South Florida Classical Review

Chamber Music opener a memorable night

2008-10-15T12:24:00.004-04:00

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.

Ivan Davis says farewell with Schumann

2008-10-11T23:27:00.007-04:00

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

2008-10-11T18:10:00.005-04:00

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.

Festival Miami puts on the Ritz

2008-10-11T12:36:00.007-04:00

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.

Corigliano premiere opens Festival Miami with brassy power

2008-10-10T13:16:00.008-04:00

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.

Fast-rising pianist to open New World season in style

2008-10-09T11:20:00.021-04:00

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.

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."

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."

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

2008-10-09T10:54:00.005-04:00

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/

Firebird Chamber Orchestra takes wing

2008-10-07T14:03:00.006-04:00

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.

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 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."

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.

Corigliano to the Maximus

2008-10-02T20:44:00.036-04:00

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."

"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.

"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."

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.

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."

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

2008-10-02T17:28:00.014-04:00

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.

African rhythms and musical sonograms

2008-09-30T09:07:00.007-04:00

The experimental music scene in Miami is fairly circumscribed, compared to larger music centers like New York, Chicago or San Francisco. Yet, amazingly for a contentious enclave like Miami, there’s less infighting and more joint planning and cooperation, which helps makes up for the lack of scale.

Two events this past weekend featured very different takes on electronic music, giving some idea of the interesting nuggets to be uncovered within Miami’s burgeoning contemporary music scene.

Lukas Ligeti appeared Saturday evening at the Harold Golen Gallery in Miami’s Wynwood district (above), as part of the 12 Nights Festival, a monthly concert series organized by Slovakian composer-performer Juraj Kojs. http://www.kojs.net/12Nights.html

As with most electronic composers, Ligeti “performed” largely by manipulating pre-recorded music from his Apple laptop. Unlike, most, Ligeti---son of the celebrated composer Gyorgy Ligeti---also utilized the Marimba Lumina, which he wryly referred to as “the traditional instrument of Silicon Valley.”

Developed by synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla, the contraption is a MIDI controller with built-in synthesizer, but resembles a plugged-in version of the traditional marimba, with color-coded mallets used to control and trigger the live and taped music.

Most of Ligeti’s program came from his new CD, Afrikan Machinery (Tzadik). The music manages to be complex yet accessible, with a welter of pile-driving textures and competing syncopations, imbued with the pronounced influence of African rhythms. The opener, Great Circle’s Tune I, is characteristic, building from a laid-back opening to a riot of electronic pulses and colliding rhythms.

At times there was a visual disconnect with Ligeti’s wielding of the color-coded mallets mostly controlling the sounds rather than actually playing---and somtimes when he appeared to be performing, his own percussion line was inaudible due to the mix. Yet in the final selection, Entering: Perceiving Masks; Exiting: Perceiving Faces, Ligeti finally cut loose with a breakout solo, showing that the drummer-composer is a worthy musician as well. Not everyone’s electronic cup of tea, but Ligeti’s music is consistently intriguing and often delightful. http://www.myspace.com/lukasligeti

On Sunday afternoon, Jason Freeman unveiled and discussed his work Sound Microscope at the Light Box Theater in downtown Miami, as a benefit for the South Florida Composers’ Alliance to raise money for the Subtropics Festival, to be held Feb. 26-March 15.

The Miami-born composer, now teaching at Georgia Technical University in Atlanta, said he was inspired by Google Maps to create this online interactive work. Freeman was intrigued by the ability to zoom in on a particular street on Google, and, rather than exploring geographical spaces, Sound Microsope is designed to allow auditors to zero in and “discover the hidden detail” of an individual sound, its timbre especially, which is then illustrated with sonograms.

Log on and check out Freeman’s Sound Microscope at the Interdisciplinary Sound Arts Workshop (iSaw) website: http://isaw.info/.

[Photo by Ginga Asakura]

"Bonesetter" cuts to the marrow of Chinese experience

2008-09-28T17:32:00.013-04:00

SAN FRANCISCO: The course of opera history is nearly biblical in its received wisdom and fixed chronological lineage: Monteverdi and Rameau begat Purcell who begat Handel who begat Mozart, etc.

But in China a different, very distinct operatic style was developing, one that predates Dido and Aeneas by centuries. Those two worlds are currently colliding on stage at the War Memorial Opera House where San Francisco Opera is presenting the world premiere performances of Stewart Wallace's opera, The Bonesetter's Daughter.

The opera, with a libretto by Amy Tan based on her 2001 novel, was commissioned by San Francisco Opera, and underwritten in part by John A. Gunn and Cynthia Fry Gunn. The generous couple earlier this month gave a whopping $40 million gift to the company, which will help commission more new works and expand the company’s nascent theater simulcasts.

Wallace has some experience with themes that resonate with the city by the bay’s cultural jambalaya. His previous opera for the company, Harvey Milk, was based on the pioneering gay San Francisco politician, and Bonesetter’s Daughter is clearly designed in part as homage to the city’s large Chinese populace.

The opera, set in late 1990s San Francisco and pre- and post-World War II China, tells of the conflicts and tangled history of three generations of Chinese women, based in part on Tan’s experiences with her mother. The author’s alter ego, Ruth Young Kamen, is celebrating a festive Chinese restaurant dinner in San Francisco in the late 1990s with Ruth's gauche American in-laws. The evening is interrupted when her strict yet now, declining, mother LuLing Liu bizarrely claims to have been present during the murders of O. J. Simpson's wife and her friend.

Precious Auntie (Qian Yi) , the ghost of her dead grandmother, escorts Ruth on a mystical journey into her mother's past: she takes her to Immortal Heart, a village outside of Beijing in the 1930s, and to wartime Hong Kong, where the young LuLing (also sung by Cao) survived by writing letters home for the illiterate fishermen’s wives. Through the retrospective episodes, the hardships of LuLing’s life become apparent to Ruth, not least being menaced by the raffish villain Chang the Coffin Maker (the strong-voiced bass, Hao Jiang Tian), a kind of Szechuan Sportin' Life.

Ultimately, Ruth’s spiritual pilgrimage bridges the generations and the opera’s coda returns to the present. The dying LuLing asks her daughter for forgiveness for her harsh treatment of Ruth as a child, and at the moment of her passing, the grandmother's apparition returns to gently lead LuLing through the mist into the afterlife.

In pre-performance remarks Thursday night, the composer related the discussions and extensive field research in China he undertook over four years with Li Zhonghau, principal percussionist of the Chinese National Peking Opera Company.

For the most part, Wallace succeeds in his stated goal of creating a Western opera with prominent elements of traditional Chinese opera. Wallace has skillfully integrated Chinese instruments into his score, with a battery of exotic percussion and the opening fanfare-like balcony summons of two suonas, a double-reed instrument with a whiny trumpet-like timbre.

The most prominent Eastern element is embodied in the performer Qian Yi, as the mystical spirit, Precious Auntie. Yi’s seamless, fleet-footed movements and unearthly scalic wails reflect the strange (to Western ears) febrile Sprechstimme of the ancient kunju opera tradition.

Yet for all the deft interweaving of Eastern and Western musical traditions, the visual trappings —as with the Sino-Cirque du Soleil of the Dragon Dance opening sequence, and the large ensemble scene opening Act 2 in Hong Kong Harbor---overwhelm the opera’s intimate family drama. Eye-popping and musically fascinating as they are, the colorful costumes, fine choral singing and spectacle of the set pieces seem like stand-alone tableaux that interrupt the narrative. There is an attempt to insert so much ethnographic lore and local musical color —like the baffling dragon bone symbolism---that the opera ends up feeling a bit like a Chinese banquet where everything is exotic and tasty but one ends up feeling overfed.

The Bonesetter’s Daughter is an uneasy mix, a kind of Rough Guide to Chinese opera set alongside a traditional family narrative, with naturalistic and mystical elements that never quite cohere. The music is most successful in the direct comfrontations between Ruth and LuLing when Wallace leads with his tonal straightforward style, as with the sensitive string writing in the final scene.

It must be enormously gratifying for the Chinese and Chinese-American cast to finally be able to portray genuine Chinese characters on a major opera stage. The vocalism and acting of mezzo-sopranos Zheng Cao as Ruth and, especially, Ning Liang as the mature LuLing (above) were sensitively rendered, with Liang bringing great pathos to the affecting finale. Though rather youthful to be credible as Precious Auntie, Qian Yi's fluid grace and traditional vocalism were striking---and you have to love that hair. The singers were discreetly amplified, a necessity for the artists attuned to the intimate scale of Chinese opera, which. however, led to some indiscreet electronic feedback at the end of Act 1.

Steven Sloane conducted with focus and authority, ensuing that the brash and piquant timbres of the Chinese instruments made vivid impact. Ian Robertson elicited impassioned ensemble work from the SFO Chorus, Chen Shi-Zheng provided fluent stage direction and Leigh Haas’s production, with sets by Walt Spangler and colorful costumes by Han Feng, was a feast for the eyes.

[Photos by Terrence McCarthy]

The Bonesetter's Daughter runs through Oct. 3. Tickets are $15-$290. 415-864-3330; http://www.sfopera.com.

Back on the Beach Beat

2008-09-27T14:32:00.002-04:00

The music season is heating up this weekend with several worthy events, unfortunately, many competing at the same times.

7:30 p.m. Saturday: The New World Symphony will serve up its final free preseason concert, this time with Alasdair Neale leading the entire contingent of musicians in works of Rachmaninoff, Ginastera and Roberto Sierra. Lincoln Theater, 541 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach. www.nws.edu.

7:30 p.m. Saturday. Pianist Ilya Itin will tackle music of Haydn, Beethoven and Prokofiev (two of the War Sonatas) in a benefit for Patrons of Exceptional Artists, the fund-raising arm of the Miami International Piano Festival. $40 includes post-concert reception at the Steinway Piano Gallery, 4104 Ponce De Leon, Coral Gables. http://miamipianofest.com/calendar/special_9_27_08.html 305-935-5115.

8 p.m. Saturday. Lukas Ligeti performs his offbeat electronic music at the Harold Golen Gallery in Miami’s Wynwood District. (Scroll down for profile of Ligeti and concert details.)

8 p.m. Saturday. Thomas Sleeper leads the Frost Symphony Orchestra in a free event at UM’s Gusman Concert Hall, 1314 Miller Drive, Coral Gables featuring music of Chobaz, Verdi and Tchaikovsly

2-4 p.m. Sunday. Presented by iSaw, Sunday Jason Freeman’s new installation, Sound Microscope, will be unveiled at the Light Box Theater, 3000 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. www.isaw.info.

4 p.m. Sunday, the UM’s “jazz dean,” pianist Shelly Berg will join the Bergonzi Quartet in Brahms’ Piano Quintet and selections to be announced. The Bergonzi will also perform Ravel’s String Quartet. Gusman Concert Hall. $40. www.sundaymusicals.org.

Seraphic Fire opens with Cuban Baroque

2008-09-25T20:17:00.014-04:00

By Greg Stepanich

The world's popular songbooks of the 20th and 21st centuries have been notably enriched by the music of Spanish America, but that's far less true for its orchestral and sacred music libraries, in particular with pieces from earlier centuries.

Seraphic Fire, the Miami-based chamber choir, opened its seventh season this week with a small but enlightening taste of what we've been missing. The 13-person singing group, backed by a three-piece continuo ensemble, returned to Palm Beach County Thursday afternoon after a two-year absence with a program of music primarily from the Latin American Baroque.

The house was modest -- no more than 50 people at the Harriet Himmel Theater in West Palm Beach's CityPlace -- but it was an appreciative house that listened intently and appeared to enjoy the concert. The group's next appearance at the Himmel in late October will feature the music of New Orleans, and likely will bring a larger crowd.

Artistic Director Patrick Dupre Quigley is one of the most interesting programmers in the area 's classical music community, and this concert was no exception. Titled El Fuego Serafico, the program featured five sacred works by the Cuban composer and priest Esteban Salas (1725-1803). Salas's music is much more Baroque in style than his dates would indicate, and one wonders whether his relative isolation in the far-off islands of the Spanish Empire had something to do with that.

Salas also was only a modest talent, a writer of attractive melodic lines and pleasing contrapuntal textures, as the first two pieces, O admirable sacramento and Ecce panis angelorum, indicated. The third piece, Pange lingua, was more complex, but still basically sunny music of praise.

Quigley's focus here was on smooth sound, and he got plenty of it from his ensemble. Entrances for the first bars of several of these pieces tended to be ragged, perhaps because the pacing of one piece to the next was so swift, as is this director's habit.

The opening set of Salas works -- meant to recreate "a scene from Corpus Christi Sunday at the Havana cathedral in the year 1785" -- was contrasted with a mini-Requiem mass of four pieces from two Mass of the Dead settings, one by Salas and the other by the Spanish Renaissance master Tomas Luis de Victoria. The Victoria works (Taedet animam meam and the Offertorium) were far darker and more vivid than the two Salas pieces (an Introit and Kyrie) they framed, but putting them all together did present very different ways of looking at the fact of death: Trembling before judgment, and solace in the face of loss.

