Chamber music is often defined as music among friends, which generally refers to the performers. That description took on a different, larger context with the season-opening concert of Friends of Chamber Music of Miami, which presented the piano quintets of Schumann and Brahms.
Schumann was a close and influential mentor to the young Brahms who also enjoyed a lifelong friendship with Schumann’s widow Clara, which profoundly influenced his life and music.
FOCM president Julian Kreeger corralled an impressive all-star lineup of musical firepower for this program: violinists Cho Liang Lin and Adele Anthony, violist Roberto Diaz, cellist William De Rosa and pianist Joseph Kalichstein. The event, held Monday night at Gusman Concert Hall, was a co-presentation with Festival Miami.
Schumann's Piano Quintet was written in 1842, his annus mirabilis chamber-music year, in which he completed three string quartets, the Piano Quartet, and Piano Quintet. The rush of inspiration and confident vitality are evident throughout in Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat Major, the first in the genre to achieve success and still one of the finest. The writing is deftly deployed among all five players, with key expressive contrasts and extraordinary lyrical richness. A hearty, vigorous expression predominates, and even the second movement’s funeral march never quite veers into tragedy, with a first trio that is one of Schumann’s most indelible inspirations.
Even though these five musicians had not played together before as an ensemble, there was clear musical empathy and a sense of fully engaged partnership, which contributing to an idiomatic, impassioned performance in touch with Schumann’s vitality and flowing lyricism. In addition to providing brief, charming verbal notes, Kalishstein took the pivotal role in the proceedings with fiery keyboard work, well balanced by Lin’s purity of tone and seamless articulation, and Roberto Diaz’s elegance.
Unlike the Schumann work, Brahms' Piano Quintet went through a characteristically tortuous gestation from string quintet to sonata for two pianos, and finally, with Clara Schumann’s urging, its final form. Brahms’ Piano Quintet is an expansive work, spanning three-quarters of an hour, and sprawling in its breadth and thematic richness, with a Schumann-esque Andante, biting scherzo, and large-scale finale that moves from brooding gloom to frenzied exultation.
Gleaming and responsive as the Schumann performance was, the Brahms was finer still. Perhaps Anthony seemed a bit reticent compared to her high-powered colleagues, and Kalichstein’s unbridled attacks sometimes sacrificed accuracy.
But these are minor quibbles and this galvanic performance---weighty in texture and grand in scale---was tackled with full-tilt commitment by the entire ensemble. Led by Lin, the delicacy of the string playing conveyed the plaintive folk-like expression of the slow movement. With Kalichstein primus inter pares, all five musicians were at their finest in the scherzo, putting across the march theme’s forceful swagger, and bringing explosive bravura to the finale, culminating in a thrilling coda.
Friends of Chamber Music’s next performance isn’t until January but the glow from this memorable evening should keep audience members satisfied till then.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Ivan Davis says farewell with Schumann
Shelly Berg was the most prominent musician on the stage of Gusman Concert Hall Saturday night, as the third evening of Festival Miami showcased the energetic Frost School of Music dean collaborating with several faculty musicians.As expected however the spotlight was stolen by the final artist to perform, pianist Ivan Davis, who is retiring after a remarkable 42 years of teaching at the University of Miami.
In a brief speech, Davis mentioned how much he had learned from all his students, those who had gone on to piano careers as well as those who had not. His greatest accomplishment, he hoped, was instilling in his students, “a sense of adventure and appreciation.”
Davis, 76, is retiring at the end of this school year but an even greater loss for the music world is that Saturday marked his farewell public appearance as pianist. Vision problems and arthritis have made it increasingly difficult for him to perform.
Davis’s rendering of Schumann’s Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood) may not have been technically pristine but with the level of insight, subtle poetry and understanding Davis brought to these Schumann miniatures, no one could cavil. The relaxed fantasy, gentle musing and introspection were rendered with natural expression and simple eloquence, truly the art that conceals art. His refined encore of the favorite Scarlatti sonata with which he liked to begin his recitals, closed the circle neatly.
The rest of the concert followed the genre-crossing path established at last year’s inaugural Dean’s Concert with Berg teaming up with a variety of Frost faculty musicians in jazz and classical works. Incoming flute professor Trudy Kane joined Berg for a graceful reading of the Sonatine by Walter Gieseking, an artist known more as pianist than composer. The Miami Saxophone Quartet kicked up plenty of energy with their short but exuberant jazz set.
Berg and members of the Bergonzi String Quartet served up a lively if rough-and–ready performance of the Rondo finale of Brahms’ Piano Quartet in G minor. But the most impressive performance was Debussy’s Premiere Rhapsodie in which clarinetist Margaret Donaghue showed herself fully in synch with the music’s lyrical poise and relaxed virtuosity.
Firebird Orchestra makes its first flight
It’s safe to say that few chamber orchestras are born in an opera rehearsal studio that has been converted into a nightclub cabaret with cash bar. But the Firebird Chamber Orchestra is not just any ensemble. Patrick Dupre Quigley has achieved great success with his choir Seraphic Fire by doing smart, adventurous programs that consistently defy expectations.
The same qualities would appear to apply to the young conductor’s new venture, the Firebird Chamber Orchestra. Backed by a $250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, the ensemble is making its debut this weekend with three performances at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.
Friday night’s concert at the Peacock Rehearsal Hall in the Ziff Ballet Opera House offered a comfortable, informal atmosphere with the charismatic Quigley offering concise yet informative verbal program notes. Any fear that the club atmosphere would produce visual and aural distractions turned out to be unfounded. In fact, Friday night’s audience proved so perfectly attentive and respectful, the hall was quieter than some of Seraphic Fire’s church performances.
The in-the-round seating certainly offers an intimate concert experience with tables so close to the stage, one could tap Quigley on the shoulder. The mirrored wall adds a neat double perspective, offering a front view of the conductor from the musicians’ vantage point.
But while the space worked well enough practically, acoustically it proved problematic. The Peacock space may be fine for rehearsing voices but it is a bone-dry room with no ambient warmth, throwing a merciless glare on every note played by the 13-member string ensemble. Quigley’s players are skillful enough to withstand such exposure, but there’s no denying that the arid acoustic provided little bloom to a corporate string tone that at times emerged thin and wiry.
The premiere program of Baroque and 20th- century American works for strings was characteristically enterprising. Quigley once again showed that he is just as inspirational a conductor with orchestra as with singers, directing with precise economy, cuing entrances and transitions clearly, and keeping a consistent rhythmic pulse.
The opening Vivaldi concerto from L’Estro Armonico (No. 10, RV 580) offered a sampler of Quigley’s historically minded Baroque approach with sparing vibrato and light bowing. Co-concertmaster Michael Albert led his fellow violinists effectively, displaying admirable articulation in the virtuosic solo passages.
Like Richard Strauss, Georg Philipp Telemann composed a programmatic work on Don Quixote. Telemann can be the dull uncle of the Baroque, yet his Burlesque de Don Quixotte in French style shows surprising wit and ingenuity. A sprightly overture is followed by six movements painting various episodes from Cervantes’ novel, such as the upward string figures for Sancho Panza being tossed about in a blanket and the swooning strings representing the knight errant’s love for Dulcinea.
The music could have smiled more and the wry instrumental effects punched across more vividly at times. Yet for the most part Quigley led an attentive well-played rendering mindful of period style, that made a worthy case for Telemann’s rarely heard suite.
Performing Samuel Barber’s String Quartet in an ensemble arrangement was a fine idea, as the restless agitation and pensive unease of the outer movements provides context and a layered tragic depth to the celebrated Adagio centerpiece. Quigley directed this deeply felt music with clear-eyed sensitivity, taking the Adagio at a flowing, unsentimental pace that made it more moving for shearing off the schmaltz. Though well played by the Firebird members, one wanted more body of tone and presence from the violins.
The continuing neglect of so many leading 20th-century American composers who are not lucky enough to be Elliott Carter borders on scandal. Kudos to Quigley for programming music of David Diamond, one of our most inexplicably overlooked masters.
Diamond’s Rounds for String Orchestra from 1944 is lighter in expression than much of his wartime music, but one could hardly wish for a more engaging introduction to the composer’s art. In three short movements, Rounds presents a down-home country-fiddling expression, cast in the contours of folk music even though no actual melodies are quoted. The music displays Diamond’s sophisticated hand with string writing and an urbane touch without sacrificing affection for the populist style.
The brilliant Allegro vigoroso finale should go like the wind, but felt a bit cautious and reined in Friday night. Otherwise, Quigley and his players gave Rounds superb advocacy, playing with rhythmic bite, keeping the intricate counterpoint and shifting rhythms clearly defined and bringing just the right sense of stoic Midwestern melancholy to the central Adagio.
Patrick Dupre Quigley conducts the Firebird Chamber Orchestra 7 p.m. Sunday at the Arsht Center’s Ziff Ballet Opera House in the Peacock Rehearsal Studio. $40. 305-949-6722; www.arshtcenter.org.
The same qualities would appear to apply to the young conductor’s new venture, the Firebird Chamber Orchestra. Backed by a $250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, the ensemble is making its debut this weekend with three performances at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.
