in a final “Aspen Farewell” recital on August 15.

JÜRGEN FRANK

The Emerson String Quartet—the very first group to perform in Harris Hall in 1993 when it was still a construction site—will be performing its Farewell Concert on August 15 in that same hall. “Saying farewell to one of the greatest ensembles of our lifetime is bittersweet,” says Fletcher.

“I know they’re looking forward to coming back to Aspen one last time. It will be an emotional evening for everybody. Bring your tissues,” says Chamberlain.