Festival Focus, Week 3

YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE

FESTIVAL FOCUS Supplement to The Aspen Times

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ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

Monday, July 9, 2012

Vol 23, No. 4

Joshua Bell, Edgar Meyer Play New Concerto Both Meyer and Bell are Grammy Award-winning musicians, Avery Fisher Violin phenomenon Joshua Bell and Prize-winners, and alumni of the Festival, renowned double bassist and composer where Meyer is now a member of the artEdgar Meyer will join the Aspen Cham- ist-faculty. But the impressive duo also ber Symphony at 6 pm this Friday, July shares a long history of friendship and 13, in the Benedict Music Tent, to play musical collaboration.

Meyer’s own Concerto for Violin and “Edgar and I met at Indiana University, Double Bass, the second performance where he was going to school and I was of the work followa thirteen-year-old ing their premiere also going to school, of it last Saturday. half-time,” says Bell, The concert will be who attended high one of the twelve school and univerorchestral events sity jointly at the this summer led by time. “He was this conductor Robert phenomenal bass Spano in his inplayer that everyaugural season as one was talking music director of about. He was kind the Aspen Music of a freak of nature.

Festival and School He did things with (AMFS). the bass that no “Edgar Meyer’s one had come close music has that wonto trying.”

Joshua Bell derful attribute of These words of defying classificapraise come from tion, having influences from great clas- the violinist who appeared as a soloist sical music to a range of other styles. To with the Philadelphia Orchestra at fourhave a concerto that features both his teen and made his Carnegie Hall debut own virtuosity on the double bass, which at seventeen. is kind of unbelievable, along with Josh The first piece Bell remembers playBell, one of the greatest violinists in the ing with Meyer was Schubert’s two-cello world today, is an extraordinary treat,” String Quintet, on which Meyer played Spano says. “And that Edgar has been the second cello part, but on his bass. To ALEX IRVIN / AMFS creating this music knowing that the two this day, Bell cannot listen to the piece Joshua Bell performing at the Festival in 2010. Bell will of them are going to play it, I think that perform a new double concerto by composer, bassist, and AMFS artist-faculty member Edgar Meyer on July 13. makes this an event not to be missed.”

See BELL, Festival Focus page 3 GRACE LYDEN

Festival Focus writer

When you do a new piece, you’re part of the birthing process.

You’re bringing it to life for the first time, and that’s a very special thing.

AOTC Season to Open With The Magic Flute Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS).

The AOTC will open its 2012 season with Mozart’s Like so many fairy tales, the opera The Magic Flute charming and beloved opera, performed almost a hunbegins with a handsome prince. dred times in Mozart’s short lifetime and now the most His name is Tamino, and he is in love with the beau- frequently performed opera worldwide. Performances tiful Pamina, daughter of the take place at 7 pm Thursday, Queen of the Night. With his July 12; Saturday, July 14; best friend Papageno, Tamino and Monday, July 16, in the sets off on an extraordinary Wheeler Opera House. adventure to rescue the kidThe object of Tamino’s napped maiden, facing evil desire is the kind-hearted, forces along the way. It all smart, and brave Pamina, takes place in a magical realm played by soprano Ying Fang. where child-spirits roam and Pamina loves Tamino, but the chime of bells can protect faces a dilemma, for it is soon one from harm. revealed that the Queen of Richard Bado Conductor of The Magic Flute But at the heart of young the Night is a deceptive tyrant Tamino’s tale is the story of trying to prevent the couple’s everyone who has ever been happiness. in love, and everyone who has ever had to grow up.

“As the daughter of the Queen of the Night, Pamina “It’s a coming-of-age fable about a young man finding struggles between her love as a daughter and her love himself,” says Edward Berkeley, longtime director of the Aspen Opera Theater Center (AOTC), which is part of the See OPERA Festival Focus page 3 GRACE LYDEN

Festival Focus writer

What makes something like Aspen unique is people are going to hear singers in the formation of their careers.

The Palace of the Queen of the Night, set design for The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) for a production in Berlin, 1816 (watercolor), Karl Friedrich Schinkel, (1781-1841)/Deutsches Theatermuseum, Munich, Germany/ The Bridgeman Art Library

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Page 2 | Monday, July 9, 2012

FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

Supplement to The Aspen Times

World-Class Tubist Warren Deck Turned to Teaching Academy.

“I heard this guy and thought, ‘oh my golly,’” Deck One would never guess from his friendly demeanor says. “My parents never had to make me practice after and perpetual smile that Warren Deck, the respected that. He was the fire, the spark.”

Deck made his solo debut with the Philharmonic in tubist and twelve-year artist-faculty member of the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS), is no longer 1989 with the premiere of Roger Kellaway’s Songs of Ascent and has made recordings with the Canadian able to play the instrument he loves.

Deck still has dreams about playing the tuba the way Brass, a world-renowned chamber ensemble.