Friday night’s concert at the Peacock Rehearsal Hall in the Ziff Ballet Opera House offered a comfortable, informal atmosphere with the charismatic Quigley offering concise yet informative verbal program notes. Any fear that the club atmosphere would produce visual and aural distractions turned out to be unfounded. In fact, Friday night’s audience proved so perfectly attentive and respectful, the hall was quieter than some of Seraphic Fire’s church performances.
The in-the-round seating certainly offers an intimate concert experience with tables so close to the stage, one could tap Quigley on the shoulder. The mirrored wall adds a neat double perspective, offering a front view of the conductor from the musicians’ vantage point.
But while the space worked well enough practically, acoustically it proved problematic. The Peacock space may be fine for rehearsing voices but it is a bone-dry room with no ambient warmth, throwing a merciless glare on every note played by the 13-member string ensemble. Quigley’s players are skillful enough to withstand such exposure, but there’s no denying that the arid acoustic provided little bloom to a corporate string tone that at times emerged thin and wiry.
The premiere program of Baroque and 20th- century American works for strings was characteristically enterprising. Quigley once again showed that he is just as inspirational a conductor with orchestra as with singers, directing with precise economy, cuing entrances and transitions clearly, and keeping a consistent rhythmic pulse.
The opening Vivaldi concerto from L’Estro Armonico (No. 10, RV 580) offered a sampler of Quigley’s historically minded Baroque approach with sparing vibrato and light bowing. Co-concertmaster Michael Albert led his fellow violinists effectively, displaying admirable articulation in the virtuosic solo passages.
Like Richard Strauss, Georg Philipp Telemann composed a programmatic work on Don Quixote. Telemann can be the dull uncle of the Baroque, yet his Burlesque de Don Quixotte in French style shows surprising wit and ingenuity. A sprightly overture is followed by six movements painting various episodes from Cervantes’ novel, such as the upward string figures for Sancho Panza being tossed about in a blanket and the swooning strings representing the knight errant’s love for Dulcinea.
The music could have smiled more and the wry instrumental effects punched across more vividly at times. Yet for the most part Quigley led an attentive well-played rendering mindful of period style, that made a worthy case for Telemann’s rarely heard suite.
Performing Samuel Barber’s String Quartet in an ensemble arrangement was a fine idea, as the restless agitation and pensive unease of the outer movements provides context and a layered tragic depth to the celebrated Adagio centerpiece. Quigley directed this deeply felt music with clear-eyed sensitivity, taking the Adagio at a flowing, unsentimental pace that made it more moving for shearing off the schmaltz. Though well played by the Firebird members, one wanted more body of tone and presence from the violins.
The continuing neglect of so many leading 20th-century American composers who are not lucky enough to be Elliott Carter borders on scandal. Kudos to Quigley for programming music of David Diamond, one of our most inexplicably overlooked masters.
Diamond’s Rounds for String Orchestra from 1944 is lighter in expression than much of his wartime music, but one could hardly wish for a more engaging introduction to the composer’s art. In three short movements, Rounds presents a down-home country-fiddling expression, cast in the contours of folk music even though no actual melodies are quoted. The music displays Diamond’s sophisticated hand with string writing and an urbane touch without sacrificing affection for the populist style.
The brilliant Allegro vigoroso finale should go like the wind, but felt a bit cautious and reined in Friday night. Otherwise, Quigley and his players gave Rounds superb advocacy, playing with rhythmic bite, keeping the intricate counterpoint and shifting rhythms clearly defined and bringing just the right sense of stoic Midwestern melancholy to the central Adagio.
Patrick Dupre Quigley conducts the Firebird Chamber Orchestra 7 p.m. Sunday at the Arsht Center’s Ziff Ballet Opera House in the Peacock Rehearsal Studio. $40. 305-949-6722; www.arshtcenter.org.
Festival Miami puts on the Ritz
by Alan Becker
The Ritz Chamber Players, founded in 2002, is a group of African-American musicians dedicated to the exploration of the black heritage in classical music. Beyond the obvious jazz influences, few are familiar with the many composers who studied classical composition and contributed to the growth of an art form almost entirely identified with white creativity.
Friday’s Festival Miami program at Gusman Concert Hall on the University of Miami campus started us down this path of discovery. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in England in 1875 to an African father and an English mother. His father soon returned to Africa, leaving the raising of his son to his wife, though it is doubtful whether his father even knew of his son’s existence. Young Samuel’s love for music led him to studies at the Royal College of Music and to considerable success as a composer. He died of pneumonia at the absurdly early age of 37.
Coleridge-Taylor’s Variations for Cello and Piano, from 1907, is a gorgeous piece of heartbreaking lyricism, typical of the late flowering of Romanticism in music. Cellist Kenneth Law has a beautiful, well-sustained tone and is capable of handling difficult virtuoso passages with unassuming ease. He was well matched by Terrence Wilson’s ardent pianism.
Named for the earlier composer, Coleridge Taylor-Perkinson was composer-in-residence for the Jacksonville based Ritz players, but passed away in 2004 before he could complete a commissioned work for violin, viola and cello. What is left, simply called Movement, is a short fragment of lyrical expression not unlike Barber’s famed Adagio, but leavened with a layer of polytonal harmonic grit. While it ended all too soon, it was a fine tribute to the late composer.
Bernhard Crusell’s Clarinet Quartet, Op. 2, no. 1, moved back into the sphere of Caucasian composers in fine style. The composer was born in Finland in 1775 and died in 1838, thus spanning the lifetimes of many of the era’s greats. If you start with Beethoven and add some Mozart to the mix one gets a pretty good idea of Crusell’s musical world.
The four-movement quartet is an absolute delight, and Patterson, clarinetist and artistic director of the Ritz, spun pure liquid gold from his instrument. From almost imperceptible attacks to fully capturing the joy of the writing, this was artistry of the highest attainment. Crusell’s writing for the instrument reflected his renown as a clarinetist and his sure hand in exploring all facets of his instrument. Since there are three more Crusell clarinet quartets, a world of discovery awaits.
Dvorak’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat is a favorite and has seen many outings in the Miami area. Infused with the Czech spirit, the work’s passions have rarely been revealed with such force and dynamism as here. While there have been more performances with playing of more refinement and charm, none have surpassed the Ritz for sheer verve and sweep, with special note of the superlative artistry of violinist Tai Murray and the resonant viola of Amadi Hummings. May the Ritz return---and soon.
The Ritz Chamber Players, founded in 2002, is a group of African-American musicians dedicated to the exploration of the black heritage in classical music. Beyond the obvious jazz influences, few are familiar with the many composers who studied classical composition and contributed to the growth of an art form almost entirely identified with white creativity.
Friday’s Festival Miami program at Gusman Concert Hall on the University of Miami campus started us down this path of discovery. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in England in 1875 to an African father and an English mother. His father soon returned to Africa, leaving the raising of his son to his wife, though it is doubtful whether his father even knew of his son’s existence. Young Samuel’s love for music led him to studies at the Royal College of Music and to considerable success as a composer. He died of pneumonia at the absurdly early age of 37.
Coleridge-Taylor’s Variations for Cello and Piano, from 1907, is a gorgeous piece of heartbreaking lyricism, typical of the late flowering of Romanticism in music. Cellist Kenneth Law has a beautiful, well-sustained tone and is capable of handling difficult virtuoso passages with unassuming ease. He was well matched by Terrence Wilson’s ardent pianism.
Named for the earlier composer, Coleridge Taylor-Perkinson was composer-in-residence for the Jacksonville based Ritz players, but passed away in 2004 before he could complete a commissioned work for violin, viola and cello. What is left, simply called Movement, is a short fragment of lyrical expression not unlike Barber’s famed Adagio, but leavened with a layer of polytonal harmonic grit. While it ended all too soon, it was a fine tribute to the late composer.
Bernhard Crusell’s Clarinet Quartet, Op. 2, no. 1, moved back into the sphere of Caucasian composers in fine style. The composer was born in Finland in 1775 and died in 1838, thus spanning the lifetimes of many of the era’s greats. If you start with Beethoven and add some Mozart to the mix one gets a pretty good idea of Crusell’s musical world.
The four-movement quartet is an absolute delight, and Patterson, clarinetist and artistic director of the Ritz, spun pure liquid gold from his instrument. From almost imperceptible attacks to fully capturing the joy of the writing, this was artistry of the highest attainment. Crusell’s writing for the instrument reflected his renown as a clarinetist and his sure hand in exploring all facets of his instrument. Since there are three more Crusell clarinet quartets, a world of discovery awaits.
Dvorak’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat is a favorite and has seen many outings in the Miami area. Infused with the Czech spirit, the work’s passions have rarely been revealed with such force and dynamism as here. While there have been more performances with playing of more refinement and charm, none have surpassed the Ritz for sheer verve and sweep, with special note of the superlative artistry of violinist Tai Murray and the resonant viola of Amadi Hummings. May the Ritz return---and soon.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Corigliano premiere opens Festival Miami with brassy power
By age 25, most young people are moving out of the house, striking out on their own, and starting new futures. So too has Festival Miami, which opened its 25th season Thursday evening with a salute to composer John Corigliano at the Knight Concert Hall of the Adrienne Arsht Performing Arts Center.