Here again, because Quigley conceived the four pieces as part of a Requiem set, the joins between movements were meant to be seamless, though instead they were a little hasty. It would have been easier for the audience to digest the music given just a bit more time to prepare their ears for the contrast between the late 18th century of Salas and the early 17th century of Victoria. The singing was quite good overall, and the choir made inventive use of the Himmel's space, sending three of the men to a high stage above the floor to sing the chant for the Te decet hymnus section of the Salas Introit.

Four other 17th- and 18th-century composers from New Spain were represented by madrigral-style song settings full of rhythm and lively melody. Perhaps the most charming was the Christmas-themed Los coflades de la estleya of the Peruvian composer Juan de Araujo (1646-1712), with its vigorous call-and-response and its contagious feeling of headlong joy. The Seraphic Fire singers clearly had a good time singing this, and brought it off with gusto.

There was also some strong solo singing by soprano Gabrielle Tinto at the opening of the Marian song A la fuente de vienes, by the Colombian composer Juan de Herrera (1670-1730).

Today's concert also was notable for its inclusion of two contemporary pieces, one an encore performance of an Ave Maria by Homestead's Miguel Nieves, who wrote it several years ago while recuperating from head injuries suffered at Fort Sill. It's a very slight, short piece, and was sung with the appropriate respectful simplicity.

The other new work is literally fresh out of the workshop, and got its world premiere Wednesday night. Mi amado para mi, a setting by Seraphic Fire guitarist Alvaro Bermudez of words by St. Teresa of Avila, is a fine piece of contemporary choral music, tonal but not bland, and well-suited to its obsessive text and conversant with the language of jazz. Bermudez knows how to structure a piece for good narrative line: The opening motif, a murmur of a rising, then falling, half-step, at first broods over a static chord, but in the middle turns into a pulse, then returns at the very end to close down the argument.

The work also has a fugue, of all things, with a spiky subject, as the saint sings of being wounded with an arrow. Quigley said in remarks to the audience that this one of several pieces he's asked Bermudez to write for the choir, and I for one am looking forward to hearing more work from this young composer.

Seraphic Fire closed the concert with two pieces by the legendary Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernandez: Cachita and El Cumbanchero. These were a lot of fun, though the dryness of the Himmel was something of a drawback; the fat-chord arrangements the choir was using could have used a little resonance to make a richer impact.

The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Friday at First United Methodist Church in Coral Gables; 8 p.m. Saturday at All Saints Episcopal Church in Fort Lauderdale; and 4 p.m. Sunday at Miami Beach Community Church. http://www.seraphicfire.org/.

Greg Stepanich has covered classical music, theater and dance for 25 years at newspapers in Illinois, West Virginia and Florida. He worked for ten years at The Palm Beach Post, where he was an assistant business editor and pilot of Classical Musings, a classical music blog. He now blogs at classicalgreg.wordpress.com, and works as a freelance writer and composer.

Realpolitik circa 14th-century Genoa

2008-09-25T15:26:00.016-04:00

SAN FRANCISCO: Of Verdi’s greatest works, Simon Boccanegra remains the least performed. After an unsuccessful 1857 premiere, the composer, much like his protagonist, continued to brood upon its failure, and 24 years later substantially revised the opera, garnering a more positive reception.

San Francisco Opera's production, seen Wednesday night, boasted Dmitri Hvorostovsky in the title role and eloquently demonstrated the richness and distinctive qualities of this work. Indeed with a faultless cast and meticulous music direction by Donald Runnicles, the performance was so perfectly realized on every level, it made criticism virtually irrelevant.

It's somewhat understandable why Boccanegra has remained on the periphery of the repertoire. The opera boasts no celebrated “hit” arias or set pieces---Fiesco’s Il lacerato spirito comes closest---and the preponderance of low male voices bestows a grim, brooding quality. Finally, the complex, baffling scenario makes Il Trovatore seem linear.

Yet it's easy to see why Verdi retained such great affection for the opera. There's a concentration and paring away of non-essentials in Boccanegra. The music has an airy pastoral grace as well as taut explosive power, with the ensembles—that closing Act 1 in particular,---among the finest Verdi ever produced. Further, for the very politically minded Verdi, the opera is a cautionary tale, exploring the Realpolitik dangers of ruling justly in a world of ancient hatreds, mindless violence, and cunning manipulation, as well as the threat of factionalism that threatened to tear his country apart.

In 14th-century Genoa, a man of humble origins, Simon Boccanegra has been elevated to the position of Doge, yet is besieged by enemies: his traitorous former advocate Paolo; the nobleman Fiesco, with whose daughter Maria, he has fathered a child, Amelia; and his now-grown daughter’s lover, Gabriele Adorno whose father Boccanegra had executed. Despite the calumnies and undercover attempts to destroy him, Boccanegra’s continues to rule wisely and benevolently, yet is ultimately overcome and poisoned, though not before forgiving Adorno and elevating him to succeed him.

In the title role, Dmitri Hvorostovsky led a trio of prepossessing singers with the vocal goods to match. Retaining his trademark, perfectly coiffed white mane as the older Doge seemed a bit self-conscious, but otherwise the Siberian baritone appears born to play the role. His Boccanegra is commanding and authoritative, often using a sly charm to persuade his detractors, yet loving and protective of his daughter. Hvorostovsky can sometimes coast on his burnished tone and ease of technique but here he etches an incisive portrait of a well-meaning ruler undone by the relentless motivation of his enemies. Hvorostovsky’s singing was consistently detailed and vividly characterized, the singer often exploiting a wide range of dynamics and coloring.

Adding to the trio of singers with cover-magazine looks, Barbara Frittoli likewise offered a sensitive portrayal of Boccanegra’s secret daughter, Amelia. The Italian soprano sounded wobbly early in the evening, but soon got on track, bringing idiomatic Italianate vocalism and expressive subtlety to the role. The fast-rising tenor Marcus Haddock completed the gene-pool casting as Amelia’s lover, Adorno, singing with dramatic power in his Act 2 aria, and investing a somewhat thankless role with vitality and depth of characterization.

As Boccanegra’s conspirators, Patrick Carfizzi as Paolo displayed a darkly Italianate bass-baritone making the spiteful character’s oily malevolence starkly manifest. Vitalij Kowaljow embodied the dignified and prideful patrician Fiesco, singing with a refined and commodious bass.

Scrupulously attentive to Verdi’s detailed markings, Donald Runnicles brought out the ingenuity of the score and its contrasts, from a pastoral lyricism of almost Mozartian delicacy to the explosive chords and thoughtful pauses of as the characters ponder their next moves.

The revival of the Elijah Moshinsky production offered elegant simplicity, with the clean lines of Michael Yeargan's sets touched off majestically by Peter J. Hall’s period costumes. With Christopher Maravich’s evocative lighting, the various tableaux resembled Breugel and Canaletto canvasses come to life. Director David Edwards provided a seminar in understated stage direction, avoiding histrionics and having the artists move simply and naturally, speaking and singing in an almost conversational style.

[Photos by Terrence McCarthy]

San Francisco Opera’s Simon Boccanegra has one more performance 8 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $15-$290. 415-864-3330; http://www.sfopera.com/.

Korngold's haunting opera revived in style

2008-09-24T15:48:00.015-04:00

SAN FRANCISCO---"The guy needs a psychiatrist," said one woman in the audience of Paul, the obsessed protagonist of Die tote Stadt. Erich Wolfgang Korngold's once-celebrated, uber-Romantic opera opened Tuesday night at the War Memorial Opera House for its belated San Francisco Opera debut.

The Korngold revival over the last two decades has rekindled interest in many of the Viennese composer’s concert works. His Violin Concerto has edged its way into the repertoire, and Korngold is posthumously getting his due as a greatly gifted composer whose posterity should be based on more than his sumptuous Warner Brothers film scores, magnificent as they are.

Korngold’s stage works have not yet come in from the cold, though his most acclaimed opera, Die tote Stadt is receiving increasing attention in Europe. Kudos to San Francisco Opera for bringing this Willy Decker production, first mounted at the Salzburg Festival, stateside for a three-week run.

Premiered simultaneously in Hamburg and Cologne in 1920, Die tote Stadt (The Dead City) was a mega-hit of Lloyd Webber proportions in its era. The opera’s name has been kept alive by the first act’s drop-dead-beautiful Gluck, das mir verblieb, still a favorite recital item of sopranos everywhere.

Based on Georges Rodenbach’s expressionist novel Bruges la morte, the opera is set in the monastic gloom of Bruges where the grieving Paul cannot rouse himself from mourning over his recently departed wife, Marie. He meets a young slatternly dancer, Marietta, who happens to be her exact likeness. The conflicted Paul is torn between his sexual attraction to the earthy Marietta and his devotion to the pure Marie, with the action unfolding in a series of fantastical scenes that ultimately lead to murder.

Korngold’s remarkable score is brilliantly, even audaciously orchestrated (including two harps, piano, organ, celesta, harmonium and five percussionists) cast in a style of Straussian opulence that sounds majestic even to jaded 21st-centiury ears.

As a narrative, tote Stadt is a Freudian’s dream with its quasi-necrophilic obsessions, cathedral spires and assorted repressions and unspoken desires. Too often modern productions focus on the weirdness of the long second act---here logically incorporated into Act 1 without a break--- and neglect the genuine humanity at the opera’s core. At the coda when the damaged but wiser Paul rises to leave Bruges and sings a final farewell to Marie reprising that aching Act 1 aria, the effect is utterly heart-breaking.

Tote Stadt remains little known, apparently even in a sophisticated opera city like San Francisco, and there were scores of empty seats opening night with more electing to depart at intermission. Significantly, the opera and performers were warmly applauded by all who stayed.

San Francisco Opera had its share of opening-night glitches Tuesday, including Emily Magee as Marietta losing her wig moments after her entrance. Yet with a first-rate cast, Decker’s imaginative staging, and inspired advocacy by Donald Runnicles and the orchestra of this tortuously difficult score, Korngold’s forgotten masterpiece lives again, proving this is a work fully deserving inclusion in the regular repertoire.

Decker's staging, helmed in this production by Meisje Hummel, doesn't follow the composer’s meticulous stage directions but for the most part is faithful to its spirit, while investing the fantasy sequences with a whirling succession of images that conjure up the unsettling dream-like landscape of Paul’s disordered thoughts.

I could have done without the bald Marietta, and making Paul too much of a cringing twitchy neurotic from the start. But most of Decker’s conceits worked effectively, aided by Wolfgang Gussmann’s minimalist set for Paul’s den, the ceiling and walls moving to precarious angles as his nightmare unfolds. Decker’s double images for the touching conversation between Paul and the apparition of Marie was clever and atmospheric. Most striking was his varied and copious utilization of John Singer Sargent’s 1890 painting of Elsie Palmer to represent Marie. The painting in many guises serves as the opera’s visual leitmotiv, and well chosen too, as the young Miss Palmer’s visage has an innocence and haunting otherworldly sadness wholly apt for Paul’s departed wife.

The leading roles are punishing for both singers but the two principals overcame the myriad hurdles to make impressive company debuts. Torsten Kerl has made the role of Paul almost a signature piece, and he brought considerable vocal power and dramatic heft to the role. The German tenor has an ample, vibrant instrument and assayed the big moments while bringing a touching delicacy to Paul’s final scene. Perhaps his Paul is too unhinged at the start, but Kerl certainly made Paul’s anguish and conflicted emotions vividly manifest.

In the dual role of Marie/Marietta, Emily Magee overcame the wig disaster to provide a fiery and passionate tour de force debut. The American soprano has the dramatic power and lyric sensitivity for the role, and her rendition of Gluck das mir verblieb was beautifully sung, invested with just the right ache of nostalgic longing. Magee made Marietta’s own sadness and unwholesome history palpable and brought vehemence and daunting intensity to her climactic confrontation with Paul. She was also wholly credible as a dancer, displaying a light-footed grace, and brought ethereal purity to the passages in which she doubles as Marie’s apparition.

Lucas Meachem, here cast as both Paul’s friend Frank and the Harlequin Fritz, made much of his comprimario double-duty. The baritone proved an unusually forceful and imposing Frank, and a graceful Harlequin, though his rendering of Fritz’s Viennese waltz sounded tight opening night. As Paul’s loyal housekeeper Brigitta, Katharine Tier was too young for the role and failed to project in her brief, soaring Act 1 arietta.

Taking some minor trims, Donald Runnicles drew out the lyric set pieces too lovingly at times. But the company’s music director, who conducted this production at Salzburg and other venues, is clearly in synch with this opera, and led a sensitive, scrupulously balanced account of Korngold’s rich, opulent score, eliciting polished and responsive playing by the SFO orchestra.

Die tote Stadt has five more performances through Oct. 12. Tickets are $15-$290. 415-864-3330; http://www.sfopera.com.

[Photos by Terrence McCarthy]

Met opener an opaque experience

2008-09-24T03:27:00.015-04:00

The Metropolitan Opera opened its 125th season Monday night with a glitzy, relentlessly promoted evening as Renee Fleming tackled a trio of favored roles in separate staged acts, with tenor Ramon Vargas and baritone Thomas Hampson providing backup firepower.

The added novelty was that the gala was transmitted live throughout North America at movie theaters as part of The Met: Live in HD series. I caught the La Traviata and Manon excerpts at the South Beach Stadium on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. Fleming looked radiant--- though alarmingly thin, a soprano friend thought---and for the most part sang with gorgeous tone, security, dramatic depth and emotional commitment, The popular soprano was at her finest in Act 2 of Traviata, bringing a world-weary sadness and desperate sensuality to the doomed Violetta, with excellent support from Vargas and Hampson, as Alfredo and Germont.