It was not easy for Deck to start teaching after a forced he used to, before focal dystonia permanently impaired end to his brilliant performance career. his upper lip.

“I felt like a fraud,” Deck says. “I was asking people to Focal dystonia arises suddenly and has affected the do things that I couldn’t do anymore.” right hands of famed pianists Leon Deck came to a realization, though, Fleisher and Gary Graffman, but between his first and second years at also numerous brass players. The the AMFS. cause of the neurological condition “All these athletes have coaches is unclear. who don’t do it, but they can still Deck had been playing with the help somebody else do it at a much New York Philharmonic for fourteen higher level,” Deck says. “And so I years when symptoms arose in 1993. thought, ‘I know what it sounds like, I He kept practicing and stayed at the know what it’s supposed to feel like, I Philharmonic for eight more years, know how this works—I can roll with but his playing was compromised, Justin Benavidez this.’ From then on, it’s been easy.” and he was discouraged. In 2001, he Student of Warren Deck Even as an undergraduate student went to a specialist and was told he at the University of Michigan, Deck’s would never regain his former skill.

“The diagnosis, for me, was permission to stop, and tuba professor insisted Deck was a natural teacher, and his students agree. stop banging my head against the wall,” Deck says.

“He is an expert at his craft, but he is also a master Deck grew up with family who did not listen to at relaying the various facets of that craft,” says Justin classical music, but he was drawn to the register of the tuba when selecting an instrument to play in the school Benavidez, a student of Deck’s since 2010. “He has band. He knew he wanted to be a musician when he the ability to use different means of articulating his was a seventh grader living in Ann Arbor and a ninth- ideas and finding the best manner of connecting with grade tubist returned from a year at the Interlochen Arts a student. In studying with him, I have discovered not GRACE LYDEN

Festival Focus writer

He is an expert at his craft, but he is also a master at relaying the various facets of that craft.

ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

AMFS artist-faculty member Warren Deck instructing students in a brass choir during the 2010 Music Festival. Deck has been teaching at the Festival for twelve years.

only how to be a better performer on my instrument, but how to be a better teacher as well.”

Deck is now an instructor at the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver and says that what he loves most about teaching is “seeing a light bulb go on.”

“That’s the thrill of it.”

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Supplement to The Aspen Times

FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

Monday, July 9, 2012 | Page 3

Bell: Two Virtuosos, Old Friends Continued from Festival Focus page 1

without expecting to hear a double bass. When both Bell says the piece’s complex rhythmic underpinwere students at the AMFS in 1983, they played a duo nings represent not only the composer’s native region, concert, substituting bass for one of the violin parts in but also the fact that Meyer was a double major in math Wieniawski’s Études-Caprices for two violins. at Indiana. “Sometimes you need a calculator to figure This time, though, Bell and Meyer are reuniting to play out the tempo relationships,” Bell jokes. one of Meyer’s originals, as they The work premiered at Tangledid in 1999 for Short Trip Home, wood, the summer home of the an album of chamber music that Boston Symphony Orchestra, on has been described as “classical Saturday, July 7, and will also be fusion.” Meyer’s original compoperformed at the Hollywood Bowl sitions often show the influence on July 17 and 19. of his childhood in Tennessee, “The BSO was so gracious to allow and Bell says the new concerto is us and the Hollywood Bowl to presno different. ent it in the same season in which “His music is always evolving, they’re premiering it,” says AMFS Robert Spano and I find it’s getting deeper, perPresident and CEO Alan Fletcher.

AMFS Music Director haps as he questions limits of toMeyer also wrote Bell a sonata nality,” Bell says. “But there are in 2005, and the violinist has prealways elements of his bluegrass roots, which means miered numerous new works during his career. He says the music comes out of him in a very natural way. Some he loves the freedom that accompanies playing a nevercomposers try to find that style artificially, but his is a before-heard piece of music. very natural and unique voice.”

“It’s amazing to start with a clean slate,” Bell says.

Edgar Meyer’s music has that wonderful attribute of defying classification.

“As a classical musician, every piece comes with a lot of baggage, good baggage and bad baggage, because the piece has been played thousands of times. But when you do a new piece, you’re almost part of the birthing process of the piece. You’re bringing it to life for the first time, and that’s a very special thing.”

The July 13 program will also include Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 in D minor, op. 120, and Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, op. 24.

Knoxville is Barber’s interpretation of a James Agee poem, and the text will be sung by acclaimed soprano Susanna Phillips. The work is characterized by an undulating rhythm that evokes rocking chairs and the serenity of an era gone by.

“The setting that Barber provided to the text very much captures that musical sepia of an old family portrait sitting on the porch in the evening,” says Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor. “It is a depiction of American life in a bygone era, and Agee was perfect, and Barber was able to perfectly capture it within an orchestral setting.”