While this is not the first time the festival has ventured off the University of Miami campus---in 2002 it presented the ballet, Cecelia Valdes at Miami-Dade County Auditorium---it is clearly a new day for Festival Miami under Shelly Berg. The dean has revamped the lineup to form thematic weeks of different genres, opening the five-day classical “Great Performances” series with this tribute to Corigliano, one of our finest composers. It’s too bad that with such a worthy event and the composer in attendance, the turnout was so disappointing with the house less than 25 percent of capacity. Holding the concert on Yom Kippur clearly didn’t help.
Of the three Corigliano works performed by Frost School of Music forces, the most significant was the Florida premiere of his Circus Maximus. Inspired by using the spatial resources of a large modern concert hall, Corigliano’s uninhibited third symphony is set in eight connected movements and calls for large wind ensemble, including marching band, saxophone quartet and eleven trumpets spread out across the balconies.
As its name implies, Circus Maximus draws a sharp parallel between the massive entertainment spectacles of ancient Rome and contemporary America with our own plugged in, downloaded, iPhone-equipped lives. The composer implies that, instead of focusing on the world’s survival, our preoccupation with electronic bread and circuses may lead to the same end as that of the Roman Empire.
Circus Maximus is an extraordinary work, the moments of theatricality like the marching band and shotgun blast at the coda used not as gimmicks but to reflect the excesses and real dangers of frenetic modern society.
It’s safe to say that the Knight Concert Hall hasn’t had a test drive like this since the Chicago Symphony performed Richard Strauss two season ago. The spatial effects worked magnificently, from the antiphonal trumpet fanfares of the opening Introitus to the sultry insinuating seductions of Screen/Siren, with the saxophone quartet and double-bass placed in the second-tier balcony.
The symphony has its deafening moments and cacophony but also passages of great beauty as with the Prayer movement, a fragile searching solace that rises to a rich lyrical outpouring. Corigliano’s inventive use of instruments is on full display in Night Music I with evocative nocturnal sounds and uncannily lifelike lupine wails. Only the Channel Surfing third movement didn’t quite come off Thursday, the contrasts too ironed out and the mercurial remote-control clicking unclearly presented.
Otherwise Gary Green led a powerful, well prepared performance with the gifted musicians of the Frost Wind Ensemble excelling in their varied and challenging assignments. It’s too bad a female audience member had to shout a premature “Bravo!” which unleashed the applause and spoiled the stark coda and silence after pianist Liana Purcell fired the climactic shotgun blast high up in the choral seating.
Corigliano’s Red Violin Concerto has seen more manifestations than the title instrument of the 1998 movie has had owners: from film score to Caprices and concertante Suite, Chaconne, and now a full-fledged four-movement concerto.
The Red Violin Concerto adds three movements to the existing Chaconne, mining the movie’s varied themes. While the concerto is full of Corigliano’s frenetic drive, percussive rhythmic bite and creative instrumental writing, particularly in the final movement, the expression is largely lyrical, wistful and rhapsodic, offering myriad technical challenges and expressive opportunities for the violin soloist.
Corigliano could not have wanted for a more compelling performance that that served up by soloist Jennifer Koh, who made a very impressive local debut. The violinist tackled the score's complexities with a crackling intensity that gave terrific bite to the driving passages while her even, tight vibrato added tartness to the openly lyrical pages.
The Frost Symphony Orchestra lacks the sonority and gleam of a professional ensemble though the student musicians performed solidly and with conviction, some wayward intonation apart. More problematic was the conducting of Yongyan Hu. The Chinese maestro’s stolid direction and poky tempos consistently undermined Koh and sacrificed forward momentum. It would have made more sense to have the Frost School’s Thom Sleeper on the podium, since he's worked closely with the orchestra for the past month and has a proven record of getting excellent results from student forces.
The evening led off with Corigliano’s choral setting of Baudelaire’s L’invitation au voyage. Corigiano’s skill at word-setting, aided by Richard Wilbur’s precise yet sensual English translation--- is striking, almost conversational in its attentive word painting. A cappella choral events have not been plentiful in the Knight Concert Hall,which is unfortunate, for the sound of the Frost Chorale’s massed voices was stunning, radiant with glowing tone.
In his local debut, Joshua Habermann, the Frost School’s new director of choral studies, showed himself a very fine conductor indeed. Habermann sensitively balanced choral sections and elicited a wide array of coloring and dynamic details with feather-soft pianissimos, which bodes well for his UM post and imminent leadership of the Master Chorale of South Florida.
While this is not the first time the festival has ventured off the University of Miami campus---in 2002 it presented the ballet, Cecelia Valdes at Miami-Dade County Auditorium---it is clearly a new day for Festival Miami under Shelly Berg. The dean has revamped the lineup to form thematic weeks of different genres, opening the five-day classical “Great Performances” series with this tribute to Corigliano, one of our finest composers. It’s too bad that with such a worthy event and the composer in attendance, the turnout was so disappointing with the house less than 25 percent of capacity. Holding the concert on Yom Kippur clearly didn’t help.
Of the three Corigliano works performed by Frost School of Music forces, the most significant was the Florida premiere of his Circus Maximus. Inspired by using the spatial resources of a large modern concert hall, Corigliano’s uninhibited third symphony is set in eight connected movements and calls for large wind ensemble, including marching band, saxophone quartet and eleven trumpets spread out across the balconies.
As its name implies, Circus Maximus draws a sharp parallel between the massive entertainment spectacles of ancient Rome and contemporary America with our own plugged in, downloaded, iPhone-equipped lives. The composer implies that, instead of focusing on the world’s survival, our preoccupation with electronic bread and circuses may lead to the same end as that of the Roman Empire.
Circus Maximus is an extraordinary work, the moments of theatricality like the marching band and shotgun blast at the coda used not as gimmicks but to reflect the excesses and real dangers of frenetic modern society.
It’s safe to say that the Knight Concert Hall hasn’t had a test drive like this since the Chicago Symphony performed Richard Strauss two season ago. The spatial effects worked magnificently, from the antiphonal trumpet fanfares of the opening Introitus to the sultry insinuating seductions of Screen/Siren, with the saxophone quartet and double-bass placed in the second-tier balcony.
The symphony has its deafening moments and cacophony but also passages of great beauty as with the Prayer movement, a fragile searching solace that rises to a rich lyrical outpouring. Corigliano’s inventive use of instruments is on full display in Night Music I with evocative nocturnal sounds and uncannily lifelike lupine wails. Only the Channel Surfing third movement didn’t quite come off Thursday, the contrasts too ironed out and the mercurial remote-control clicking unclearly presented.
Otherwise Gary Green led a powerful, well prepared performance with the gifted musicians of the Frost Wind Ensemble excelling in their varied and challenging assignments. It’s too bad a female audience member had to shout a premature “Bravo!” which unleashed the applause and spoiled the stark coda and silence after pianist Liana Purcell fired the climactic shotgun blast high up in the choral seating.
Corigliano’s Red Violin Concerto has seen more manifestations than the title instrument of the 1998 movie has had owners: from film score to Caprices and concertante Suite, Chaconne, and now a full-fledged four-movement concerto.
The Red Violin Concerto adds three movements to the existing Chaconne, mining the movie’s varied themes. While the concerto is full of Corigliano’s frenetic drive, percussive rhythmic bite and creative instrumental writing, particularly in the final movement, the expression is largely lyrical, wistful and rhapsodic, offering myriad technical challenges and expressive opportunities for the violin soloist.
Corigliano could not have wanted for a more compelling performance that that served up by soloist Jennifer Koh, who made a very impressive local debut. The violinist tackled the score's complexities with a crackling intensity that gave terrific bite to the driving passages while her even, tight vibrato added tartness to the openly lyrical pages.
The Frost Symphony Orchestra lacks the sonority and gleam of a professional ensemble though the student musicians performed solidly and with conviction, some wayward intonation apart. More problematic was the conducting of Yongyan Hu. The Chinese maestro’s stolid direction and poky tempos consistently undermined Koh and sacrificed forward momentum. It would have made more sense to have the Frost School’s Thom Sleeper on the podium, since he's worked closely with the orchestra for the past month and has a proven record of getting excellent results from student forces.
The evening led off with Corigliano’s choral setting of Baudelaire’s L’invitation au voyage. Corigiano’s skill at word-setting, aided by Richard Wilbur’s precise yet sensual English translation--- is striking, almost conversational in its attentive word painting. A cappella choral events have not been plentiful in the Knight Concert Hall,which is unfortunate, for the sound of the Frost Chorale’s massed voices was stunning, radiant with glowing tone.
In his local debut, Joshua Habermann, the Frost School’s new director of choral studies, showed himself a very fine conductor indeed. Habermann sensitively balanced choral sections and elicited a wide array of coloring and dynamic details with feather-soft pianissimos, which bodes well for his UM post and imminent leadership of the Master Chorale of South Florida.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Fast-rising pianist to open New World season in style
The New World Symphony opens its 21st season next Friday night with Michael Tilson Thomas leading the Miami Beach orchestra in music of Ravel and Stravinsky, two MTT specialties.
