Festival Focus Week 1

YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE

FESTIVAL FOCUS Supplement to The Aspen Times

Monday, June 27, 2011

Vol 22, No.1

Theme for 2011 Summer Season:“ArtInspires Art” Fletcher, president and CEO of the Aspen Music Festival and School. “If you The Aspen Music Festival and School visit a painter’s studio, they are always opens its sixty-third season this Wednes- listening while they paint. I’ve remarked day with a summer-long program cen- to some that they should note on the tered on the theme of “Art Inspires Art.” back of a painting the music that helped It will showcase musical works inspired inspire it.”

Conversely, comby painting, poetry, posers sometimes drama, architecture, fi nd their own inspiphilosophy, and even ration in non-musical other music. works. Fletcher himThe Festival’s conself, also an accomcert schedule, complished working comprising more than 300 poser, sees two of classical music events his own such works between June 29 and on the 2011 sumAugust 21, includes mer program: After works such as Felix a Reading of King Mendelssohn’s Scenes Lear on July 20 and from A Midsummer Study: Woman HoldNight’s Dream, based ing a Balance on Auon the play by William gust 8. Study, which Shakespeare; Modest Alan Fletcher will be performed by AMFS President and CEO Musorgsky’s famous Robert Spano, the Pictures at an ExhibiAMFS’s music director-designate as well tion, evoking an imaginary tour of the art as a performing concert pianist, and vioof Musorgsky’s great friend Viktor Hartlinist and AMFS artist-faculty member mann; Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote, based on Miguel de Cervantes’s seven- David Halen, was commissioned by the teenth-century literary masterpiece; and National Gallery of Art in Washington, Claude Debussy’s Clair de lune, a piano D.C. Says Fletcher, “I was asked to write depiction of French poet Paul Verlaine’s a work inspired by any painting in the tender poem of the same name. collection, and I knew right away I would “Artists have always been intrigued LAURA E. SMITH Festival Focus writer

The arts speak to each other and learn from each other, a reason we believe so much in collaboration in Aspen.

by metaphors in other arts,” says Alan

See ART, Festival Focus page 3

Audience members listen to a piano recital in Harris Concert Hall last summer.

ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

Spano Conducts Mahler, Rachmaninoff, and Strauss COURTNEY E. THOMPSON Festival Focus writer

The Aspen Music Festival and School’s first Aspen Festival Orchestra concert on Sunday, July 3, at 4 pm, features masterworks by Mahler, Rachmaninoff, and Richard Strauss; the considerable musical prowess of Russian pianist Vladimir Feltsman; and the intensity and exuberance of conductor Robert Spano, the AMFS’s recently appointed music director-designate.

While Spano has guest conducted in Aspen since 1993, this will be his first time on the podium as the artistic leader of the institution. The music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Spano was named AMFS music director-designate in March of this year. This season he will lead four concerts, three on Sundays with the Aspen Festival Orchestra and one on a Friday with the Aspen Chamber Symphony. He will also play chamber music and direct the AMFS’s conducting academy.

AMFS Vice President of Artistic Administration and Artistic Advisor Asadour Santourian believes that what Spano will bring to his concerts is a quality on which all artists rely: imagination.

“Robert has a tremendous and powerful imagination,” he says. “It’s backed up by the fact that he’s an avid consumer of art, literature, and information.” Spano’s recorded works are also telling of the conductor’s musical sensibilities.

“If one were to look at his Atlanta Symphony programming, one would see they’re all interesting works juxtaposed, both wet ink and from the core repertoire,” Santourian says. “That informs the observer that there is an investigative mind. That’s what I think he will bring through his musicianship to the forum.”

The repertoire of the concert features strong connections to the 2011 season theme of “Art Inspires Art.” “Mahler takes his inspiration from folk poetry and uses the tunes of those songs to make up the themes of his First Symphony, so he conjugates the concept one more time, which we will perform with Assistant Conductor Joshua Weilerstein on Wednesday, July 13,” says Santourian. “The Don Quixote of Strauss’s is exactly inspired by the story. Strauss gives it an almost cinematic treatment. He tells the story through music.”

See Spano Festival Focus page 3

MICHAEL BRANDS

Maestro Robert Spano will conduct four concerts during the 2011 season as well as play in two chamber music concerts.

Concerts daily starting 6/29 | (970) 925-9042 | www.aspenmusicfestival.com

Page 2 | Monday, June 27, 2011

FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

Supplement to The Aspen Times

Schubert Trios Are Unsung Masterpieces and have been performing together for more than thirty years.

This relationship, says Wu Han, creates The 2011 Festival opening night per“a group dynamic that feels very natural. formance showcases a trio of musicians It allows us to connect celebrated as some of with music on a very the best chamber mudeep level, which we sicians of our time. hope translates to the At 6 pm on Wednesaudience.” day, June 29, piaThe Aspen audience nist Wu Han, violinist is one this group knows Philip Setzer, and cellist well, having played for David Finckel ascend it many times over the the Benedict Music courses of their careers.