The Massenet fared less well with awkward stage direction and a bland designer gown, Fleming as Manon indulging in the odd pauses and italicized emphases she sometimes falls prey to. Vargas was terrific, however, fiery and intense with big vibrant tone in Ah, fuyez.

I left before the Capriccio finale, partly due to an early morning flight and partly due to the mounting frustration of watching the poor quality image on the big screen. This is the second Live in HD performance I attended at this theater and also the second time I’ve experienced inferior video. After I reported the dark, muddy image for Romeo et Juliette in the Miami Herald last season, I was assured by top Met officials that this was a fluke, and that the matter was investigated and the issue rectified.

Apparently not, because the image was once again washed out, lacking color and sharpness with a muted gray-green hue predominating. The Manon in particular was so opaque and devoid of color it looked like a 1950s black-and-white TV relay. The event was live from the Met as promised, but the image on the South Beach screen was incontrovertibly not high-definition quality. Again.

For the next broadcast, Strauss’s Salome with Karita Mattila on Oct. 11, I’ll try a different theater and report back. Meanwhile I’m interested in hearing about the experiences of others who attended Monday's Met transmission. Feel free to post a comment and please be specific about the location and theater where you attended.

Plugged into African music

2008-09-21T19:30:00.021-04:00

It’s a rare experience to encounter the music of Ligeti in South Florida but one will have that chance Saturday night when the composer comes to Miami to perform his music.

No, not that Ligeti. Gyorgy Ligeti, the Transylvanian-born modernist whose extraordinary, densely concentrated music gave us one of the most original voices of the last century, died in 2006.

His son, composer Lukas Ligeti, is continuing the family tradition of creating envelope-pushing sonic art with a distinctive fusion of electronica and African music. Ligeti will perform his plugged-in creations at the Harold Golen Gallery in Miami’s Wynwood district 8 p. m. Saturday.

Lukas Ligeti’s style is a wind-blasting mix of classical, electronica, and indie rock, with a pronounced influence of African polyrhythms. “I feel a part of that [classical] tradition,” says Ligeti, speaking from his apartment in New York less than 24 hours after returning from Ghana. “But I’m trying to do something new. There are completely different ways of thinking about music in Africa. I thought, if I use these ways of thinking with my own musical background—European and American---that might lead to some interesting results.”

Afrikan Machinery (Tzadik), certainly qualifies. The opening track, Balafon Dance System is a wild ride with its cacophony of crashing rhythms and shifting tonality. The insistent sampled sound of the balafon, the West African xylophone, serves as the album’s instrumental leitmotiv. In Entering: Perceiving Masks; Exiting: Perceiving Faces irregular electronic metres build up to a spectacular array of multilayed textures and counterpoint inspired by African pop and Ligeti’s memories of nights spent playing drums in open-air African bars. The massive, pulsing mechanistic wall of sound in Chimaeric Procession is a not-too-distant cousin of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, contrasted with the reggaeton and easy-going California feel (written in Palo Alto) of Great Circle’s Tune I. There’s even something like Walter/Wendy Carlos’s Switched-on Bach in the stately opening bass line of Great Circle’s Tune II.

Since 2005 Ligeti has performed on the Marimba Lumina, a MIDI-controlled electronic instrument built by synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla. who worked closely with the famous Bob Moog. “It’s a very sophisticated and strange instrument,” explains Ligeti. “I‘ve got four color-coded mallets. The instrument can differentiate which of the mallets is hitting it, so I can program it differently depending on that. The software is very complex and allows a lot of possibilities.”

The Marimba Lumina has a built in synthesizer, yet Ligeti---like Bartok, Vaughan Williams and other composers of the last century---obtains most of his source material from his own field recordings, stored on his laptop computer. “I’ve traveled a lot in Africa and other places, and I just record things,” he says. “Environmental sounds, traditional instruments, voices, whatever.”

Most electronic composers’ public performances consist of them sitting on stage manipulating an Apple laptop, which is about as visually stimulating as watching me type this sentence. “I don’t really enjoy performing on the laptop very much,” says Ligeti. “I’m not a typewriter-keyboard player. Also I don’t enjoy people playing laptops because you can’t really see what they’re doing.” Reflecting his drumming background, Ligeti prefers performing on the Marimba Lumina, avoding the usual electronic visual ennui. “The Marimba Lumina is more interesting to watch. And for me as a drummer, playing a percussion instrument makes a lot more sense technically.”

Growing up in Vienna, Ligeti had no desire to follow in his father’s acclaimed footsteps. "My father was a really great composer. And I thought, he’s already good enough. I don’t need to do the same thing.” However, at 18, when he finished the equivalent of high school in Vienna, Ligeti realized his future course was inevitable. “I was always hearing music in my head,” he says. Ligeti decided on drums as his instrument because he had nothing invested since he never paid much attention to percussion previously. “I figured if I fuck up, it’s not going to be a problem.”

In hindsight, Ligeti said he wished he knew what he was getting into. “Not only are the drums a very difficult and physically demanding instrument to play,” he says, “but you have to schlep them around all the time. And you can’t practice at home because of the neighbors. Had I known more, I wouldn’t have chosen it.”

Growing up in Austria, Ligeti studied composition and became immersed in all genres; jazz, classical, rock and world music. His fascination with African music was sparked by Gerhard Kubik, his professor in Vienna and one of the world’s leading experts on African music. After initial exposure, Ligeti began to immerse himself in African music and theory. “In my search for my own voice as a composer, that was the first and the most important ingredient.” Gyorgy Ligeti’s late works also show some of African elements, most famously in his piano work, African Rhythms. “We swapped a lot of tapes,” says Lukas.

While Ligeti the younger is pursuing a very different musical path, there are similarities in their musics: sonic density, a prominent, often mechanistic pulse, and an unorthodox approach to tuning. “I’m interested in breaking free from tempered tuning,” he says. “Using just intonation and microtonalities. I don’t really use any system, I just use my electronics to tune stuff. I do it by ear and I try to find new–sounding melodies and harmonies.”

In his early forties—Ligeti said he stopped counting birthdays after he turned 35---his success is growing, with commissions from the Kronos Quartet, the Bang On a Can Festival, and Ensemble Modern. He has collaborated with such musicians as John Zorn and Gary Lucas, and performs in Burkina Electric, an electronica band based in Burkina Faso.

While Ligeti has great respect for the Western classical tradition, growing up in Vienna in the household of one of the century's most innovative musical minds, the avant garde “seemed quite normal.” It also makes him listen more critically to contemporary classical music, particularly that being produced in Europe.“I had a harder time with composed music because in many cases I can see the emperor is wearing no clothes,” says Ligeti. “My colleagues often become fascinated by complexity and issues like that, which for me are already old hat.

“For me it’s all conservative. The tonal post-Romantic music and Darmstadt and serial music are all conservative to me. It’s music my father and my grandfather’s generation would have been more concerned with.

"I’m more interested in world music and electronica and indie rock than most classical music being composed today. I love using the sounds of traditional African instruments because there’s a lot of noise and buzzing that gets incorporated. You go from village to village and find completely different tuning systems, different instruments and different styles of playing.”

Lukas Ligeti performs music from his new CD, Afrikan Machinery, 8 p.m. Saturday at the Harold Golen Gallery, 2921 NW 6th Ave. in Miami. 434-284-2965; http://www.haroldgolengallery.com.
[Photo by Chris Woltmann]

El Fuego Serafico

2008-09-21T14:43:00.015-04:00

Seraphic Fire opens its seventh season this week, one that should prove significant for Patrick Dupre Quigley (left) and his gifted singers. In addition to the chamber choir offering its standard jambalaya of the traditional and diverse, Quigley will launch the new Firebird Chamber Orchestra Oct. 9 at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami.

But this week it’s Seraphic Fire’s turn, leading off its season with five performances of Latin choral music, centered on the Cuban Baroque composer Esteban Salas. The program will also cover music from Spain, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico and New World villancicos, going beyond the 18th-century to include works by two local composers. Alvaro Bermudez’s Mi Para Mi will be premiered and the choir will also reprise the Ave Maria by Miguel Nieves, a strikingly beautiful work debuted by Seraphic Fire in 2005. Tickets are $35 ($87 for a season subscription). 305-476-0260; http://www.seraphicfire.org/

Seraphic Fire performs:

8 p.m. Wednesday at Corpus Christi Catholic Church, 3220 NW 7th Ave., Miami 33137

1 p.m. Thursday at the Harriet Himmel Theater, 700 S. Rosemary Ave., West Palm Beach 33401

7:30 p.m. Friday at First United Methodist Church, 536 Coral Way, Coral Gables 33134

8 p.m. Saturday at All Saints Episcopal Church, 333 Tarpon Drive, Fort Lauderdale 33301

4 p.m. Saturday at Miami Beach Community Church, 1620 Drexel (on Lincoln Road), Miami Beach 33139

Renee Fleming live from New York

2008-09-19T14:27:00.014-04:00

For the first time in history, you can attend the Metropolitan Opera’s opening night without having to travel to Manhattan. Monday night’s gala event with Renee Fleming will be broadcast live to movie theaters across the country as part of The Met: Live in HD series. The celebrated soprano will perform scenes from Verdi’s La Traviata, Massenet’s Manon and Strauss’s Capriccio starting at 6 p.m. For information on the 21 Florida theaters and venues across the country, call 800-638-6737 or go to www.metopera.org/hdlive.

The Met’s HD broadcast lineup this season includes:

Oct. 11: Strauss’ Salome with Karita Mattila
Nov. 8: John Adams’ Doctor Atomic
Nov. 22: Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust with Marcello Giordani and Susan Graham
Dec. 20: Massenet’s Thais with Fleming and Thomas Hampson
Jan. 10: Puccini’s La Rondine with Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna
Jan. 24: Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice with Stephanie Blythe and Danielle de Niese
Feb. 7: Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon
March 7: Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with Cristina Gallardo-Domas
March 21: Bellini’s La Sonnambula with Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flores
May 9: Rossini’s La Cenerentola with Elina Garanca

Brave (and free) New World preview

2008-09-19T13:58:00.005-04:00

With Festival Miami starting in October this season, September is more musically barren than usual, but there are still some isolated events.

The New World Symphony does not open its season until next month, but one can scope out this year’s roster (a third of the orchestra is new each fall) at two free preview concerts. Friday night’s program for woodwinds and brass is especially venturesome, offering Stravinsky’s Octet, Varese’s Deserts, Emil Hartmann’s Serenade and Musicians Wrestle Everywhere by Judith Weir.

On Saturday the New World strings will be in the spotlight for two of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (Autumn and Winter), George Walker’s Lyric for Strings, and Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.

Due to reserved seating, both free events are “sold out” on paper but there are usually ample no-shows, so go to the Lincoln Theater at 541 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach and take a chance. Note that the New World’s evening performances now start at 7:30 this season. http://www.nws.edu/.

Season Preview 2008-2009

2008-09-14T13:40:00.044-04:00

The only constant in life is change and that surely applies to South Florida---the epicenter of transience---more than most places. Across three counties, the volatile, ceaselessly mutating music scene is marked by new beginnings, novel challenges and evolution this season, as well as some stagnation and retrenchment.

The New World Symphony (http://www.nws.edu/) remains the brightest light in the local classical firmament. This is the Miami Beach orchestra's last full season at the Lincoln Theatre before moving into its new Frank Gehry-designed, high-tech edifice, and the New World will once again serve up the most discerning repertoire and starriest soloists and guest conductors led by artistic director Michael Tilson Thomas. MTT will lead off the New World's season not with the usual one-off gala but instead leap right into subscription concerts with the opening weekend of Ravel and Stravinsky featuring fast-rising young pianist Yuja Wang (Oct. 17-19).

Other New World events to mark on your calendar are Tilson Thomas' program of Beethoven and Richard Strauss at the Arsht Center (Oct. 25), the brilliant young English composer Thomas Ades conducting his music and others (Nov. 22), Emanuel Ax making a belated NWS bow in Beethoven (Dec. 12-14), conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy and violinist Joshua Bell in joint NWS debuts with music of Mahler and Saint-Saens (Jan. 24), a Charles Ives festival with pianist Jeremy Denk (Feb. 20-22), and Marin Alsop's return in music of Dvorak, Liszt and Golijov with cellist Alisa Weilerstein.

More questions surround the Concert Association of Florida this season than any other in memory, from its recent (and apparently unrequited) bid for the Arsht Center to take the presenting organization over, to the on-again-off-again Florida Symphony initiative, and eyebrow-raising move into booking non-classical artists like Pink Martini last spring and Jose Feliciano and Mariza this season.

The Concert Association of Florida (http://www.concertfla.org/) still offers plenty of first-class orchestras---largely booked by founder Judy Drucker before her exit last summer---- including Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra (Nov. 3 at the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale, Nov. 6 at the Arsht Center in Miami), the Budapest Festival Orchestra (Jan. 28, Arsht) and Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic (Feb. 29, Arsht). All of the above orchestras will also appear at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach (http://www.kravis.org/.)