Yet in addition to the celebrated conductor and orchestra, this season's curtain-raiser also will provide audiences with the opportunity to catch a young, alarmingly gifted musician who appears to be on the brink of stardom. Pianist Yuja Wang will team up with Tilson Thomas and the New World in two works, Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand and Stravinsky's Capriccio.
It's a neat bit of symmetry that Wang, just 21, is the same age as the New World Symphony. She has already demonstrated to local audiences her astounding technique and fearless virtuosity in a recital for Friends of Chamber Music of Miami two seasons ago. Add a vivacious personality and charismatic stage presence and it would seem that there's no stopping the Beijing-born musician. For an example of Wang's flame-throwing bona fides, one can hardly do better than her romp through the tortuously complex Volodos arrangement of Mozart's Rondo alla Turca.
Yet in addition to the celebrated conductor and orchestra, this season's curtain-raiser also will provide audiences with the opportunity to catch a young, alarmingly gifted musician who appears to be on the brink of stardom. Pianist Yuja Wang will team up with Tilson Thomas and the New World in two works, Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand and Stravinsky's Capriccio.
It's a neat bit of symmetry that Wang, just 21, is the same age as the New World Symphony. She has already demonstrated to local audiences her astounding technique and fearless virtuosity in a recital for Friends of Chamber Music of Miami two seasons ago. Add a vivacious personality and charismatic stage presence and it would seem that there's no stopping the Beijing-born musician. For an example of Wang's flame-throwing bona fides, one can hardly do better than her romp through the tortuously complex Volodos arrangement of Mozart's Rondo alla Turca.
Since her Miami recital, Wang has graced the stages of the leading American orchestras, performing with the Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra and New York Philharmonic. And this season she will make debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony, National Symphony and Pittsburgh Symphony.
"I think she's an amazing artist," says Tilson Thomas, who has been an advocate and mentor of sorts, performing with Wang in San Francisco and London. "She represents the new wave of Asian artists. The level of creativity, her feeling for harmony and the level of musical understanding are extraordinary."
"To hear her perform a concerto, you hear her reacting to every coloristic possibility of the orchestra. And she's at a stage now when she's learning so many concertos."
Thirteen concertos to be exact, which is a daunting number to play in a single season, where many soloists restrict themselves to just a handful of works.
"It is a huge repertoire," says Wang, with a laugh from New York, where she just moved the previous week. "But I think it's more fun to play concertos because I can collaborate with other people. When you have a whole orchestra behind you, it's more exciting and actually easier for me. With a recital, I have to control everything. There's more freedom but I also have to work harder."
"To hear her perform a concerto, you hear her reacting to every coloristic possibility of the orchestra. And she's at a stage now when she's learning so many concertos."
Thirteen concertos to be exact, which is a daunting number to play in a single season, where many soloists restrict themselves to just a handful of works.
"It is a huge repertoire," says Wang, with a laugh from New York, where she just moved the previous week. "But I think it's more fun to play concertos because I can collaborate with other people. When you have a whole orchestra behind you, it's more exciting and actually easier for me. With a recital, I have to control everything. There's more freedom but I also have to work harder."
Hard work is clearly something Wang is not afraid of. Nearly half of her concertos in 2008-2009 are new to her repertoire including the Ravel and Stravinsky works, which she will be performing for the first time on Lincoln Road next weekend.
Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand has most often been a staple of pianists with right-hand afflictions, like Leon Fleisher or Wang's mentor at the Curtis Institute, Gary Graffman. But for Wang, it's a favored work, one she was determined to play after hearing Graffman perform it two years ago.
"I just fell in love with it," she says with characteristic enthusiasm. "I think it's an awesome piece, even better than the Ravel G major. It's so dark and the harmonies are so beautiful. The rhythmic vitality is very cool. And the orchestra has so much more color than the G major. It's more sensual, more like Ravel."
Stravinsky's Capriccio is less often heard, dating from 1929, the same year Ravel began work on his Left Hand Concerto. The Russian composer wrote the flashy Capriccio for personal solo display and, more practically, as a tund-raising device he could perform to improve his shaky finances after fleeing Russia.
"The thing with Stravinsky is everything he wrote is so different," says Wang. "I've played the piano part in Petrushka, and this is completely different, more from his neo-Classical period. There's a lot of very jazzy moments and counterpoint in the orchestra. It's a lot of fun."
Wang learned the Capriccio at the request of Tilson Thomas, a conductor for whom, she says, every collaboration is educational and enjoyable. "He's probably the most knowledgeable person I know," says Wang. "He has so much imagination and creativity. And he's so quick at absorbing information. He's like this sponge that has everything in there."
Born in Beijing in 1987, Yuja Wang began studying at age 6, performing in China, Australia and Germany as a child before attending the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She moved to North America, first attening the summer program of the Mount Royal College in Calgary and then the Mount Royal Conservatory. At 15, Wang won the Aspen Music Festival's concerto competition and moved to Philadelphia to study with Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music.
Wang is exhilarated by her recent move to New York from Philadelphia even though her current living situation is decidedly Spartan. "I just have a rug, a piano and a bed," she says. "It's a huge change from Philadelphia. But I'm just two blocks from Carnegie Hall. I'm very interested to discover the city. I want to explore every corner of New York."
Unlike many a young musician, she doesn't travel with an entourage of family, teachers and assorted hangers-on, a testament to her youthful maturity and independence. "I always travel alone," says Wang. "I always bring a book and my laptop. I enjoy studying music on the plane too, like a conductor. It gives me time to think."
In addition to a voracious appetite for music, the depth of Wang's taste in reading is impressive in an age when The Da Vinci Code is considered classic literature. "Right now I'm reading The Idiot by Dostoyevsky. And I read Nietzsche's Thus Sprach Zarathustra and Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. And I love Victor Hugo. I read no trash," she laughs.
As with her literary choices, Wang makes no concession to the middle-brow in music and is planning to explore more contemporary works, including music of Messiaen, Ligeti, Xenakis and George Crumb, "Being Chinese, I think Tan Dun is very interesting too," she says. "There are so many treasures to discover. Every day I discover something new."
Like many young women, she enjoys shopping, as well as exploring YouTube and is a dedicated movie fan, particularly older films, including Woody Allen's Manhattan, which served as her video introduction to New York. She also enjoyed Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut for its use of Ligeti's music. Asked if she was old enough to see the director's erotic thriller when it was released, she laughs. "I'm legal now!"
Wang says her intellectual curiosity and intense desire for new experiences sometimes make her so restless that she becomes impatient and finds it hard to practice for extended periods. "I can only practice twenty minutes because I get bored. I'm trying to get a longer attention span. It's a good thing all the pieces I play are under a half-hour!"
Yet, even at such a young age, Wang has the searching temperament and perfectionist attitude of a seasoned artist, finding herself constantly questioning and reexamining her approach to even the most familiar piece of music. "Sometimes, even subconsciously, I just change it a little," she says. "You know, the hall is always different, different piano or orchestra, different conductor.
"I like to play it differently each time. That way it's always fresh."
Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand has most often been a staple of pianists with right-hand afflictions, like Leon Fleisher or Wang's mentor at the Curtis Institute, Gary Graffman. But for Wang, it's a favored work, one she was determined to play after hearing Graffman perform it two years ago.
"I just fell in love with it," she says with characteristic enthusiasm. "I think it's an awesome piece, even better than the Ravel G major. It's so dark and the harmonies are so beautiful. The rhythmic vitality is very cool. And the orchestra has so much more color than the G major. It's more sensual, more like Ravel."
Stravinsky's Capriccio is less often heard, dating from 1929, the same year Ravel began work on his Left Hand Concerto. The Russian composer wrote the flashy Capriccio for personal solo display and, more practically, as a tund-raising device he could perform to improve his shaky finances after fleeing Russia.
"The thing with Stravinsky is everything he wrote is so different," says Wang. "I've played the piano part in Petrushka, and this is completely different, more from his neo-Classical period. There's a lot of very jazzy moments and counterpoint in the orchestra. It's a lot of fun."
Wang learned the Capriccio at the request of Tilson Thomas, a conductor for whom, she says, every collaboration is educational and enjoyable. "He's probably the most knowledgeable person I know," says Wang. "He has so much imagination and creativity. And he's so quick at absorbing information. He's like this sponge that has everything in there."Born in Beijing in 1987, Yuja Wang began studying at age 6, performing in China, Australia and Germany as a child before attending the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She moved to North America, first attening the summer program of the Mount Royal College in Calgary and then the Mount Royal Conservatory. At 15, Wang won the Aspen Music Festival's concerto competition and moved to Philadelphia to study with Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music.
Wang is exhilarated by her recent move to New York from Philadelphia even though her current living situation is decidedly Spartan. "I just have a rug, a piano and a bed," she says. "It's a huge change from Philadelphia. But I'm just two blocks from Carnegie Hall. I'm very interested to discover the city. I want to explore every corner of New York."