Tent stage fresh off “We fi nd inspiratheir North American tion and nourishment tour performing Franz in the Aspen musical Schubert’s piano trios, community as well as which they will bring to in the many friends we Aspen for the first time.

Alan Fletcher have made here over AMFS President and CEO This is a special the years,” she says. program by a special “Coming to Aspen each summer is truly group of musicians, says Alan Fletcher, a highlight for us and we always look forAMFS president and CEO. The pieces, ward to coming.”

Fletcher says, “are among the best works With these music-makers on the roster, of Schubert, a summation of what makes Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice president Schubert great. And these musicians of artistic administration and artistic adhave unique relationships and commuvisor, believes this concert will be wellnication that make them ideal to play honed and simultaneously very exciting. them.”

“They’re by day and by night great Wu Han and Finckel have been married chamber musicians,” Santourian says. since 1985 and perform together often.

“It’s in their DNA; it’s in their genes.

They Finckel and Setzer are both members of have been so immersed in these works.” the renowned Emerson String Quartet The trio’s recent tour garnered critiCOURTNEY E. THOMPSON Festival Focus writer

The music is among the best works of Schubert, a summation of what makes Schubert great.

cal and audience praise. “In my opinion, symphonic in scale.”

“The trios are extraordinarily complex,” this is just the greatest music ever written,” says Wu Han. “When we first began says Santourian, “and yet at the same exploring the idea of performing both time are beautifully wrought, highly meof the Schubert Piano Trios in one con- lodic, and easily accessible.”

Fletcher says these are pieces at the cert, I had a discussion with one of my mentors, Menaham Pressler, the legend- highest level of composition, but are not ary pianist of the Beaux Arts Trio, who well known. “That,” he says, “will be a equated performing them to climbing a great discovery for the audience.” mountain. This music is very demanding for the performers and the listeners alike. Though the climb can be harrowing and challenging, the view from the top is unforgettable.”

Finckel agrees and calls the works masterpieces in their own right.

“The musicologist Michael Steinberg puts it brilliantly: ‘as we get to know [the works]…we will find ourselves grateful to have two masterpieces that speak to such different artistic and spiritual hungers within us’,” says Finckel. “The B-flat major trio is wonderfully buoyant and sweet. The E-flat maCHRISTIAN STEINER jor trio is more dramatic David Finckel, Wu Han, and Philip Setzer open the AMFS 2011 in many ways and almost season on June 29 with Schubert’s piano trios.

Buy your tickets now: (970) 925-9042 • www.aspenmusicfestival.com

FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

Supplement to The Aspen Times

ART: 2011 Season

Monday, June 27, 2011 | Page 3

Spano

Continued from Festival Focus page 1

Continued from Festival Focus page 1

choose my longtime favorite, a Vermeer.

The painting encompasses a theme of balance—light and dark, serenity and action, intimacy and commerce. I employ aspects of musical balance: high and low, slow and fast, violin and piano, loud and soft, in an attempt to portray the same emotional balance of the painting.

The arts speak to each other and learn from each other, a reason we believe so much in collaboration in Aspen.”

“Inspiration strikes artists like lightning,” says Asadour Santourian, vice president of artistic administration and artistic advisor of the Aspen Music Festival and School, “and inspiration comes from many sources and forms. Literature and poetry are the most often-used source, and yet paintings, sculpture, architecture, even abstract ideas have proven to be powerfully fertile sources. Art critic Walter Pater best defined it when he said, ‘all art constantly aspires to the condition of music.’ ” With literature and poetry being so inspirational to composers, it makes sense that much of this summer’s music is derived from the genius of the greatest literary master of all time, William Shakespeare. The summer sees a great number of works based

Festival-goers know that the Aspen Music Festival and School’s Music Tent is one of Aspen’s most beautiful spots. Aspen’s blend of music and nature is truly unique.

on his opus, and his broad influence will be explored in-depth in a two-week mini-festival scheduled from July 30 to August 14. In addition, the entire opera season focuses on Shakespeare with Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff, and Leonard Bernstein’s modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story.

From the grand to the intimate, another special evening that will delve into the nexus of Shakespeare’s literary art with classical music is called “Shakespeare’s Kingdom” and it takes place on August 9. This song recital features poetic texts by Shakespeare set to music by classical composers as varied as Purcell, Byrd, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms,

Strauss, Britten, Poulenc, Vaughan Williams, and Walton. It will be performed by Metropolitan Opera tenor Paul Appleby and AMFS piano artistfaculty member Kenneth Merrill.

In another salute to Shakespeare, August 12 sees the premiere of a work the AMFS commissioned specifically for this season entitled Sonnets. AMFS alumnus composer Andrew Norman drew inspiration from several of Shakespeare’s inimitable poems to create a work of depth and sensitivity, in both music and text.