Opera: Mozart Starts the Season Continued from Festival Focus page 1

PHOTO BY LISA-MARIE MAZZUCCO COURTESY OF THE EMERSON STRING QUARTET

End of an Era for Emerson Quartet GRACE LYDEN

Festival Focus writer

The Emerson String Quartet, one of the premier quartets of our time, will return to Aspen at 8 pm this Thursday, July 12, in Harris Concert Hall with a diverse program of Mozart, Thomas Adès, and Shostakovich. But for the audience members who have been going to hear the group in Aspen for approximately thirty years, it may feel bittersweet.

This is the Emerson’s final performance at the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) with cellist David Finckel, who is leaving the Quartet at the end of the 2012–2013 concert season.

“It’s the end of an era,” says AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher. “They’ve been one of the longest running quartets in modern times, with the same personnel.” The Emerson String Quartet formed in 1976, and the last personnel change was in 1979.

The concert will open with Mozart’s String Quartet in D major, K. 575, which was actually the first piece ever performed in Harris Hall. The Emerson String Quartet was asked to play the second movement to test the Hall in 1993, when it had just been completed and before there were even seats.

The Mozart is followed by a piece written for the ensemble in 2010, The Four Quarters by British composer Thomas Adès, and the program will close with Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 in C minor.

Shostakovich dedicated this quartet to victims of fascism and war, but its four-note repetitive motif is based on the composer’s initials, adding a personal note. The piece was written in 1960, just after Shostakovich had joined the Communist Party and was “extremely depressed,” says violinist and founding member Philip Setzer, because Shostakovich had almost immediately realized his mistake.

“It’s clear from the unrelenting tragedy of this piece that it’s a very personal work, and it’s an extremely powerful end to the program,” Setzer says.

The dynamic work may resonate with Aspen audiences for another reason, though. The Emerson String Quartet recorded the Shostakovich String Quartets over the course of three summers at the AMFS, and the recording won two Grammy Awards, for “Best Classical Album” and “Best Chamber Music Performance,” in 2000.

“They’ve been a touchstone for greatness in the string quartet world,” Fletcher says.

Philip Setzer and Eugene Drucker were studying with the same violin teacher at the Juilliard School when they started the Emerson String Quartet, and the ensemble’s members were in their twenties when they started coming to the AMFS in the early 1980s. Since then, the Emerson has come nearly every year, often working with students or playing multiple concerts within a season.

Setzer says they feel a connection to all who come to the Festival: faculty, students, and, of course, regular concertgoers.

“Having any place that you go to consistently over the years becomes something very important to any artist, especially a group,” says Setzer. “I have this rush of memories of people who would be waiting for us backstage afterwards and would come out on a cold night, or a rainy night, or a beautiful day. They would take time out of their busy schedules to come hear us. It’s a wonderful support system.”

Finckel has always been a solo artist, in addition to working with the chamber group, so the decision to pursue personal artistic endeavors is not entirely a turning point for him. And to the pleasure of many, the Quartet will return to Aspen next year when Finckel is replaced by established cellist Paul Watkins.

“This concert will certainly have an emotional significance, but we’re thrilled, at the same time, that they’re returning next summer in the new formation,” says Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor. “It’s farewell, and hail.”

for Tamino,” Fang says. “She experiences emotional breakdown, but also the happiness of being in love.”

Fang is one of the many AOTC singers on the cusp of their professional careers. A master’s student at the Juilliard School, she played Maria in the AOTC’s production of West Side Story last summer. Since then, she has had principal roles with the Juilliard opera program, as Fanny in Rossini’s La Cambiale di Matrimonio and Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

But Fang, recipient of a prestigious AMFS fellowship, says AOTC gives her a taste of what her life will hold when she finishes school.

“The process of learning and preparing a role here is very close to the professional world,” Ying says. “For example, we have only two weeks to prepare The Magic Flute. I think this experience helps me, a young opera singer, to get ready for the real opera world.”

Richard Bado, the opera’s conductor, thinks audiences have a special opportunity when they see performers at this stage in their careers.

“What makes something like Aspen unique is people are going to hear singers in the formation of their careers,” Bado says. “Then they see them down the road, performing internationally, and they can say, ‘I heard her do her first Pamina in Aspen, and now look where she is at this point.’”

Bado says the opera’s longevity results from a combination of attributes, including the delightful story and Mozart’s music, which “never gets old.” The music is a challenge, though, for both singers and instrumentalists.

“It’s not difficult to listen to, but it’s difficult to be true to the style of the period and then, transcend past the style so you bring real human emotion to what you’re playing in the piece,” Bado says.

James Alexander, the opera’s guest director, has set the opera in New York, circa 1960, and this interpretation will showcase the true breadth of the AOTC students’ talents.

“The concept is that it’s being performed in a stripped-away theater, so it really depends completely on the individual characters to create the world of the opera,” Berkeley says. “Some of the magic of the opera is going to happen because of how stripped away it is.”