Unlike many a young musician, she doesn't travel with an entourage of family, teachers and assorted hangers-on, a testament to her youthful maturity and independence. "I always travel alone," says Wang. "I always bring a book and my laptop. I enjoy studying music on the plane too, like a conductor. It gives me time to think."
In addition to a voracious appetite for music, the depth of Wang's taste in reading is impressive in an age when The Da Vinci Code is considered classic literature. "Right now I'm reading The Idiot by Dostoyevsky. And I read Nietzsche's Thus Sprach Zarathustra and Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. And I love Victor Hugo. I read no trash," she laughs.
As with her literary choices, Wang makes no concession to the middle-brow in music and is planning to explore more contemporary works, including music of Messiaen, Ligeti, Xenakis and George Crumb, "Being Chinese, I think Tan Dun is very interesting too," she says. "There are so many treasures to discover. Every day I discover something new."
Like many young women, she enjoys shopping, as well as exploring YouTube and is a dedicated movie fan, particularly older films, including Woody Allen's Manhattan, which served as her video introduction to New York. She also enjoyed Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut for its use of Ligeti's music. Asked if she was old enough to see the director's erotic thriller when it was released, she laughs. "I'm legal now!"
Wang says her intellectual curiosity and intense desire for new experiences sometimes make her so restless that she becomes impatient and finds it hard to practice for extended periods. "I can only practice twenty minutes because I get bored. I'm trying to get a longer attention span. It's a good thing all the pieces I play are under a half-hour!"
Yet, even at such a young age, Wang has the searching temperament and perfectionist attitude of a seasoned artist, finding herself constantly questioning and reexamining her approach to even the most familiar piece of music. "Sometimes, even subconsciously, I just change it a little," she says. "You know, the hall is always different, different piano or orchestra, different conductor.
"I like to play it differently each time. That way it's always fresh."
Pianist Yuja Wang performs Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand and Stravinsky's Capriccio with Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 17 and Saturday Oct. 18 and 3 p.m. Sunday Oct. 19 at the Lincoln Theatre, 541 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach. The program also includes Ravel's Rapsodie espagnole and Stravinsky's Suite from The Firebird (1919 version). $28-$84. www.nws.edu; 305-673-3331. 800-597-3331.
Festival Miami opens music season tonight
This weekend marks the start of South Florida’s music season proper, with two competing events Thursday night: the debut of the Firebird Chamber Orchestra and the opening of Festival Miami. Patrick Dupre Quigley leads his new chamber ensemble in string music of Vivaldi, Telemann, Barber and David Diamond Thursday Friday and Sunday evenings at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. For more info and ticket details, scroll down.
Across Biscayne Boulevard at the same time, Festival Miami kicks off at the Knight Concert Hall with a salute to American composer John Corigliano, including the local premiere of his third symphony, Circus Maximus, and the Red Violin Concerto with soloist Jennifer Koh.
http://classicalsouthflorida.blogspot.com/2008/10/corigliano-to-maximus-opens-festival.html
Thursday’s Corigliano event will open the festival’s “Great Performances” week, which will continue at Gusman Concert Hall on the University of Miami’s Coral Gables campus. On Friday night the African-American Ritz Chamber Players will perform music of Dvorak and George Walker; pianist and outgoing Frost School teacher Ivan Davis will be saluted Saturday evening; Sunday afternoon will offer a Faculty Composers Concert, and pianist Ning An performs Chopin Sunday evening.
Most striking is Monday night’s concert, copresented with Friends of Chamber Music of Miami. The Brahms and Schumann piano quintets will be performed by an all-star lineup featuring violinists Cho-Liang Lin and Adele Anthony, violist Roberto Diaz, cellist William De Rosa and pianist Joseph Kalichstein. Call 305-284-4940 or log on to http://www.festivalmiami.com/
Across Biscayne Boulevard at the same time, Festival Miami kicks off at the Knight Concert Hall with a salute to American composer John Corigliano, including the local premiere of his third symphony, Circus Maximus, and the Red Violin Concerto with soloist Jennifer Koh.
http://classicalsouthflorida.blogspot.com/2008/10/corigliano-to-maximus-opens-festival.html
Thursday’s Corigliano event will open the festival’s “Great Performances” week, which will continue at Gusman Concert Hall on the University of Miami’s Coral Gables campus. On Friday night the African-American Ritz Chamber Players will perform music of Dvorak and George Walker; pianist and outgoing Frost School teacher Ivan Davis will be saluted Saturday evening; Sunday afternoon will offer a Faculty Composers Concert, and pianist Ning An performs Chopin Sunday evening.
Most striking is Monday night’s concert, copresented with Friends of Chamber Music of Miami. The Brahms and Schumann piano quintets will be performed by an all-star lineup featuring violinists Cho-Liang Lin and Adele Anthony, violist Roberto Diaz, cellist William De Rosa and pianist Joseph Kalichstein. Call 305-284-4940 or log on to http://www.festivalmiami.com/
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Firebird Chamber Orchestra takes wing
Last month Patrick Dupre Quigley and Seraphic Fire opened their seventh season with a creative Latin program breezily segueing from the Cuban Baroque composer Esteban Salas to modern works by two young Miami-area composers.
The chamber choir’s concerts are characteristically eclectic in 2008-09, taking in a program of populist New Orleans music later this month, Russian Orthodox works and another exploration of Christian and Jewish liturgical music.
The chamber choir’s concerts are characteristically eclectic in 2008-09, taking in a program of populist New Orleans music later this month, Russian Orthodox works and another exploration of Christian and Jewish liturgical music.
Yet it is not the critically acclaimed choir, but Quigley’s new enterprise that most people will be keeping a close watch on this season. On Thursday night, Quigley will launch the Firebird Chamber Orchestra, which will perform four programs at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in its inaugural season. The program will be repeated Friday and Sunday.
Backed by a $250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, a home at the Arsht Center, and Quigley’s ability to draw audiences with smart, discerning repertoire presented in an approachable, user-friendly way, it would seem that his new project would be a surefire (sorry) success.
But will it succeed in the face of a devastating economy of historic scale and a circumscribed classical audience base in Miami? Even with the stellar artistic reputation that Quigley and Seraphic Fire have forged over six seasons, establishing a unique identity for a new chamber orchestra may prove difficult in a regional landscape that has not been fertile ground for new ensembles since the failure of the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra.
The Boca Raton Symphonia has managed to carve out an audience base in southern Palm Beach County. But in Miami-Dade and Broward counties consistent success has been hard to come by: the Miami Chamber Symphony went bust and, after some initial success a few years back, the Renaissance Chamber Orchestra folded due to overambitious expansion and mismanagement. Other groups like Orchestra Miami, which has yet to announce a 2008-2009 season, have found it difficult to present more than a few concerts a season. And, even the charismatic Quigley could not draw audiences to a solo vocal recital series that Seraphic Fire launched in fall of 2006 and had to withdraw due to lack of attendance.
The Boca Raton Symphonia has managed to carve out an audience base in southern Palm Beach County. But in Miami-Dade and Broward counties consistent success has been hard to come by: the Miami Chamber Symphony went bust and, after some initial success a few years back, the Renaissance Chamber Orchestra folded due to overambitious expansion and mismanagement. Other groups like Orchestra Miami, which has yet to announce a 2008-2009 season, have found it difficult to present more than a few concerts a season. And, even the charismatic Quigley could not draw audiences to a solo vocal recital series that Seraphic Fire launched in fall of 2006 and had to withdraw due to lack of attendance.
The 30-year-old conductor is characteristically confident, however, about the success of the Firebird Chamber Orchestra. Indeed, he sees little in the way of competition for what in his authentically minded view will be a slenderized chamber “orchestra” of Baroque dimensions with fewer than two-dozen players. "We actually don't have any real chamber orchestras that are chamber size,” Quigley says. “Once you get five violins in there, it's no longer a chamber orchestra---not in terms of what Bach and Mozart had. At that point, you're a Romantic medium-size orchestra.”
“My personal feeling is that chamber music should be able to fit into a salon. Less people, better players."
Towards that end, he has gone about recruiting the best musicians, maintaining a small core and cherry-picking other local and national players as needed, based on repertoire. For instance, in this week’s premiere program for strings, the co-concertmasters will swap places, with Baroque specialist Michael Albert as leader for the Vivaldi and Telemann works and Adda Kridler, a member of the Charleston Symphony, in the first chair for the Barber and Diamond. "We're trying to make it as authentic as possible for both styles when we mix it up," says Quigley. "It's sort of the same thing we do with Seraphic Fire with certain Romantic voices for Romantic stuff and more Baroque voices for Baroque stuff. I like thinkers in my ensemble and they're all very good thinkers as well as good players."
One way, Quigley sees the Firebird Chamber Orchestra establishing an identity, is, like Seraphic Fire, by offering more offbeat and adventurous repertoire than anyone else. “If there is a chamber orchestra in town I guarantee you that in the past 36 months they've played the Tchaik Serenade, probably the Siegfried Idyll and gone through the standard string orchestra rep. We try to stay outside the standard rep---certainly outside the rep for Florida."