The Cleveland Orchestra will come to town for its annual three weeks of residency, this time with guest conductors Kurt Masur and Pinchas Steinberg leading populist fare of Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky (March 6 and 7 and April 2 and 4). Franz Welser-Most's sole week (Jan. 30-31) in 2009 has the most interesting lineup with Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony (No. 7) and soprano Measha Brueggergosman in Wagner's Wesendonck Songs (http://www.artshtcenter.org/).

This season will see the debut of the Firebird Chamber Orchestra. Patrick Quigley's new ensemble, which premieres Oct. 9-11 at the Arsht Center in music of Vivaldi, Telemann, and David Diamond, and will perform three other intriguing programs in its first season. Quigley's choir, Seraphic Fire, will serve up a season-opener of Cuban Baroque music (Sept. 25-28) a program of New Orleans jazz (Oct. 30-Nov. 2), Russian Orthodox works (Feb 12-15) and the now-traditional Handel's Messiah (Dec. 19). (http://www.seraphicfire.org/.)

The biggest opera stars this season will be heard not on the opera stage, but at the Knight Concert Hall as part of Florida Grand Opera's demurely titled Superstar Concert Series, featuring Dmitri Hvorostovsky (Jan. 10), Marcello Giordani (March 9) and Bryn Terfel, left (April 6).

Neither Florida Grand nor Palm Beach Opera is exactly breaking new ground with adventurous repertoire or blockbuster singers in its staged productions. FGO has the most interesting curio with Leo Delibes' once-popular Lakme starring Leah Partridge (opening Feb. 21), and local favorite Eglise Gutierrez will make her FGO debut in the season-opening new production of Verdi's La Traviata (Nov. 15). Rossini's La Cenerentola, Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and Puccini's Madama Butterfly make up the balance of the FGO season. For the first time, this year all productions will be double cast, so if you want to catch a particular singer, check your dates carefully. http://www.fgo.org/.

What Palm Beach Opera lacks in programming daring, it makes up for with consistent casting and a charismatic music director in Bruno Aprea. The dynamic Aprea is at his finest in core Italian rep, so figure on Verdi's Rigoletto (Dec. 12-15) and Bellini's Norma (Jan. 23-26) as best bets. La Boheme and Le nozze di Figaro are also slated this season.(http://www.pbopera.org/.)

For more offbeat repertoire, one can venture across the bog to Sarasota Opera for its spring festival, which this year (Feb 7 -March 29) offers Mascagni's L'Amico Fritz and Verdi's Don Carlos along with Tosca and L'elisir d'amore (http://www.sarasotaopera.org/.). And if you don't mind hearing worthy voices in rough-around-the-edges productions, the fledgling Miami Lyric Opera has Bellini's I Puritani on tap (March 26 and 28) (http://www.miamilyricopera.org/).

Festival Miami (http://www.festivalmiami.com/) opens with a tribute to John Corigliano Oct. 9 at the Arsht Center featuring the premiere of his Circus Maximus for wind ensemble and Red Violin Concerto with soloist Jenifer Koh. Also worth checking out are an all-star chamber concert with the Brahms and Schumann piano quintets Oct. 13 and the closing two-night salute to Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera (Nov. 2 and 3).

Sunday Afternoons of Music (http://www.sundaymusicals.org/) offers a worthy lineup including violinist Elmar Oliviera, (Jan. 11, rescheduled due to Hurricane Ike), the Miami debut of cellist Steven Isserlis (March 14) and Eglise Gutierrez, left, in recital (Jan. 4). The Master Chorale of South Florida enters a new era with artistic director Joshua Habermann, and will open its season with Mendelssohn's Elijah (Nov. 14-16). (http://www.masterchoraleofsouthflorida.org/).

The Boca Raton Symphonia opens its second season with music director Alexander Platt Dec. 7. There's also the Miami Bach Society, the Boca Festival of the Arts spotlighting Itzhak Perlman, the Miami International Piano Festival, Miami Symphony Orchestra and season schedules yet to be announced by Friends of Chamber Music, Project Copernicus and other organizations. Watch this space for weekly best bets on upcoming musical events throughout the season.

American string quartets, lost and found

2008-09-11T17:16:00.011-04:00

The string quartet has occupied a strange place in the American musical landscape. While it was the medium of choice for the deepest and most profound thoughts of Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and Shostakovich, it has served more as a one-off venture for many American composers. Samuel Barber’s single work in the genre, produced the Adagio for Strings, a mainstay of the concert hall. Elliott Carter’s five quartets are more respected than loved but receive regular performances. There have been a handful of modern masterworks in the genre by John Corigliano and Aaron Jay Kernis and other quartets that deserve to be revived by Walter Piston, George Rochberg, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and, especially, David Diamond.

The present offbeat Naxos disc of four American string quartets reflects the tenuous place the genre has had domestically, yet provides a worthy and well played program with one notable discovery.

It took Ralph Evans, first violinist of the Fine Arts Quartet, more than three decades to complete his String Quartet No. 1 (ambitiously numbered, considering the long gestation). The opening Moderato has an easy-going Delius-like English feel, turning more angular in the middle, though an overall amiability reigns. The Andante is an impassioned chromatic outpouring and the third movement offers a lightweight gamboling scherzo. Even with the emphatic closing chord, Evans’ quartet seems to need another movement, a finale with some ballast.

Philip Glass has completed five mature quartets, as well as his atmospheric quartet soundtrack for Bela Lugosi’s Dracula. The concise String Quartet No. 2 is adapted from music for a stage version of Beckett’s Company and the four movements run less than nine minutes with a characteristic mix of yearning lyric phrases against pulsing minimalist rhythms.

Most substantial are the other two works. George Antheil’s String Quartet No. 3, written in 1948, dates from the composer’s conservative late years when he had put aside the anarchic outrages of his “bad boy of music” youth. Still, it’s hard to believe this retro-conservative work came from the same pen that produced Ballet mecanique. There’s a strong flavor of 19th-century American folksong in the opening Allegretto, which grows more tense and agitated. The ensuing Largo offers a gently rocking melody, naïve and rustic in its Dvorak-in-America nostalgia. A more pointed scherzo leads to a fast-paced finale that retains the cheerful folk elements even with an edgy driving counterpoint.

Bernard Herrmann is best known for writing some of the finest film scores of the last century, spanning from Citizen Kane to Taxi Driver with several Hitchcock classics in between. Completed in 1965, Echoes was Herrmann’s first concert work in 25 years, cast in a single 20-minute movement of ten sections.

Echoes was staged by the Royal Ballet, but is virtually unknown today, which is hard to account for. This is a terrific, consummately well-crafted and haunting work, with the tension and musical argument fluently sustained over the long span. Though the sections are subtly varied, the quartet centers on Herrmann’s characteristic bleak unease, the brooding introspection and dark romantic longing reflective of his film work; indeed, some parts sound very close to sections of Vertigo and Psycho. Echoes is rounded off with a nerve-wracked scherzo and frenzied finale before a quiet elegiac coda.

Vigorous and committed playing by the Fine Arts Quartet, though the forwardly balanced recording is on the loud side. It would be wonderful if Naxos could find their way to adding new performance of other neglected American works into the American Classics series, not least David Diamond’s ten string quartets, a significant body of work inexplicably ignored. For now, the present disc offers an offbeat program and a real discovery with Bernard Herrmann’s Echoes.

A rare foray into Mexican classical music

2008-09-10T15:47:00.009-04:00

Even in a Latin cultural milieu like Miami, rarely does one encounter the classical music of Mexico. Once in a great while, Silvestre Revueltas’ Sensemaya is aired but even the celebrated Carlos Chavez is infrequently performed, let alone works by contemporary Mexican composers.

Props then to pianist Mia Vassilev (left) and cellist Javier Arias, aka the Orpheus Duo, for their concert of Mexican music for cello and piano presented Tuesday night at Gusman Concert Hall. The program, to be repeated Friday night at Florida International University, also served as Vassilev’s doctoral recital (in accompanying and chamber music), and offered a varied and bracing conspectus of Mexican classical works.

There is likely more going on in contemporary Mexican music circles than most people realize, since the two most intriguing works on the program were by living composers. Federico Ibarra (born 1946) has written in every genre including symphonies, ballets, chamber music, songs and opera. His Musica para Teatro III is a suite cast in five movements that are concise to the point of being epigrammatic. Ibarra’s style is angular and ironic, alternating jocular and sardonic elements and off-center dance rhythms---a south-of the-border Prokofiev---and his music was given a taut, biting performance by the Orpheus Duo.

Leonardo Coral, 46, was represented by his Cello Sonata. Coral’s lucid, highly focused music is spare yet atmospheric. In the opening section, Espejos s de Luna y Viento (reflection of the moon and the wind), an unsettled fragile lyricism is set against hard-edged percussive writing. The Lamento offers a nostalgic cello solo that grows more impassioned backed by a spectral piano accompaniment. The finale has the strongest native element, a kind of folk dance on mescaline, jagged and driven with fleeting rememberance of the lyric elements. Both musicians were clearly inspired by Coral’s sonata, which receive the finest advocacy of the evening.

There's nothing particularly nationalistic about the Cello Sonata of Manuel M. Ponce (1882-1945), written in a traditional European style. Few would guess the first three movements came from Mexican origins, though the sonata displays the well-crafted professionalism for which Ponce was known, with a rhapsodic opening movement, scherzo-like section, and lovely, introspective Arietta. The brilliant final Allegro burlesco has more recognizably Latin vitality, but the long opening movement tends to sprawl.

The celebrate Chavez, Aaron Copland’s friend and closest colleague, was represented with his songful Madrigal, the cello line given ample yearning by Arias. The Mexican-born cellist’s father Emmanuel Arias y Luna was represented with his Dos Piezas, in which the brilliance and rhythmic energy of the cancion and jarabe offered the most direct populist folk flavor.

Arias’ intonation could have been more consistently focused, but the Mexican-born cellist of the Amernet Quartet showed clear affection and an idiomatic feel for the music. Vassilev sounded a bit cautious in sections that required more unbridled dynamism, but her playing was consistently vital and polished, with a nuanced expressive palette.

The program will be repeated 8 p.m. Friday at Florida International University’s Wertheim Performing Arts Center, 11200 SW 8th St. in Miami. Admission is free.

Mexican Orpheus

2008-09-08T21:38:00.006-04:00

Late notice but the talented Orpheus Duo is presenting an intriguing (and free) program of Mexican chamber music this week. Cellist Javier Arias and pianist Mia Vassilev will team up for cello sonatas by Manuel Ponce and Leonardo Coral, Federico Ibarra's Musica para Teatro III, Carlos Chavez's Madrigal, and Dos Piezas by Emmanuel Arias y Luna. The program will be performed 8 p.m. Tuesday at the University of Miami's Gusman Concert Hall, 1314 Miller Drive, Coral Gables and 8 p.m. Friday at Florida International University's Wertheim Performing Arts Center, SW 8th St and 107th Ave., Miami.

Oliveira erased by Ike

2008-09-05T16:30:00.001-04:00

Violinist Elmar Oliveira's appearance at Gusman Concert Hall for Sunday Afternoons of Music has been cancelled due to the threat this weekend of Hurricane Ike. The event may be rescheduled at a future date.

Season opens Sunday with violinist Oliveira

2008-09-04T14:16:00.012-04:00

If anyone deserves credit for the lengthening music season in South Florida, it’s Doreen Marx. Last season Marx’s Sunday Afternoons of Music series stretched into June, and this weekend she kicks off the 2008-2009 music calendar in early September with a recital by Elmar Oliveira (left).

The distinguished American violinist and artist in residence at Lynn University Conservatory in Boca Raton, will join pianist Robert Koenig for a meat-and-potatoes program featuring Mozart’s Sonata in A major, K.305, Schubert’s Duo in A major, Brahms’ Sonatensatz and Ernest Bloch’s Sonata No. 2 Poeme mystique. The concert is 4 p.m. at Gusman Concert Hall, 1314 Miller Drive in Coral Gables. Tickets are $40, $32 for seniors and $10 for students. Call 305-271-7150 or visit http://www.sundaymusicals.org/.

New-look Festival Miami to open at Arsht Center with tribute to Corigliano

2008-08-30T14:43:00.010-04:00

The 25th anniversary of Festival Miami is the first to bear the imprint of Shelly Berg, jazz pianist and the Frost School of Music’s dean. The University of Miami’s fall concert series will have a new look structurally, and, to some extent, musically, with events grouped into four themed weeks of classical, jazz, pop and Latin music.

The goal, says Berg, is to make the festival a destination for more people outside the Miami area, who are likely to visit if music of similar genres are scheduled closely together.

On opening night, Festival Miami will move off campus with a concert honoring composer John Corigliano (above) at the Adrienne Arsht Center Oct. 9. Gary Green will lead the Frost Wind Ensemble in the Florida premiere of Corigliano’s theatrical Circus Maximus (Symphony No. 3), violinist Jennifer Koh and the Frost Symphony Orchestra will team up for the Red Violin Concerto, and Joshua Habermann directs the Frost Chorale in Corigliano’s setting of Baudelaire’s L’invitation au voyage.