For more information about this year’s Festival and School or tickets, call 970-925-9042 or visit www.aspenmusicfestival.com.

Aspen Music Festival and School Box Office Hours Harris Concert Hall: 9 am–evening-concert intermission, daily.

Wheeler Opera House: 9 am–5 pm daily.

Between the two “Art Inspires Art” pieces is Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. The piece will showcase Feltsman’s great talents.

Spano, who is delighted to be working with Feltsman on this piece, says Rachmaninoff is a passion of his.

“Rachmaninoff is such an important composer of the twentieth century,” he says. “He is often disregarded because he’s so popular, but he’s a giant.”

To Santourian, Feltsman is the right musician to take on such a giant’s work.

“One cannot pigeon-hole him,” Santourian says. “He’s proven to all of us that he can play everything from contemporary to Bach and Scarlatti. His Goldberg Variations are still the gold standard against which every artist here is tested.”

In addition to the works, the excitement of the concert for Spano is getting to work with so many different artists.

“The whole program is really like a giant chamber music concert,” Spano says.

“I’m very excited to meet Markus Werba, whom I have not met yet, as well as Eric Kim and Sabina Thatcher. It’s a special aspect of the concert to have so many special artists on the same program.”

This summer will be the first that Spano will be able to spend almost the entire season in Aspen. He will be in residence seven of the Festival’s eight weeks.

“Being able to spend so much time here this summer is incredibly exciting for me,” Spano says. “To get to know everyone better and take the time to be here is such a great opportunity.”

Violinist Rosenberg Loves Teaching, Playing, Aspen COURTNEY E. THOMPSON Festival Focus writer

Violinist Sylvia Rosenberg, an AMFS artist-faculty member of more than thirty years, says that she loves both teaching and performing, both of which she will do in Aspen this summer.

“I feel it is all part of my life in music,” she says, “both teaching and performing.”

Rosenberg has taught at the Aspen Music Festival and School since 1980 and was a student here herself in the 1950s with the violinist Szymon Goldberg.

“Aspen was very different then,” she says. “There weren’t any fancy shops.

Many of the streets were not paved. The sheep walked through the streets. But there was always the awe-inspiring scenery.”

Rosenberg began her musical studies at the age of five with the piano and started the violin when she was seven.

She credits her parents who took her and her sisters to concerts as children and who loved music. Her middle sister became a pianist. Rosenberg says that she still plays a bit of the piano and viola, “both badly,” she says.

When she was ten years old, she was accepted into the Juilliard School’s Preparatory Department and that, she says, is when she knew that this was going to be a big part of her life. She studied with

Ivan Galamian. She then won a Fulbright scholarship and studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger for two years.

Rosenberg has performed throughout the United States and Europe with virtually every major orchestra, including the Chicago, National, and London symphonies, the Royal and Stockholm Philharmonics, as well as the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom she recently appeared under the directon of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

Rosenberg currently spends the year teaching at the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music, but always looks forward to returning to Aspen in the summer, as much for the scenery as the people. Her musician colleagues, she says, are one of the best parts of her summers.

“My colleagues—the wonderful pianist Anton Nel with whom I’ve played every summer since 1997, as well as the distinguished violist James Dunham and cellist Michael Mermagen to name just a few—are the most important aspect for me,” Rosenberg says.

In addition to performing with her colleagues, Rosenberg says she learns from her students, to whose development as young artists and professionals she feels dedicated. Rosenberg has been teaching since she was nineteen and still a student at the Juilliard School. She would teach

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every Saturday morning at the Henry Street Settlement, an organization on the Lower East Side that offers social, health, and art service programs to the community. She has since taught at the Royal College of Music and Royal Academy of Music in London, where she still gives master classes, the Eastman School of Music, the Peabody Conservatory of Music, Indiana University, and Stony Brook State University.

In Aspen, “I’m always interested in how my students can expand Violinist and AMFS artist-faculty member Sylvia Rosenberg. their horizons and what concerts as possible and “I almost never kind of life they can have in music,” she says. “The AMFS plays a miss the opera performances,” she says. big role because they are hearing and She also attends lectures at the Aspen playing so much music. It affects the Institute and says she is very interested work that they do and their development in both science and politics. For this and much more, she is still very devoted to as musicians and people.”

She also is very honored to be a part the Aspen Music Festival and School.

She says, “All this intense and very of the Advanced Strings Quartet Studies program with the AMFS, which she says high level of music-making is inspirhas fostered the success of many now ing for me in the midst of the magical active and successful groups, including natural setting of Aspen—the mountains the Jupiter String Quartet that returns and the feeling at night that the stars are this year to perform the full cycle of so close, all combine to make the AMFS a unique place.”

Beethoven string quartets.

Rosenberg will play chamber music on When not teaching or performing, Rosenberg makes sure to attend as many Saturday, July 2, in Harris Concert Hall.