This week's opener, spanning three centuries of music, is typical of what Quigley hopes to offer, featuring a Vivaldi concerto, Barber’s String Quartet, the central movement of which comprises the celebrated Adagio for Strings, and two rarities in Telemann’s Don Quixotte and David Diamond’s Rounds for String Orchestra. Doing the complete Barber String Quartet, Quigley says, exemplifies the ensemble's mission to present works from varied musical eras that give the music context and provide a frame of reference for audiences. "When was the last time the full Barber String Quartet was played in town? We've certainly heard the Adagio but we haven't heard it in context."
”I don't think programming a Tchaik symphony has any merit in terms of its relation to programming. Great, you're doing the status quo. But how does that relate to the rest of the program? An overture, a concerto and a symphony---who cares?! We're trying to take people to a different part of the chamber orchestra rep."
Towards that end the Firebird will perform arrangements of works for string quartet such as the Barber this week and Schubert's Death and the Maiden quartet in November on a thematic program on loss and last things, which also includes Bach’s cantata Ich habe genug "The fact is that string quartets, sadly, don't really pull in this town. However chamber orchestras do. If we can introduce them to different and interesting parts of the rep, I think that's important."
Another way the Firebird will offer a difference is by featuring more vocal music on their programs, like the Bach cantata, in a region where classical vocal music is largely limited to mainstage opera productions. “I think doing Ich habe genug three nights in a row is something this town need to hear. For me it's one of the top three pieces of music of all time. And having the Schubert Death and the Maiden next to it provides context. The Schubert of course doesn't use any words, but it all comes back to the universal theme of death through music.”
Unlike Seraphic Fire, which performs in area churches, this week’s debut concerts will move from the sacred to the semi-profane. The original idea was to perform all concerts at the Arsht Center’s Knight Concert Hall in its yet-to-be-utilized chamber configuration. Instead, this week’s concerts have been shifted to the Peacock Rehearsal Hall in the Ziff Ballet Opera Houses, which will be converted into a nightclub setting with tables, full bar and drinks being served during the performance.
It seems an unorthodox setting for the debut of a new classical chamber orchestra but one that Quigley welcomes and says is in line with Seraphic Fire's quest for nontraditional concerts in nontraditional spaces. "I don't mind sounds of glasses or wine bottles being dropped,” he says. “It's part of the live experience. We have hearing aids go off and other disturbances when we play in churches. We don't need absolute silence."
Unlike Seraphic Fire, which performs in area churches, this week’s debut concerts will move from the sacred to the semi-profane. The original idea was to perform all concerts at the Arsht Center’s Knight Concert Hall in its yet-to-be-utilized chamber configuration. Instead, this week’s concerts have been shifted to the Peacock Rehearsal Hall in the Ziff Ballet Opera Houses, which will be converted into a nightclub setting with tables, full bar and drinks being served during the performance.
It seems an unorthodox setting for the debut of a new classical chamber orchestra but one that Quigley welcomes and says is in line with Seraphic Fire's quest for nontraditional concerts in nontraditional spaces. "I don't mind sounds of glasses or wine bottles being dropped,” he says. “It's part of the live experience. We have hearing aids go off and other disturbances when we play in churches. We don't need absolute silence."
For the popular conductor, the addition of a chamber orchestra fulfills his original vision of Seraphic Fire as a holistic European-style ensemble composed of voices and instrumentalists, and drawing musicians as needed for repertory, much like France’s Les Arts Florissants or Les Musiciens du Louvre.
“We started out that way but over three years ago when we went to just being the choir we had to cut back on the orchestra,” due to economics, Quigely says. “It's getting back to what we have always wanted to be, which is like the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir. In the end, it's about the music and about hearing the music.”
Patrick Quigley will conduct the Firebird Chamber Orchestra 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 7 p.m. Sunday at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts' Ziff Ballet Opera House in the Peacock Studio, Miami. Tickets are $40. Call the Arsht Center at 305-949-6722 or go to www.arshtcenter.org.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Corigliano to the Maximus
Festival Miami ushers in a new era this Thursday when the Frost School of Music’s concert series opens its 25th season with a celebration of John Corigliano’s music at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.
Violinist Jennifer Koh will be the soloist in Corigliano’s Red Violin Concerto, and the American composer’s L’invitation au voyage will also be heard. But most significant is the Florida premiere of Corigliano’s Circus Maximus for wind ensemble.
This is the first time the University of Miami’s fall festival has moved off campus, part of a revamped structure overseen by Frost School dean Shelly Berg. Berg has grouped the festival into four thematic weeks by musical genre, with Thursday’s event kicking off the classical music lineup and succeeding weeks devoted to jazz, pop and Latin music through Nov. 3.
There has been some grumbling from inside and outside UM about the festival retooling. But it’s hard to fault the classical programming, particularly the opening-night tribute to Corigliano, who, at a remarkably youthful 70, stands as one of our finest and most original composers. His Symphony No. 1, a powerful and deeply felt homage to friends the composer lost to AIDS. remains the great symphony of the modern era. The Symphony No. 2 for strings, a retooling of his String Quartet, is less outwardly flashy, but an equally rich and probing work.
Circus Maximus, Corigliano’s third symphony, is reflective of the composer’s style with its audacious scoring, pointed social commentary and extreme and unorthodox challenges for musicians as well as conductor. Still, it's a singular work in Corigliano's canon, originating with his desire of "revitalizing the concert hall."
Violinist Jennifer Koh will be the soloist in Corigliano’s Red Violin Concerto, and the American composer’s L’invitation au voyage will also be heard. But most significant is the Florida premiere of Corigliano’s Circus Maximus for wind ensemble.
This is the first time the University of Miami’s fall festival has moved off campus, part of a revamped structure overseen by Frost School dean Shelly Berg. Berg has grouped the festival into four thematic weeks by musical genre, with Thursday’s event kicking off the classical music lineup and succeeding weeks devoted to jazz, pop and Latin music through Nov. 3.
There has been some grumbling from inside and outside UM about the festival retooling. But it’s hard to fault the classical programming, particularly the opening-night tribute to Corigliano, who, at a remarkably youthful 70, stands as one of our finest and most original composers. His Symphony No. 1, a powerful and deeply felt homage to friends the composer lost to AIDS. remains the great symphony of the modern era. The Symphony No. 2 for strings, a retooling of his String Quartet, is less outwardly flashy, but an equally rich and probing work.
Circus Maximus, Corigliano’s third symphony, is reflective of the composer’s style with its audacious scoring, pointed social commentary and extreme and unorthodox challenges for musicians as well as conductor. Still, it's a singular work in Corigliano's canon, originating with his desire of "revitalizing the concert hall."
"In Beethoven's day the only way you could hear his music was in a concert hall,” says Corgliano from the home he shares in upstate New York with long-time partner, composer Mark Adamo. “Now you can jog while you're listening and look at the sunset. It's a very different world.
"So I wanted to take that particular space and think what could happen here with 2,800 people that can't happen in your living room? And the answer, is I can be spatial for the whole piece.”
Utilizing the concert venue in an offbeat way is not entirely new to Corigliano's art. His Clarinet Concerto arranges instrumentalists about the hall and the Pied Piper Fantasy is scored for children to play toy instruments in the audience and for the flute soloist to make a theatrical entrance and exit.
Circus Maximus takes this to another level with a 75-member wind ensemble, including 11 trumpets spread out through all levels of the Knight Concert Hall, with the distancing and varied sonic perspectives a key element of the performance. The work also calls for marching band and is capped by some of the most deafening passages one is ever likely to encounter in a classical venue, including a two-minute sustained chord that makes Shostakovich’s climaxes seem like a Haydn string trio.
Apart from the spatial element, the other inspiration came from Corigliano’s love of ancient Roman history, particularly the vast entertainment hippodromes like the Roman Coliseum and the Circus Maximus. He sees firm parallels between the gladiator battles and Christian sacrifices of Rome and the electronic bread and circuses served up by our own plasma TVs, iTune downloads, and unsavory popular culture like The Jerry Springer Show.
"I walked through it and around it," he said of the ancient Circus Maximus site. "Now it's just a field. It's enormous. But for a thousand years it was daily entertainment for Rome for 400,000 people a day. The government wanted to keep the people amused between the Coliseum and Circus Maximus And they didn't realize things were crumbling until they finally fell. We don't have arenas of 400.000. But we do have television, and the internet and the blogosphere and all these things are ways of getting our entertainment.
Utilizing the concert venue in an offbeat way is not entirely new to Corigliano's art. His Clarinet Concerto arranges instrumentalists about the hall and the Pied Piper Fantasy is scored for children to play toy instruments in the audience and for the flute soloist to make a theatrical entrance and exit.
Circus Maximus takes this to another level with a 75-member wind ensemble, including 11 trumpets spread out through all levels of the Knight Concert Hall, with the distancing and varied sonic perspectives a key element of the performance. The work also calls for marching band and is capped by some of the most deafening passages one is ever likely to encounter in a classical venue, including a two-minute sustained chord that makes Shostakovich’s climaxes seem like a Haydn string trio.