The classical “Great Performances” week will continue at Gusman Concert Hall with the Ritz Chamber Players Oct. 10 and a tribute to pianist and outgoing Frost faculty member Ivan Davis Oct. 11 featuring Berg and Frost musicians, with Davis performing Schumann’s Kinderszenen. Faculty composers will be featured Oct. 12 in the afternoon with pianist Ning An in music of Chopin the same evening. On Oct. 13, a co-presentation with Friends of Chamber Music of Miami will offer the Brahms and Schumann piano quintets performed by the all-star lineup of violinists Cho-Liang Lin and Adele Anthony, violist Roberto Diaz, cellist William De Rosa and pianist Joseph Kalichstein.

Week 2, “Jazz and Beyond,” will lead off with singer Tierney Sutton and the Frost's Jazz Vocal I Ensemble Oct. 16, followed by the Joshua Redman Trio Oct. 17. The Frost Concert Jazz Band will be joined by saxophonist Eric Marienthal and trumpeter and new Frost faculty member Greg Gisbert Oct 18. Oct. 19 will bring an experimental evening of Latin electronica music by “DJ Le Spam and the Spam All-Stars.”

A bevy of pop and rock musicians will highlight the "Creative American Music" week. Several of Berg’s friends team up Oct. 23 at the BankUnited Center for a concert featuring UM alum Bruce Hornsby, Steve Miller, Patti Austin, Monica Mancini, Dave Koz, Ricky Skaggs and Jon Secada with the Frost’s new Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra. Hollywood songwriters and Oscar perennials Alan and Marilyn Bergman will be feted Oct. 25, and Frost students will have their chance with the traditional Emerging Young Composers event on Oct. 21 and a new Songwriter’s Showcase Oct. 22. Berg will also participate in a discussion of solo jazz piano history Oct. 26 with writer Buzz McCoy, and that evening the legendary bluesman Honeyboy Edwards will take the stage.

Latin music will be to the fore the final week, "Music of the Americas.” Author Nelson Faria and the Frost Studio Jazz Band will offer a survey of Brazilian musical styles Oct. 29, followed by an evening of tango with the Pablo Ziegler Trio Oct, 30, jazz pianist-bandleader Eddie Palmieri Oct. 31 and a salute to ballroom music and dance Nov. 1.

The festival will conclude with a two-night tribute to Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera (left). Luis Ascot will perform his Piano Concerto No. 1 with Thomas Sleeper and the Frost Symphony Orchestra. Soprano Virginia Correa Dupuy performs Ginastera songs with Berg at the piano. Also to be heard are the Pampeanas Nos. 1 and 2, the Lamentations of Jeremiah and the rarely performed Cantata para America magica for solo soprano and 53 percussion instruments.

Most events take place at Gusman Concert Hall, 1314 Miller Drive, Coral Gables on the UM campus. Tickets are $15-$200 and go on sale September 1. Call 305-274-4940 or visit http://www.festivalmiami.com/

Chorale to have new master this season

2008-08-27T16:16:00.007-04:00

When the Master Chorale of South Florida opens its fifth season this fall, it will also mark a new chapter in the organization’s history. The baton has been passed to Joshua Habermann (left), who takes over as artistic director from Chorale founder Jo-Michael Scheibe. Ironically, the two men have swapped states, with Scheibe departing to his new post at the University of Southern California and Habermann coming to Florida after 12 years as assistant conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus and as director of choral activities at San Francisco State University. To make the succession even more symmetrical, Habermann has also assumed Scheibe’s former post as director of choral studies at the University of Miami.

Habermann will open the Master Chorale’s season by leading the chorus and Boca Raton Symphonia in Mendelssohn’s heaven-storming oratorio, Elijah, November 14-16 at venues in Pompano Beach, Miami and Boca Raton. The Chorale will join forces with the Empire Brass for a program of holiday music Dec. 12-14, and close its season with American Tapestry, a program of homegrown choral music April 24-26. In addition to its three subscription programs, the Master Chorale will be the guest choir when Itzhak Perlman leads the Russian National Orchestra in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at Festival of the Arts BOCA on March 15.

Tickets for the Master Chorale’s concerts are $30, $35 at the door. Call 954-418-6232 or visit http://www.masterchoraleofsouthflorida.org/.

A big box for an exquisite vox

2008-08-26T13:55:00.029-04:00

by Sebastian Spreng

Remember Caballé? Remember the LP? If you don’t, now is the time to refresh your memory The lady is celebrating her 75th birthday and Sony/BMG has released a 15-CD box, The Original Jacket Collection, with a selection of her best recordings, packaged in vintage LP covers. Even with some discs offering just 40 minutes of music, at an affordable $89.98, these recordings, made between 1964 and 1972, show the Spanish diva at her absolute peak.

Montserrat Caballé's sensational overnight success in 1965, replacing an indisposed Marilyn Horne in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia at Carnegie Hall, is the stuff of legend. From then on her career was "B.C." and "A.C." Before Carnegie Hall, she was a well appreciated “all-terrain soprano” singing primarily in Bremen, Basel and Barcelona, her hometown. The day after Carnegie, the New York Times quoted “Callas + Tebaldi = Caballé.” The equation was prophetic. Callas gave her final stage performances that year and Caballé boldly proclaimed, “The last ten years were hers, the next ten years will be mine.”

Peter Ustinov used to say that Luciano Pavarotti was “the man who swallowed a Stradivarius,” and the same could be said of Caballé. Her cello-like voice was a marvel, the gleaming high notes, the superlative musical instincts, the amazing breath control and, especially, the exquisite pianissimos that made her a treasure of a now-bygone era. As an actress and dramatic interpreter, she fared less well, but she was always honest and tasteful.

However, her unique instrument posed some disadvantages. She was often criticized for producing only gorgeous sounds and, after hours of listening, even Caballé can be too much of a good thing. She was also accused of not delving deeply into character and recording excessively. But those were the golden days when a prima donna could afford the luxury of recording everything she wanted to--- maybe with that one-of-a-kind instrument it was too much for record producers to resist.

The box includes eight recitals and two complete operas: Bellini´s Norma and Strauss’s Salome. The lack of the complete RCA Lucrezia Borgia with Alfredo Kraus and Shirley Verrett, the Eduardo Toldrá recital from 1963 (her first LP) and the Art of Montserrat Caballé under Gianfranco Masini from 1974 are drawbacks of this edition, even more than her Traviata that could also have been part of the package.

The first CD - Presenting Montserrat Caballe – remains the most impressive. While the plain cover shows a black-and-white sketch of the soprano trying to resemble Callas, inside is an individual model of bel canto vocalism with the trademarks that made her justly famous. Highlights include a magnificent Casta Diva, as well as the long scene of Bellini´s Il Pirata, Donizetti´s Maria di Rohan and two Carnegie Hall show-stoppers from Lucrezia Borgia and Roberto Devereux.

During the sixties and seventies in America, Norma and Queen Elizabeth were roles mainly associated with Sills and Sutherland respectively; in continental Europe, Caballé was the preeminent choice. With more than one hundred roles in her repertoire, her excursions into bel canto are her real forte. At that time, the fearless glottal attacks and seamless pianissimos were not, as in later years, an excuse to hide declining powers.

The three “rarities” CDs are virtuoso gems. Verdi, Donizetti and the Rossini discs demonstrate – before Bartoli and company – supreme vocal mastery. Rossini´s Willow Song and Ave Maria from Otello are flawless, as is the fiendish D’amore al dolce impero from Armida. The late bel canto, early Verdi and rare Donizetti selections are excellent choices too.

Curiously, the two CDs dedicated to zarzuela arias and duets with her husband, tenor Bernabé Martí, feel too elegant and over- sophisticated, missing the more earthy, genuine touch of Teresa Berganza or Victoria de los Angeles. A similar shortcoming appears in the Granados song recital, which still has its enthralling moments.

Great Operatic Duets lives up to its title from beginning to end. The partnership with Shirley Verrett proved ideal and the two voices complement each other immaculately. Verrett’s feline Amneris, Adalgisa, Jane Seymour, Tancredi, Laura and Suzuki match perfectly with the tonal opulence of Caballé. Most successful in the Great Operatic Heroines disc are the Desdemona scene and Anna Bolena´s Al dolce guidami, which takes the breath away. Less exciting is a mannered Depuis le jour from Charpentier’s Louise, Amelia from Un ballo in maschera and a very slow Tosca that sacrifices drama and dynamics.

Richard Strauss was Caballe’s favorite composer, and she sang Arabella the Marschallin, Ariadne and Salome many times. Her complete recording of the Judean princess is a welcome addition and the voice rings like a bell, effectively achieving the Strauss ideal of an ”Isolde of sixteen years”. She is no competition for big dramatics like Nilsson or Rysanek, but hers is a sincere performance well worth having. The supporting cast is first-rate including Sherrill Milnes in his prime, Regina Resnik, Richard Lewis and James King under Erich Leinsdorf. The Strauss lieder recital is done with remarkable taste and is a work of love, though in the end Caballe isn't completely in her element.

Joined with the powerhouse Adalgisa of Fiorenza Cossotto, her commercial recording of Norma is remarkable with both of the duets a match made in heaven. Her Casta Diva doesn´t equal the live performance in the Theater of Orange-- a performance for the ages now on DVD-- but lives up to her reputation. The young Domingo and Raimondi are Pollione and Oroveso. Carlo Felix Cillario is the workmanlike conductor. Not a replacement for Callas but definitely one of the two or three best versions.

Caballé remains one of the singing wonders of the last century and this indispensable collection by the greatest Spanish soprano since Victoria de los Angeles is a must for all collectors.

Born in Santa Fe, Argentina, Sebastian Spreng is a visual artist and music reviewer for newspapers and classical magazines, who has resided in Miami since 1987. Music is often present in his work and many of his exhibits have been based on musical series, including Liederkreis I & II, Sinfonietta, Impromptus, Chamber Music, and Reverberations. www.sebastianspreng.net.

Montserrat Caballé as Norma performing Casta Diva (Orange, 1974). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIQQv39dcNE

Perlman and Boca together again

2008-08-26T12:59:00.005-04:00

If you love Itzhak Perlman, you’ll definitely like the 2009 installment of the Boca Festival of the Arts, which will fete the celebrated violinist in honor of his 50th year of performances in the U.S.

The musical component of the ten-day festival will feature Perlman as soloist, conductor and chamber musician in an array of familiar repertoire. On March 7, Perlman will perform Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the Russian National Orchestra led by Mikhail Pletnev. He will present a chamber music evening with his Perlman Music Program March 8, followed by a concert of klezmer music March 12. For a grand finale, Perlman will conduct the Russian National Orchestra and Master Chorale of South Florida in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 to close the festival March 15.

In other events, Pletnev will conduct the RNO in an all-Beethoven program March 10 featuring the mighty Fifth Symphony, with Jeremy Denk as soloist in the Piano Concerto No. 5. And on March 13 conductor Alondra de la Parra leads the Russian musicians in an evening of Latin-American music. Other artists and programming details are yet to be announced. All performances are at the Centre for the Arts at Mizner Park in Boca Raton. Call 866-571-2787 or visit http://www.festivaloftheartsboca.org/.

Miami Lyric Opera closes season in style

2008-08-24T17:13:00.010-04:00

Vocal programs of isolated opera arias are often the musical equivalent of a chicken salad lunch---it sates the appetite, there's nothing heavy, and usually no surprises.

What looked on paper like a chicken-salad aria event by Miami Lyric Opera offered a strong evening of vocalism that rose to surprising heights Saturday night at the Colony Theater, closing the fourth season of Raffaele Cardone's fledgling company on an up note.

Saturday's program offered a more unified lineup than usual, leading off with extended scenes from Don Pasquale and Manon. With the safety-first conservative repertoire served up by the two large regional opera companies, Massenet is encountered locally about as often as Wozzeck.

So it was doubly pleasurable to hear the generous selection of Manon excerpts, which also provided several of the evening's high points. Massenet's tale of the wealth-loving woman of leisure who leads herself and the Count des Grieux to a tragic end is chock full of some of Massenet's finest music, remarkable in its range and variety.

The title role received spectacular advocacy from Susana Diaz as Manon. Glammed up in blond hair and slinky evening gown, it's hard to believe this was the same singer who was so convincing as a virginal, innocent Gilda a year ago in Rigoletto. At times, one wanted a smoother legato and more body in the middle voice, particularly with Je suis encore. But Diaz showed herself more than capable of taking on the demanding role, displaying blazing top notes and impressive agility in a glorious account of Manon's Gavotte, and plumbing emotional depth in a concentrated Adieu, notre petite table.

Jorge Pita was an equally worthy des Griux, bringing yearning ardor to Il Reve and dramatic power to Ah! fuyez. So compelling and well sung was the ensuing scene by both artists, that it was a bit disappointing not to hear the rest of the opera. Cardone provided a teaser that the company may present a complete Manon next season. We live in hope.

Lighter fare was encountered with the opening excerpts from Donizetti's Don Pasquale. Beverly Coulter was a lively presence as Norina, conveying the charm of the mercurial schemer and showing impressive technical gleam in Quel guardo and comic interplay in the duet with Daniel Snodgrass's Malatesta. Coulter's ringing top notes were also heard to fine effect in the Lucia sextet and music from Bellini's La Sonnambula, with lovely tone and coloratura dazzle in Amina's showpiece Ah! non giunge.

David Pereira possesses a refined if slender lyric tenor. Though sensitively floated, Faust's Salut demeure requires more weight and a firmer attack, but Pereira's elegant voice was well suited to Ernesto's arias from Pasquale.