Apart from the spatial element, the other inspiration came from Corigliano’s love of ancient Roman history, particularly the vast entertainment hippodromes like the Roman Coliseum and the Circus Maximus. He sees firm parallels between the gladiator battles and Christian sacrifices of Rome and the electronic bread and circuses served up by our own plasma TVs, iTune downloads, and unsavory popular culture like The Jerry Springer Show.
"I walked through it and around it," he said of the ancient Circus Maximus site. "Now it's just a field. It's enormous. But for a thousand years it was daily entertainment for Rome for 400,000 people a day. The government wanted to keep the people amused between the Coliseum and Circus Maximus And they didn't realize things were crumbling until they finally fell. We don't have arenas of 400.000. But we do have television, and the internet and the blogosphere and all these things are ways of getting our entertainment.
"We are besieged by entertainment. We're just saturated with information, if you look at a news broadcast you've got the crawl on the bottom, you have the newscaster talking and in the right-hand corner you have a picture of something else. So many different activities have to happen at the same time today. And there's a shorter attention span because we're multitasking like crazy. We're able to do five different things without doing anything neatly. "
Corigliano says he’s just as guilty as anyone else but sees personal and political dangers in the fact that the plugged-in accoutrements that make contemporary life rewarding also make it more tense and unsettled. “I can't say I don't like my iPhone because I love it,” says the composer. “I don't want to give it up. I love the technology: my plasma flat screen TV and my computer.
“But the same technology that brought us our iPhone is also the technology that can bring about our destruction. With one bomb our world will be over. If New York City goes up, everything's over, kiddo. So Circus Maximus is a piece that celebrates all of this wildness and craziness and yet is terrified of it."
That influence is clearly felt in the third movement, appropriately called Channel Surfing. Different groups of instruments are spread throughout the hall each with their own music to play. With a remote-control click, we switch from dance music to pathos to cartoons in an instant. “Nothing lasts more than a minute because you get bored,” says Corigliano. “The interruptions become faster and faster."
That influence is clearly felt in the third movement, appropriately called Channel Surfing. Different groups of instruments are spread throughout the hall each with their own music to play. With a remote-control click, we switch from dance music to pathos to cartoons in an instant. “Nothing lasts more than a minute because you get bored,” says Corigliano. “The interruptions become faster and faster."
Most challenging for the players is the Circus Maximus movement, which concludes with a massive single chord, a "super-saturation" that, Corigliano says, is likely “the loudest noise ever heard at Carnegie Hall.” A “Prayer” follows that tries to make sense of all the cacophony, but the music again grows louder, wilder and more frenzied. Finally, the work ends with a violent shock, a shotgun blast that symbolizes for Corigliano what the stakes are of the current world situation. “That's the only way I could think of ending a piece like that,” he says.
The man in charge of conducting this daunting work is the Frost School of Music’s Gary Green, leader of the Frost Wind Ensemble. Green heard the Carnegie Hall premiere but confesses he was not initially that taken with the music. "I was moved by what John is trying to say in this symphony. I was deeply affected but not musically."
Indeed his first reaction was that it was “very loud.” Initially I thought it was sensory overload,” says Green. “There was so much, I couldn't tell where the craft was.” A second hearing in Washington with Leonard Slatkin leading the U.S. Marine Band, and further study of the score led Green to find its musical depth and political significance. “I tried to approach it with the composer's view and I’m really finding the craft in the piece now,” says Green. “It's been a learning experience for me and teaching this piece to students has been exhilarating.”
Green’s favorite sections are the more interior sections of this wildly theatrical work: the penultimate Prayer movement, which he believes offers “five minutes of John’s most beautiful music.” and the nocturnal, evocative Night Music I. "In not one place is there a time signature,” says Green of that movement. “It’s all based on feel and flow of sounds, There are wolf sounds here, nature sounds. It’s so quiet and unearthly, it’s surreal.”
That startling coda with the shotgun blast is problematic since even in these days of diverse course offerings, few music schools offer double majors in instrumental performance and marksmanship. Fortunately, for Green, he had an enthusiastic volunteer in Liana Purcell, the Wind Ensemble’s pianist, who will be firing the full-load blast at the coda.
Green’s favorite sections are the more interior sections of this wildly theatrical work: the penultimate Prayer movement, which he believes offers “five minutes of John’s most beautiful music.” and the nocturnal, evocative Night Music I. "In not one place is there a time signature,” says Green of that movement. “It’s all based on feel and flow of sounds, There are wolf sounds here, nature sounds. It’s so quiet and unearthly, it’s surreal.”
That startling coda with the shotgun blast is problematic since even in these days of diverse course offerings, few music schools offer double majors in instrumental performance and marksmanship. Fortunately, for Green, he had an enthusiastic volunteer in Liana Purcell, the Wind Ensemble’s pianist, who will be firing the full-load blast at the coda.
The 25-year-old musician grew up in Georgia, when the nation was breaking away from the Soviet Union amid much violent civil strife. “We had a sniper on our roof for a while,” she says. “I grew up in a war and guns were a very common thing. I like shooting. It calms me down."Purcell also recognizes that the shotgun blast is not just to provide a theatrical effect but to conclude the symphony on a powerful and pessimistic note. “The shotgun is a sign like it's the end of the world. It’s telling people to wake up, and saying you missed a chance to make things better."
Corigliano confesses that it was a relief to be finished with all the celebrations, performances and occasions of his 70th birthday season last year. "I'm not pressured terribly like last year, when it was like chaos. I had two days at home and five days away every week. When you realize you're 70, you do feel old. Not in terms of moving around but psychologically it does sound differently than 69."
He continues to be one of the most performed and recorded of living composers, with his Bob Dylan tribute Mr. Tambourine Man, just released on Naxos and a CD of Circus Maximus will be out on the same label in December. He’s also one of the few living composers to have a performing string quartet named after him. “I’m touched and amazed that they asked me,” he says. “I’m very honored."
Corigliano hasn’t yet begun work on his fourth symphony but he already knows exactly what form it will take and has set himself a challenge: a work written entirely for large chorus singing souunds but no words.
“It will be more than vocalise,” he explains. ”The voice can do more than just sing. So if you can orchestrate what the human voice and body can do and you have a hundred people it can be a very interesting piece. But I have a lot to learn about the chorus before I can write that."
“It will be more than vocalise,” he explains. ”The voice can do more than just sing. So if you can orchestrate what the human voice and body can do and you have a hundred people it can be a very interesting piece. But I have a lot to learn about the chorus before I can write that."
Festival Miami opens with John Corigliano's Circus Maximus, L'Invitation au voyage and the Red Violin Concerto with soloist Jennifer Koh, the Frost Wind Ensemble, the Frost Symphony Orchestra and Frost Chorale. 8 p.m. Thursday at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami. Tickets are $15-$75. www.festivalmiami.com; 305-284-4940.
Plain Dealer's silencing of music critic shows it's plain gutless
Last week it was revealed that Cleveland's leading newspaper, The Plain Dealer, had banned its music critic, Donald Rosenberg, from covering the Cleveland Orchestra due to what his editors viewed as excessively negative reviews of music director Franz Welser-Most. A younger colleague, Zachary Lewis, has been appointed music critic and will now cover all Cleveland Orchestra events.
Though he has lost his title as music critic, Rosenberg, above, will be allowed to review other classical music and dance organizations in Cleveland as he did previously ----just not the Cleveland Orchestra, which, of course, is the leading artistic organization in the region and one of the finest orchestras in the world. Daniel J. Wakin's story in The New York Times lays out the astounding details. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/arts/music/25crit.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
This is a dismal era for the newspaper industry, with many media companies foundering due to plummeting advertising and subscriptions, and therefore profits. Several leading media companies think the route to survival is to make massive staff cuts, gutting arts coverage, metro news and investigative reporting, usually in that order.
Uninspiring as that ongoing spectacle is, a case can be made that companies that are hemorrhaging money need to take drastic actions to survive. One can still debate the wisdom of what remains, with too many dailies sacrificing hard news, edge and testosterone in favor of suburban-mom “issues,” celebrity fluff and inane youth-oriented, where-to-have-a-cool-drink piffle.
Yet, even the desperation of the accelerated dumbing-down of content pales besides The Plain Dealer’s action last week. Profiles in courage are few and far between these days, but never has any newspaper in the U.S. or abroad ever demonstrated such complete capitulation to outside pressure or abject spinelessness as the Plain Dealer by silencing its own music critic's voice.
Don is a friend, but he's also a fine writer and superb and dedicated critic. No living music journalist knows the Cleveland Orchestra better or has covered them longer---for 28 years, the last 16 at The Plain Dealer--- and Don has written the orchestra’s official history as well.
His editors should be proud and honored to have such a scrupulous professional on staff—instead they throw Rosenberg under the train and kow-tow to an outside organization that has every reason in the world not to want honest independent coverage.