Diego Baner wielded his imposing bass with finesse and keen dramatic point in arias from Don Carlo and Simon Boccanegra. Baritone Snodgrass demonstrated idiomatic Italianate legato and showed versatility with the buffo bel canto as well as a fine account of Albert's aria from Werther. Mezzo-soprano Lissette Jimenez displayed her rich tone and admirable technique in arias from La Favorita and Cavalleria Rusticana.

Over a long program, pianist Paul Schwartz was an exemplary partner, alertly supporting the singers and providing faultless accompaniment. The only blot on the evening was the audible amped-up bass from Segafredo Café next door, which provided an unwonted backbeat to Massenet and Donizetti.

Miami Lyric Opera will open its 2009 season on March 26 with Bellini's I Puritani. Also to be heard next year are Bizet's Carmen, Emilio Arrieta's Marina and a double bill of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Puccini's Suor Angelica. Visit http://www.miamilyricopera.org/.

Video: Susana Diaz as Gilda singing Caro nome in Miami Lyric Opera's Rigoletto, 2007. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_qaQ-k_-0A

Late summer arias on Lincoln Road

2008-08-21T21:35:00.004-04:00

South Florida’s opera season is months away, but Miami Lyric Opera will offer a summer sampler this weekend with a showcase of popular arias. The concert features several local singers who have performed in MLO productions including Beverly Coulter, Susana Diaz, Lissette Jimenez, Jorge Pita, and Diego Baner, in music of Verdi, Mascagni, Massenet, Gounod, and Donizetti.

Concert time is 8 p.m. Saturday at the Colony Theater, 1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach. $30, $25 for students with I.D. http://www.miamilyricopera.org/; 305-674-1040.

A box of Heifetz

2008-08-20T19:57:00.010-04:00

I waited so long to write about the Jascha Heifetz Sony Original Jacket Collection ($79.98 at Amazon) that the label has since released three more sets of Eugene Ormandy, Montserrat Caballe, and another Leonard Bernstein box, which will be reviewed soon. In the meantime, here’s a brief take on the Heifetz set.

Aficionados will know these recordings intimately but younger collectors will want to snap up this box before it disappears. These extraordinary violin performances remain touchstones and have never sounded better than in these newly remastered versions. This limited edition 10-CD box concentrates largely on Heifetz’s concerto recordings and most of the essentials are here: magisterial Brahms and Tchaikovsky with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony, Beethoven and Mendelssohn with Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony, and the stunning recording of the Korngold concerto, a work which, though not written for him, seems eminently suited to Heifetz’s bright, diamond-like timbre.

Interpretively, the legendary violinist could be cool to the point of icy---as with his speed race through the slow movement of the Sibelius concerto. But at his best, Heifetz’s sinew and sweetness, vibrant tone, and astonishing technical security remain unequaled. Heiftez shined best, I feel, in his native Russian repertoire---Prokofiev’s irony and sharp angles suit him particularly well. My guilty pleasure of the set is the Glazunov concerto, which while not quite a masterpiece, is melodic, delightful and exhilarating (a brief bowing slip in the finale shows that even Heifetz was human). Also included are the complete Bach solo sonatas and partitas and the 1972 Los Angeles recital with Brooks Smith.

Columbia Masterworks vintage cover art was not exactly gallery material but the series’ exacting miniature reproductions of its albums are captivating and the box offer a shelf-saving way to nab some essential Heifetz.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=kFaq9kTlcaY&feature=related

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=ykbjtdfdXJ4&feature=related

Requiescat in pace

2008-08-18T18:52:00.020-04:00

Jack Zink, longtime theater critic and cultural affairs writer for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, died today at 10:30 a.m. at his home, with his wife Cynthia by his side. And the world is now a colder and less gracious place.

Jack handled the lung cancer, which was diagnosed last fall and took his life Monday morning at age 61, with the same resolve, optimism, and stoic Midwestern lack of fuss, with which he approached a difficult review, intractable interview subject or complex research into an arts organization’s tax records.

When Jack began covering the arts in South Florida in 1969, Richard Nixon was the new president, Apollo XI made the first manned landing on the moon, the Woodstock Music Festival attracted 400,000 people, and Midnight Cowboy was playing in the nation's movie theaters.

In the intervening four decades, Jack logged time at all three of the region’s major papers, the Palm Beach Post, Miami Herald and, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, as well as handling chores as Florida correspondent for Variety for two decades.

“He was driven and completely committed to everything he did,” said publicist Charlie Cinnamon who enjoyed a close working relationship dating from Jack’s earliest days in Florida. “From the beginning of his career, he was an extraordinary gentleman and as gentle as they come."

"I felt that Jack was a pillar of the community,’ said producer Jay Harris. “He was selfless and put the entertainment of South Florida ahead of his own well being.” Harris was particularly impressed with Jack’s tireless dedication and the long hours he put in as founder and guiding light of the Carbonell Awards, the regional arts honors the stature of which Jack's efforts played a large part in achieving.

“He volunteered with his time in many, many things. He was so dedicated to the entertainment industry," said Harris. "He was an icon in his own way. He leaves a legacy that will be a very hard act to follow.”

Like all good critics, Jack was an enthusiast, and never tired of the daily beat coverage. At his retirement party last month, outgoing Sun-Sentinel arts and entertainment editor Robin Berkowitz noted how Jack would review the umpteenth local production of Fiddler on the Roof with the same zeal and seriousness as if he were hearing it for the first time.

At busy peak season, when critics a decade and a half younger than him had turned to glassy-eyed zombies, Jack would be in the office most of the day, writing, conducting interviews, and editing, before dashing off to yet another performance without missing a beat or a word of complaint.

“On matters of arts and entertainment in South Florida, Jack was authoritative in a way that may be disappearing,” writes Sean Piccoli, Sun-Sentinel pop music critic in an email reminiscence. “The trend nowadays is to offload our actual memory of people, places and events to Web sites like Google and Wikipedia. Not Jack. Tech-savvy as he was, he insisted on carrying his institutional knowledge inside of his head. Jack wrote with a very full awareness of the region's cultural life, and its development over the decades that he lived and worked here, and I was always awed by the extent of his knowledge."

Sean also points out that the collision of volatile, passionate personalities in any newsroom's arts and entertainment department needed the unruffled center of gravity that Jack’s presence provided.

“Jack went about his work with exemplary patience and calm,” writes Sean. “A noisy newsroom is a wonderful thing, but there has to be someone in that setting to balance out the cacophony. In our corner of the Sun Sentinel, Jack was that guy--- rational, gentle and quietly amused at the hysterics occasionally exhibited by some of his colleagues.”

Jack’s energy never seemed to flag, whether keeping a daunting pace of theater coverage, the vast amount of time he devoted to the Carbonells, or the hundreds of hours freely volunteered to his condo board and church. For all his hectic scheduling, he somehow managed to maintain a surgically neat desktop compared to the mass of papers, press releases, CDs and coffee-stained effluvia of the ink-stained wretches around him.

John Charles Zink was born March 7, 1947 in Lorain, Ohio, a steel and ship-building enclave on Lake Erie west of Cleveland, the oldest of six children. Jack graduated from St. Mary High School, where he was active in the drama club, debate teams, intramural basketball, and started at tight end in varsity football.

Jack began his journalism career as an intern at The Elyria Chronicle-Telegram in 1968, where among his varied roles was covering the inaugural season of the Blossom Music Center and the Cleveland Orchestra’s summer concert series. He attended the University of Dayton before transferring to Ohio State University’s journalism program. Following graduation from OSU in 1969, Jack took the first of his journalism jobs in Florida where he was editor of the Miami Herald’s Lively Arts in Broward County. Two years later he moved to the Fort Lauderdale News as entertainment editor for nearly a decade (1971-80) and then to a two-year stint (1983-1985) in the same position for the Palm Beach Post & Evening Times.

At this time, South Florida entertainment was evolving from a refuge of creaky vaudeville and supper clubs to a growing pop, theater and classical music scene. Among those he met and profiled were Janis Joplin, Dustin Hoffman and Luciano Pavarotti.

In 1987, Jack returned to the role of theater critic at the Sun-Sentinel, where he also took on the new role of cultural affairs reporter/commentator, where his accumulated knowledge and experience of the region’s arts scene would prove invaluable.

Over his long career Jack covered virtually everything that could be considered entertainment—as well as some things that barely qualified: theater news and reviews, film, television, books, classical music, opera, dance, nightclubs and popular music. He received the Sun-Sentinel's highest award, the Fred Pettijohn Award, as well as the George Abbott Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts, voted by members of the arts and entertainment industry. He was Florida correspondent for Varity and Daily Variety from 1977 to 1995. When I left the Sun-Sentinel in the fall of 2006 he eagerly took upon his already teeming plate, the classical music beat, gracefully handling reviews of Palm Beach Opera and Florida Grand Opera and coordinating an ambitious schedule of freelance coverage.

While he was best known as theater critic and prolific reviewer, Jack was proud of his reporting and investigative work. A series of reports and columns about management at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts prompted the Florida State Legislature to overhaul the center’s management in the early 1990s. Later, his reporting on the Florida Entertainment Commission proved instrumental in the Legislature’s decision to dissolve that agency. But it is his work as founder, executive director and guiding light of the nationally recognized Carbonell Awards, South Florida’s regional arts honors, which may be his greatest professional legacy.

As with all critics, Jack had his share of memorable stories When a translator failed to show up, he had a friendly but worthless interview with a young unknown Italian tenor who was about to make his American debut in Miami yet could not speak a word of English---Pavarotti. He interviewed Kirk Douglas while the actor un-self-consciously sunned nude on his hotel balcony. And, once after a negative review, an enraged Robert Goulet called the newsroom and told Jack he was coming over to “punch your lights out.”

A young hot-headed actor went further than threats over the phone. Following a tepid review of a new street theater company, the furious actor went to the Sun-Sentinel newsroom to confront Jack. (These were pre-security days when anyone could simply walk into a city newsroom.) Unaware that the theater critic had just left to get a sandwich around the corner, the outraged actor demanded to see Jack and, when told he wasn’t there, erupted and attacked the metro editor on duty. The police were called, and Jack returned to the office, bewildered at seeing the now-contrite thespian being hauled away in cuffs, crying, “Jack, I didn’t mean it!”

Accomplished and prolific as his theater writing was, Jack’s occasional article off the theater beat produced some terrific work. His essays for the Sun-Sentinel’s Travel section on his trip to Egypt and, especially, a summer vacation visiting Civil War battlefields with Cynthia---Jack was a lifelong Civil War buff-----were gems of observant reporting and evocative writing.

But it was Jack's kindness, good humor and unfailing personal and professional generosity that will remain in the memory of his colleagues. He was a sounding board and source of advice for younger reporters dealing with the inevitable office conflicts and battles with editors. And in the media/entertainment milieu in transient South Florida---where duplicity, mendacity, and getting ahead at any cost are often the normal state of things---Jack's honesty, integrity, and fundamental decency remain touchstones now and always.

Jack is survived by his wife Cynthia, and daughters Derika Jeanne Zink and Susan Fuguet, from a previous marriage to Susan Haskell-Hall who died in 1983. He was also a loving stepfather to Cynthia’s son Vincent and daughter Mary.

A private funeral service for family and close friends will be held Saturday morning. A public memorial tribute will take place 3 p.m. Monday at the Parker Playhouse, 707 NE 8th St., Fort Lauderdale. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to St. Ambrose Episcopalian Church, 2250 SW 31st Ave., Fort Lauderdale, FL 33312 or to The Carbonell Awards, Inc. at P.O. Box 14211, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33302-4211.

The desert song

2008-08-16T14:12:00.011-04:00

Notes from a week of opera in Santa Fe:

For opera fans who have yet to make the trip, a sojourn to New Mexico for Santa Fe Opera’s festival is a must-do before you die. The repertoire is varied, and casting and performance quality consistently high. Not to mention the spectacular venue with open side and back views that showcase the desert sky during performances.

For South Florida residents, it offers a week of escape from the godless summer heat and humidity. The weather is balmy and pleasant with a cooling breeze---thunderstorms and flash flooding apart one day I was there. Add fine restaurants, intriguing art galleries, reasonable hotel rates and tickets that start at $26 and it’s a cultural pilgrimage that won’t break the bank.

Having grown accustomed to the sullen monosyllabic rudeness of South Florida, it was striking to encounter the Santa Fe locals in restaurants, hotels and stores who are open, friendly and speak in complete, intelligible sentences. A Miami friend, who noted the same social contrast, said, “I may move here permanently.”

In addition to the opera, the city also offers an ambitious and venturesome summer chamber music festival. Under artistic director Marc Neikrug, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival presents several events over a five-week span. I caught a terrific program by the trio Real Quiet, that included Elliott Carter’s Cello Sonata; an intriguing work, Real Loud, written for the trio by young composer Huang Ruo; and the premiere of Serenatas by Kaija Saariaho.
The tall flame-haired Finnish composer was a prominent presence this summer due to the American premiere of Saariaho’s second opera, Adriana Mater. I had issues with the opera’s libretto and static quality, yet, as with her music for Adriana, Serenatas is consistently rewarding. Cast in five movements that can be played in any sequence, the music explores the full range and limits of the instruments but with an elegant, searching cool Nordic lyricism, suffused with a longing melancholy and extremely subtle dynamics and colors. Cellist Felix Fan, pianist Andrew Russo and percussionist David Cassin gave Serenatas sterling advocacy with playing of laser-like concentration.
The 37th season of Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in 2009 will run from July 19-August 24 and offer premieres of commissioned works by George Tsontakis, Gunther Schuller, and Mark Anthony Turnage. http://www.santafechambermusic.com/; 505-982-1890.

The production of Verdi’s Falstaff had a quiet debut by a young man from a prominent Santa Fe couple. The silent role of Robin the page was charmingly played by Trevor Wilson, son of Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame of CIA/Robert Novak fame.

Santa Fe Opera’s 2009 season will offer Verdi’s La Traviata, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, Gluck’s Alceste and the world premiere of Paul Moravec’s The Letter. Tickets are $26-$170. http://www.santafeopera.org/; 800-280-4654.

Violence without, family secrets within---and endless debate about both

2008-08-10T17:12:00.008-04:00

SANTA FE: The milieu of Kaija Saariaho’s Adriana Mater is at once distant and uncomfortably familiar: a bleak, nocturnal landscape inhabited by rifle-carrying terrorists and hooded hostages, marked by patrols and rumors of war, where fear and uncertainty rule, and a greater danger exists from allies than from the unseen enemy.

Saariaho's second opera, unveiled at the Opera National de Paris in 2006, is having its American premiere this summer at Santa Fe Opera, where the Finnish composer's critically acclaimed L'Amour de loin was heard in 2002.

Adriana Mater takes place in a contemporary setting that suggests the Balkans or---in the bunker-like dwelling---the Middle East. With the outbreak of war imminent, Adriana is accosted by a drunken man, Tsargo, who reminds her that they once danced together a year ago. Following a mystical dream sequence, the loutish Tsargo returns as a soldier and, when Adriana harshly rebuffs him, he breaks down her door and rapes her.

Seventeen years later, Adriana's son, Yonas, learns the truth about his conception, and, enraged at his mother for not disclosing the rape, vows to murder his father in revenge. Yonas seeks and finds Tsargo and at the moment he is going to shoot him, discovers the criminal is blind, and cannot pull the trigger. Yonas asks Adriana to forgive his weakness. She replies that she was fearful that Yonas would grow up to be evil like his father but now knows that he is from her blood and not a monster, "We are not avenged " she tells Yonus at the curtain. “We are saved.”

Hardly a light-hearted romp, this. Saariaho and librettist Amin Maalouf, a Lebanese journalist-turned-novelist, deserve credit for tackling such a downbeat personal tale with its ripped-from-the-headlines immediacy of today's dangerous world.

Santa Fe Opera’s production of Adriana Mater, seen Friday evening, has much going for it: a first-rate cast and conductor, otherworldly scenic design by George Tsypin and intelligent, surprisingly unobtrusive direction by Peter Sellars. Yet even with Saariaho’s compelling music, Adriana Mater is a static, unsuccessful work, the attempt to merge the real and dreamlike resulting in a talky, often pretentious opera, with an interminable climactic scene between Adriana and Yonas that seemed longer than Parsifal.

The good news is the music. Saariaho is one of the most original and distinctive composers working today and her restless, shimmering constantly morphing score sounds like no one else’s The vocal lines are lyrical yet often fragmented, part of an undulating musical tapestry. Saariaho's usual elements are there---the luminous scoring, instrumental slides, crystalline high percussion--- but with a new toughness and visceral power, as with the violent chords for orchestra and chorus that accompany the offstage rape of Adriana. This is intensely difficult, highly detailed music of wide dynamic contrasts yet was put across with both refinement and tremendous power by conductor Ernest Martinez Izquierdo and the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra.

The main problem with Adriana Mater is that, apart from the confrontation between Yonas and Tsargo----for two and one-half hours there is endless conversation between the four characters and little stage action to hold one’s interest even with Tsypin's beautiful, glowing geometric set. Maalouf’s French libretto relies on repetitive talk that veers between the baldly didactic and stilted, would-be-poetic imagery (“I unveil my skin that I gather in an ancient garden” or “You are the death of death.”) I realize bad writing always sounds better in French, but still . . .

As Adriana, Monica Groop delivers a tour-de-force performance, with equally strong singing by Joseph Kaiser as Yonas, Matthew Best as Tsargo and Pie Freund as Adriana’s sister, Refka. Apart from the corny, patented gesture of all four characters raising their hands in supplication, Sellars’ direction was understated and effective.

Even with Maalouf’s self-conscious libretto and the oratorio-like stiffness, Saariaho’s majestic score makes Adriana Mater worth salvaging in a more concise, revised form. Eliminate the character of Refka, cut 45 minutes to an hour of the metaphysical debate society, and a short two acts or even 90-minute one-act Adriana would more effectively sound its important themes without the audience squirming in their seats. Saariaho’s music deserves better.

The final performance of Adriana Mater is August 12. Tickets are $25-$180. www.santafeopera.org.

[Pictured Monica Groop as Adriana in Adriana Mater. Photo by Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera.]

Bizarro Handel plot mended by stylish staging, glorious singing

2008-08-09T11:33:00.008-04:00

SANTA FE: Even by the bewildering standard of Handel's opera narratives, the plot of Radamisto is, well, Baroque.

Tiridate, king of Armenia, is in love with Zenobia, the wife of Radamisto, his brother-in-law and enemy, and son of Farsamane, king of Thrace, whom Tiridate holds captive. Meanwhile Tiridate's faithful wife Polissena is in agony over her husband's harsh cruelty and inconstancy, and being courted by his general Tigrane who is secretly rebellious about Tiridate's waging of war to achieve his adulterous ends.

Never mind. Preposterous as the storyline is, Radamisto offers 150 minutes of quite wonderful music, with several arias as indelible as those found in some of Handel’s better known stage works.

Radamisto helped to cement Handel's reputation as an opera composer and was an instant success at its 1720 premiere. He later substantially revised the opera for a revival the following year and this tighter version is largely the text used for this Santa Fe Opera production.

Even with the bizarro plot, stilted action, and implausible motivations, with an exceptional cast led by the reigning countertenor of our day, David Daniels, the stylish, visually striking staging---a coproduction with English National Opera---serves as an object lesson in how to present a seemingly intractable Handel opera.

David Alden’s outré conceptual conceits can undermine the works he directs as much as enhance them. But his approach to Baroque opera, particularly, provides a model of how to make operas like Radamisto work for modern audiences.

Designer Gideon Davey served up a mix of attractive Middle European/Mediterranean costumes and an elegant scenic Minimalism, with curved panel walls, particularly the final tableau with a massive dragon head and tail. Alden treated the music and libretto with complete fidelity---no cheap colloquial surtitles here---while investing the acting with a hip, quirky wry postmodern irony. Polissena and Zenobia make entrances by being unrolled from carpets, Polissena’s repeated suicide threats are parodied, and while outwardly faithful to the plot, there are enough sly winks that we really shouldn’t be taking this very seriously.

But primarily the production serves as a star vehicle for David Daniels. What can one say about this singer that hasn’t been said? The voice has remarkable tonal beauty and agility, and his way of shading and floating a phrase, as with his tender Caro sposa, and a sensitively spacious Qual nave smarrita is the stuff of great artistry, and Daniels' flashy coloratura arias are dispatched with little apparent effort.

Even more than with his charming Figaro, Luca Pisaroni commanded the stage as Tiridate. With his imposing presence, and twitchy, angular movements, the Italian bass-baritone clearly relished Tiridate’s silent-movie villainy, playing the unhinged character with just enough exaggeration while avoiding complete parody. For such a huge voice, Pisaroni wielded it with the greates finesse, getting around the fast tempos and technical hurdles with remarkable agility and even tone.

As well as displaying great abs, Deborah Domanski showed a burnished flexible mezzo as Zenobia, handling the brilliant passages as well as the legato with equal panache. As Tigrane Heidi Stober overacame her fat-suit Grocuho Marx getup, singing with poise and refinement in her two arias.

The character of Polissena was treated more satirically than was probably wise or necessary. While Laura Claycomb sang with precision and brilliance early on, the knockabout stage action with Pisaroni seemed to take its toll, for she sounded distinctly winded by the time she got to Barbaro, partiro. As Farsamane, Kevin Murphy’s vocal opportunities were few, but the young bass-baritone showed an admirable voice and got into the wacky spirit of the proceedings.

Harry Bicket, the go-to maestro for several leading opera houses, provided first rate musical direction adhering to Baroque period manners while providng expressive space for his singers. The orchestra responded with superbly energized playing with some spectacular trumpet work in the majestic passages.

Radamisto will be performed August 15 and 20. Tickets are $25-$180. http://www.santafeopera.org/.

[Pictured: David Daniels as Radamisto, kneeling, and Luca Pisaroni as Tiridate. Photo by Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera.]

Good vs. evil on the high seas, set to music by Britten

2008-08-07T04:30:00.007-04:00

SANTA FE. While Peter Grimes was an instant success, Benjamin Britten’s second-most-performed opera, Billy Budd, took a while to secure its place in the repertoire. Even a forward-looking company like Santa Fe Opera waited decades for a first production, though the powerful, compelling staging presented Wednesday evening made up for its belated festival debut.

It’s easy to see the appeal of Herman Melville’s short novel for Britten, since the tale of the innocent young sailor Billy Budd is replete with the English composer’s favored themes: loss of innocence, the conflict between duty and what is just, the thin line between male camaraderie and intimacy, and the destruction of goodness by calculating evil.

Robert Innes Hopkins’ set for the HMS Indomitable is a narrow ship’s bow---claustrophobic for the cramped morality within--- and a steeply raked deck that rises to reveal the sailors’ quarters underneath. Rick Fisher provides some astonishing lighting effects with the long shadows of Captain Vere and his lieutenants as they judge Billy’s fate, and in the final scene, where high above the elderly Vere is the silhouette of the hanging Billy forever haunting him.

Teddy Tahu Rhodes has the youthful demeanor and slender good looks for the “beauty” Billy, the pure-hearted able seaman who charms the crew and whose nervous stutter when unjustly accused of mutiny leads to his tragedy. The New Zealand baritone possesses an easy stage presence and the athleticism for the role, displayed in his rapid scamper up the high rigging.

In this role debut, Rhodes is an admirable Billy yet his performance seems to be finding its sea legs. Rhodes’ warm, focused baritone was best in the forthright moments: his buoyant cheer in Act 1, the lively sea shanty, and the confrontation with the villainous Claggart, where he managed to make Billy’s stammer credible yet still musical.

What was lacking were the epic dimensions and inevitable sense of Billy’s tragedy. The final scene was sensitively sung, yet that affecting soliloquy should break your heart; instead, you find yourself admiring the dark timbre of Rhodes’ voice rather than being moved by Billy’s impending execution. But it’s a worthy first outing of a difficult role for which Rhodes is clearly well suited and into which he will no doubt grow with future performances.

As the villainous Claggart, Peter Rose provides ample contrast to Rhodes’ Billy. Rose’s portly, tightly buttoned master-at-arms is a walking mountain of repression, as rotund and unprepossessing as Rhodes’ Billy is lean and hearty. Rose’s black bass-baritone almost seemed an aural manifestation of Claggart’s evil, and with finely calibrated singing, Rose starkly conveyed the master-at-arms’ self-loathing, jealousy and longing for Billy, and his determination to destroy him.

William Burden was an unusually youthful Captain Vere, but his vibrant tenor and dramatic insight contributed much to the success of the production. Burden’s “starry Vere’ is less reserved than most but still the dignified officer whose judgment of Billy impacts his life. Burden made Vere’s conflict emotionally wrenching as the authority figure who is aware of Billy’s innocence but unable to go against his code of duty.

It’s not often that people walk out of this opera buzzing about the role of the Novice, but Keith Jameson’s extraordinary performance as the weak, abused sailor was a high point of the evening. With his clear, penetrating tenor and nervous, fearful characterization of the flogged victim, Jameson’s performance was beautifully sung and dramatically riveting (also nicely enhanced by Britten’s imaginative scoring for mournful saxophone).

The rest of the large all-male cast was vocally strong and well-suited to their roles, particularly Thomas Hammons’ sympathetic old tar Dansker, Timothy Nolen as Flint, Richard Stilwell as Redburn, John Stephens as Ratcliffe, and John Duykers as the unwilling Red Whiskers.

Paul Curran’s direction was fluid and unobtrusive with the shipboard bustle and ensemble scenes exciting, aided by rousing choral work elicited by Susanne Sheston. There were two directorial miscalculations: making the sexual undertones into a jarring overtone with Billy at one point attempting to kiss Dansker seemed like gilding the homoerotic lily. And in the sea shanty, having the tough sailors morph into a rhythmic line of dancing chorus boys provoked unintentional Forbidden Broadway-like mirth.

After some rough-hewn Mozart the previous evening, the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra returned to their standard of lean, polished brilliance. Chief conductor-designate Edo de Waart led a concentrated, atmospheric account of Britten’s subtle, remarkable music that allowed all the briny color and scoring felicities to register naturally without exaggeration.

Billy Budd has two more performances, August 14 and 21. Tickets are $25-$180. 505-986-5900, 800-280-4654; www.santafeopera.org.