Rosenberg has been critical, at times scathing, about the limitations of the orchestra's music director Franz Welser-Most. Yet, like all honest critics, he's also given the Austrian conductor credit when his performances have earned it.
If Welser-Most's conducting were lionized elsewhere and Rosenberg were the only naysayer, perhaps the orchestra management and its supporters would have a point. But the fact is Welser-Most receives mixed to negative reviews by critics everywhere he is heard regularly---whether it be Rosenberg in Cleveland, me in Miami, or Tony Tommasini in New York. He still is branded with the nickname bestowed by a skeptical London orchestra player, “Frankly Worse than Most.”
In their Miami residency concerts, I've felt that Welser-Most's appearances have been largely disappointing, often lacking intensity and energy, the orchestra performing with customary polish but a kind of dutiful, airless quality. (The performance of Dvorak’s New World symphony at the Arsht Center last January is a prime example.) Perhaps its significant that in 2009, for the first time in its Miami residency, Welser-Most is only conducting one week of concerts rather than two as in previous seasons.
The orchestra’s executive director, Gary Hanson, has been upfront and straightforward in his dealings with me. But in the Times and other articles, he has given careful, lawyerly answers denying that there has been pressure brought to bear by him or board officials to have Rosenberg removed. Nonetheless, everyone in the music business is well aware that the orchestra has been overtly and covertly lobbying against Rosenberg with his editors for years. (Hanson was not available to comment this week, said a Cleveland Orchestra spokeswoman.)
The real question that should be asked---in the light of uninspiring performances, critical reviews and, even Cleveland Orchestra musicians speaking out against their conductor at the risk of endangering their own careers---why in God’s name would Cleveland Orchestra management extend Welser-Most’s contract to 2018? Nothing succeeds like mediocrity.
Honest and passionate reviews are always the enemy of entrenched cultural stagnation and untalented or overrated musicians. When an arts organization is criticized, they first go into denial mode and then attack the critic. This is nothing unusual and classic shoot-the-messenger tactics.
In a more courageous era, when newspapers were less economically threatened, independence and integrity were held up as guiding principles. Now the very people who should be in charge of upholding those principles are the first to trash them---notably The Plain Dealer’s dingbat editor Susan Goldberg, who is responsible for Rosenberg’s reassignment. It’s also become increasingly apparent in the blogosphere that Goldberg wrought similar havoc at the San Jose Mercury News during her tenure there.
With this single move, editor Goldberg—who has been on the job all of 18 months--- has done more to damage the reputation of the once-respected Plain Dealer than anything else in the paper’s century-plus history. For a related depressing example of ethical equivocation, check out the column last Sunday by the Plain Dealer’s ombudsman in which he twists himself into a pretzel trying to reconcile an earlier column defending Rosenberg’s integrity and professionalism with his current snap-to support of Goldberg’s decision. http://www.cleveland.com/readers/index.ssf?/base/opinion-0/1222590617279050.xml&coll=2
For Cleveland Orchestra’s management this is a Pyrrhic victory and a classic case of be careful what you wish for. Because of the heavy-handed tactics of the orchestra's leaders, board and supporters, the collateral backlash is now damaging the reputation of one of the nation's top orchestras and its innocent musicians are suffering for it.
When many institutions age and become irrelevant, they grow weaker and ever more corrupt before they die. As craven managers like the editors of The Plain Dealer make themselves ethical eunuchs by whoring themselves to the highest outside bidder of influence for advertising dollars, their actions will only accelerate the rapid flight from old-media outlets.
Arts journalism will survive online but most newspapers will not. Sadly, The Plain Dealer’s actions are a harbinger of similar events to come. The good news is that all previous existing monopolies on public debate that have grown corrupt and antiquated—regional, national and global--- are being dealt a death blow by the internet and blogosphere and the electronic democratization of the public square.
Though he has lost his title as music critic, Rosenberg, above, will be allowed to review other classical music and dance organizations in Cleveland as he did previously ----just not the Cleveland Orchestra, which, of course, is the leading artistic organization in the region and one of the finest orchestras in the world. Daniel J. Wakin's story in The New York Times lays out the astounding details. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/arts/music/25crit.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
This is a dismal era for the newspaper industry, with many media companies foundering due to plummeting advertising and subscriptions, and therefore profits. Several leading media companies think the route to survival is to make massive staff cuts, gutting arts coverage, metro news and investigative reporting, usually in that order.
Uninspiring as that ongoing spectacle is, a case can be made that companies that are hemorrhaging money need to take drastic actions to survive. One can still debate the wisdom of what remains, with too many dailies sacrificing hard news, edge and testosterone in favor of suburban-mom “issues,” celebrity fluff and inane youth-oriented, where-to-have-a-cool-drink piffle.
Yet, even the desperation of the accelerated dumbing-down of content pales besides The Plain Dealer’s action last week. Profiles in courage are few and far between these days, but never has any newspaper in the U.S. or abroad ever demonstrated such complete capitulation to outside pressure or abject spinelessness as the Plain Dealer by silencing its own music critic's voice.
Don is a friend, but he's also a fine writer and superb and dedicated critic. No living music journalist knows the Cleveland Orchestra better or has covered them longer---for 28 years, the last 16 at The Plain Dealer--- and Don has written the orchestra’s official history as well.
His editors should be proud and honored to have such a scrupulous professional on staff—instead they throw Rosenberg under the train and kow-tow to an outside organization that has every reason in the world not to want honest independent coverage.
Rosenberg has been critical, at times scathing, about the limitations of the orchestra's music director Franz Welser-Most. Yet, like all honest critics, he's also given the Austrian conductor credit when his performances have earned it.
If Welser-Most's conducting were lionized elsewhere and Rosenberg were the only naysayer, perhaps the orchestra management and its supporters would have a point. But the fact is Welser-Most receives mixed to negative reviews by critics everywhere he is heard regularly---whether it be Rosenberg in Cleveland, me in Miami, or Tony Tommasini in New York. He still is branded with the nickname bestowed by a skeptical London orchestra player, “Frankly Worse than Most.”
In their Miami residency concerts, I've felt that Welser-Most's appearances have been largely disappointing, often lacking intensity and energy, the orchestra performing with customary polish but a kind of dutiful, airless quality. (The performance of Dvorak’s New World symphony at the Arsht Center last January is a prime example.) Perhaps its significant that in 2009, for the first time in its Miami residency, Welser-Most is only conducting one week of concerts rather than two as in previous seasons.
The orchestra’s executive director, Gary Hanson, has been upfront and straightforward in his dealings with me. But in the Times and other articles, he has given careful, lawyerly answers denying that there has been pressure brought to bear by him or board officials to have Rosenberg removed. Nonetheless, everyone in the music business is well aware that the orchestra has been overtly and covertly lobbying against Rosenberg with his editors for years. (Hanson was not available to comment this week, said a Cleveland Orchestra spokeswoman.)
The real question that should be asked---in the light of uninspiring performances, critical reviews and, even Cleveland Orchestra musicians speaking out against their conductor at the risk of endangering their own careers---why in God’s name would Cleveland Orchestra management extend Welser-Most’s contract to 2018? Nothing succeeds like mediocrity.
Honest and passionate reviews are always the enemy of entrenched cultural stagnation and untalented or overrated musicians. When an arts organization is criticized, they first go into denial mode and then attack the critic. This is nothing unusual and classic shoot-the-messenger tactics.
In a more courageous era, when newspapers were less economically threatened, independence and integrity were held up as guiding principles. Now the very people who should be in charge of upholding those principles are the first to trash them---notably The Plain Dealer’s dingbat editor Susan Goldberg, who is responsible for Rosenberg’s reassignment. It’s also become increasingly apparent in the blogosphere that Goldberg wrought similar havoc at the San Jose Mercury News during her tenure there.
With this single move, editor Goldberg—who has been on the job all of 18 months--- has done more to damage the reputation of the once-respected Plain Dealer than anything else in the paper’s century-plus history. For a related depressing example of ethical equivocation, check out the column last Sunday by the Plain Dealer’s ombudsman in which he twists himself into a pretzel trying to reconcile an earlier column defending Rosenberg’s integrity and professionalism with his current snap-to support of Goldberg’s decision. http://www.cleveland.com/readers/index.ssf?/base/opinion-0/1222590617279050.xml&coll=2
For Cleveland Orchestra’s management this is a Pyrrhic victory and a classic case of be careful what you wish for. Because of the heavy-handed tactics of the orchestra's leaders, board and supporters, the collateral backlash is now damaging the reputation of one of the nation's top orchestras and its innocent musicians are suffering for it.
When many institutions age and become irrelevant, they grow weaker and ever more corrupt before they die. As craven managers like the editors of The Plain Dealer make themselves ethical eunuchs by whoring themselves to the highest outside bidder of influence for advertising dollars, their actions will only accelerate the rapid flight from old-media outlets.
Arts journalism will survive online but most newspapers will not. Sadly, The Plain Dealer’s actions are a harbinger of similar events to come. The good news is that all previous existing monopolies on public debate that have grown corrupt and antiquated—regional, national and global--- are being dealt a death blow by the internet and blogosphere and the electronic democratization of the public square.
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