[Pictured: Peter Rose as Claggart and Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Billy Budd. Photo by Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera.]

Memorable Mozart singing let down by subpar conducting

2008-08-06T17:41:00.014-04:00

SANTA FE. Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro is operatic titanium, an indestructible three hours of some of the finest music every put to paper, spiced by Lorenzo da Ponte’s witty, trenchant libretto on love, sex and the eternal folly of the human heart.

There were moments Tuesday night when the quality of singing and depth of characterization had one thinking this production was going to be the Figaro of a lifetime. And while the end result proved an enjoyable performance, the musical direction was not on the same level, with scrappy playing and a brusque, superficial view of the score that often undermined the artistry on stage.

Santa Fe Opera’s production of Mozart’s comedy has a considerable amount going for it, namely a young group of principals blessed with good looks as well as fine voices. Designer Paul Brown supplies enough individual touches---most notably the bed of flowers that acts as visual leitmotiv—to enliven a traditional staging.

The good news is that the production showcases a trio of extraordinary young singers who appear born to play these roles. Isabel Leonard in particular virtually redefines the part of Cherubino for the 21st century. Tall with an apt androgynous beauty, the New York mezzo was genuinely funny in the comedy and wholly believable as a gangling adolescent page. Her refined vocalism was remarkable, with Voi che sapete so beautifully shaded it seemed entirely plausible that the countess could be momentarily smitten. Most strikingly, Leonard conveyed the melancholy at the heart of Cherubino’s amorous instincts subtly without exaggeration.

Mariusz Kwiecien is the most familiar name in the cast and, his tightly coiled intensity made him a Count to be reckoned with. The Polish baritone commanded the stage, his dark incisive tone and saturnine persona ideal for the suspicious hypocritical Count. Kwiecien’s Act 3 aria was delivered with flexibility and conviction, and his elegant presence had a lurking danger and explosive quality that made the threat of violence seem very real.

The towering, handsome Luca Pisaroni proved an ideal Figaro, the Italian bass-baritone’s weighty instrument, ease of production and idiomatic legato fitting the role of the wily servant like a well-tailored glove.

If not quite as striking as their costars, Elizabeth Watts made a spunky Susanna, her bright soprano contributing to a lovely Deh vieni non tardar. As the Countess, Susanna Phillips lacks regal bearing, though her attractive voice made for a sensitively sung Dove sono. The comic comprimario parts were well taken, though Gwynne Howell’s once-imposing bass is now barely up to the brief patter role of Bartolo.

The principal drag on the performance---which took the standard Act 4 cuts---was the metrical conducting and lack of detail and flexibility from conductor Robert Tweten in the pit. Taking over for one evening from Kenneth Montgomery, Tweten’s baton consistently sacrificed refinement and polish, evident in ill-blended textures, sour wind tuning, loopy horns and moments of miscoordination with the singers.

Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro runs through August 22. Tickets are $25-$180. 505-986-5900; 800-280-4654. http://www.santafeopera.org/

[Pictured: Isabel Leonard as Cherubino and Luca Pisaroni as Figaro. Photo by Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera.]

A fat, drunken English knight in the New Mexico desert

2008-08-05T18:19:00.019-04:00

SANTA FE. You drive the 58 dusty miles from Albuquerque to Santa Fe across a barren desert landscape ringed by mountains and spotted with sagebrush and Indian casinos. From Santa Fe, you head several miles northwest, exit the main highway and climb a narrow, winding two-lane road. Soon you reach your destination, the unlikeliest of locales for the country’s leading summer opera festival, where an open-air theatre affords spectacular views of the desert sunset while experiencing Mozart and Verdi.

Now in its 52nd season, Santa Fe Opera has managed to sustain artistic and commercial success for half a century, helmed by visionary leaders like John Crosby and Richard Gaddes. The company has earned a reputation for smart, informed casting of young singers and veterans, and a similarly well-judged mix of standard repertoire spiced by the contemporary. With Charles MacKay of the Opera Theatre of St. Louis coming aboard as new general director this fall and Edo de Waart recently named to the post of chief conductor starting in 2009, even in these perilous times for the arts, the festival’s long-term health seems assured.

Santa Fe Opera’s production of Verdi’s Falstaff opened July 29 to grumbles from local mavens, but Monday night’s repeat provided little room to cavil, with a spirited, witty and superbly sung performance.

Did any octogenarian ever bid farewell to his art with a more youthful and effervescent work than Verdi did with Falstaff? The composer’s commedia lirica of the misadventures of Shakespeare’s aged, corpulent, drink- and wench-loving Sir John is, as Toscanini put it, “quicksilver from beginning to end,” a light-footed scherzo as engaging and affectionate as Verdi’s dramas are bleak and unforgiving.

In a graceful traditional staging, scenic designer Allen Moyer provides a ramshackle clapboard Garter Inn with a jousting lance sticking jauntily out of the wall, dark-paneled domesticity for Ford’s house, and the usual arboreal moonlit milieu for Windsor Forest.

The title role is being shared by Laurent Naouri and Anthony Michaels-Moore who was on stage Monday night. The English baritone doesn’t possess the sonorous ballast of a true bass, reflecting the trend toward casting lighter voices in the role, with more well-rounded acting instincts for the well-rounded protagonist.

Michaels-Moore made a fine comic figure, vital and lovable, whether commiserating with his young page (a charming Trevor Wilson) or doing a little dance in anticipation of his liaison with Alice. Others have found more pathos in Act 3 after the rather cruel pranks played on him, but Michaels-Moore conveyed a strongly sung Falstaff with a lyrical touch, putting across the bluster yet avoiding buffoonery.

Similarly, as his nemesis Ford, Franco Pomponi negotiated the line between comedy and vocalism with an imposing, firmly focused baritone. The Windsor ladies were a spunky and for once, consistently sung band of conspirators, with Nancy Maultsby’s Mistress Quickly, Kelley O’Connor’s Meg Page and, especially, Claire Rutter’s Alice Ford.

Laura Giordano nearly stole the evening as Nannetta. With the grace of a ballet dancer, the Italian soprano personified the vivacious young girl in love, her silvery voice resplendent in Sul fil d'un soffio etesio. Her Fenton, tenor Norman Reinhardt, was an aptly charismatic partner.

Wilbur Pauley and Keith Jameson as Pistol and Bardolph proved suitably scruffy as Falstaff’s boisterous no-account companions. Director Kevin Newbury avoided longeurs and kept the complex stage action on track. Conductor Paolo Arrivabeni paced the score idiomatically, with fine clarity in the fugal choruses, capturing the elegance and mercurial momentum, as well as the elfin delicacy of the fairy music.

Falstaff runs through August 23. Tickets are $25-$180. 505-986-5900, 800-280-4654; www.santafeopera.org.

[Pictured: Claire Rutter as Alice Ford and Anthony Michaels-Moore as Falstaff. Photo by Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera.]

The Concert Association column you did not read in the Miami Herald

2008-08-03T09:46:00.003-04:00

A bit of background: In June Dan Chang reported in the Miami Herald that the Concert Association of Florida has made an offer to the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts proposing that the center take over the financially troubled presenting organization.

Feeling strongly that an essential part of a newspaper critic’s role is to provide analysis and spark debate on crucial developments on one’s beat, I wrote a column examining the issues raised by the offer. To make a long story short, the Herald declined to publish the column. Because there has been no change in the situation and I feel the issues are still germane and of great significance to the local music scene, I am posting that column today.

Last week the Miami Herald's Dan Chang reported that the Concert Association of Florida had made an overture to the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts to, in essence, take over the financially troubled organization.

The proposal from Concert Association board chairman Robert Hudson requests that the Arsht Center assume all responsibilities for accounting, marketing, ticketing, and production operations. It also calls for the Arsht Center to co-produce a number of events in which the center would assume all financial risk, while most of the revenues would flow to the Concert Association. Further, Hudson requests that the Arsht Center grant naming rights and other advantages to the Concert Association without the center sharing in the financial benefit.

Finally, three "key employees"---CEO Albert Milano, artistic director Rise Kern and development director Marcia Rabinowitz would keep their jobs while the rest of the staff would lose theirs.

Lawrence Wilker, interim chief executive of the Arsht Center, expressed sympathy for the Concert Association's plight and said he would be meeting with them soon to see if there is some way the center can help. But a more realistic response to Hudson's proposal would be, "What in the world are you guys smoking?"

It makes eminent sense for the Arsht Center to assume control of the floundering Concert Association. Before the downtown arts center existed, Miami needed a highly motivated dynamo like [founder and long-time president] Judy Drucker to present classical artists via a stand-alone entity. With the Concert Association's Miami events presented at the Arsht Center's Knight Concert Hall there's no longer any practical or economic reason to have a middleman.

But it makes absolutely zero sense for Wilker to accept Hudson's heavily slanted terms---not only for the obvious, woefully unbalanced costs/benefits breakdown ---but for institutionalizing a leadership whose record is incomplete at best, and on the artistic front, little short of disastrous.

No one is exaggerating the organization's problems with a lingering deficit variously estimated at from $2.4 to $3 million, an aging, shrinking subscriber base, and management at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts that seems disdainful of providing available dates to book classical events in Fort Lauderdale. Add the plunging economy and saving the Concert Association is an undeniably daunting task.

Hudson claims that the Concert Association has reduced its perennial long-term debt by $500,000 and that increased ticket sales and more than $3 million in contributions have helped the organization to end the 2007-2008 season in the black by $210,000. Yet even if the financial picture is as rosy as described, Milano's record on artistic matters is considerably less inspiring.

Next season looks decent on paper, but the majority of the major classical events---the New York Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra, and Kirov Orchestra---were booked by Drucker before her exit last summer. The initiatives and additional programming served up by Milano and Kern have shown a remarkable lack of knowledge of basic classical presentation as well as their audience's preferences---most prominently in the disastrous Florida Symphony project announced with great fanfare in January and then quickly dropped three months later. Anyone could anticipate that Broward Center subscribers would resent paying international-orchestra prices to hear a local freelance ensemble.

Miami is not lacking in presenters of pops, jazz and Latin music, not least the Arsht Center itself, and Milano's moves have shown a blithe indifference to the fact that classical programming has been the Concert Association's raison d'etre for forty years. By changing its orientation to include mixed programs of classical and pops, world music and jazz, the Concert Association isn't "broadening" its profile but diluting it. You don't build a larger audience for classical music by doing less classical music.

For four decades, under Drucker, the Concert Association of Florida never wavered in its mission of presenting world-class orchestras and classical artists (as well as dance). Concert Association subscribers---the foundation of the organization's audiences ---have said loud and clear that they don't want "crossover," local freelance orchestras, or watered-down pops concerts, as evidenced by the numbers of people either not renewing in Broward or renewing only for the five classical events.

With its precarious financial situation, shrinking subscriber base and management that seems anxious to let someone else take over all responsibilities---while they keep their salaries----it's entirely possible that the 2008-2009 season will be the final one for the Concert Association of Florida as an independent presenter of events. And it will most likely be the last season for the organization's series in Fort Lauderdale, where the Broward Center has shown indifference to providing dates for classical events for many years.

An Arsht Center takeover of the Concert Association could serve to shore up the organization financially as well as artistically. Potential conflicts with other resident groups and duplicative programming could be dealt with more easily and overall coordination more efficiently handled.

But it is crucial that the Arsht Center demonstrate a serious, lasting commitment to presenting quality classical repertoire unlike its sister venue in Fort Lauderdale. In addition to more innovative marketing that will stem the dwindling subscribe base, it's essential that a programming director with a wide and deep knowledge of classical repertoire and practical experience be hired, preferably with an arts center background.

A reconstituted Arsht Center/Concert Association partnership could continue the organization's historical tradition of bringing world-class orchestras and solo artists and even expanding it, possibly by inviting touring opera companies like the Kirov for multi-week residencies.

So, Larry Wilker's reply to Hudson should be, "Thank you very much for your proposal. We appreciate your difficulties and would very much like to help. But come back with a counteroffer more rooted in reality---one that gives us some financial benefits as well as risks, and the ability to choose our own personnel who will guarantee not just the financial security but the artistic integrity of the Concert Association of Florida. Then we'll talk."

Chamber Festival closing on several high notes

2008-08-02T12:31:00.007-04:00

By Alan Becker

The Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival is concluding its four-week series on a high note, as demonstrated by the terrific concert Friday night at the Helen K. Persson Recital Hall.

Debussy’s Premiere Rhapsody for clarinet and piano was originally written as a competition piece for the Paris Conservatoire, and subsequently orchestrated by the composer. Although the idiomatic writing was sensitively played by pianist Lisa Leonard, knowledge of the rich tapestry of orchestral colors tends to eclipse the composer’s first thoughts. It definitely held no terrors for clarinetist Michael Forte. His liquid tone melted beautifully into all the subtle crevices of the music in a performance that was one of the festival’s highlights.

Schubert’s Introduction and Variations on the song “Trockne Blumen” for flute and piano is based on one of the theme’s from his Die schone Mullerin cycle. Despite the maudlin title that translates as “faded flowers,” it is an upbeat set of extended variations that rarely strays from the melody. There is a substantial degree of virtuosity required of both players and the music received it in this performance. Once beyond the slow introduction, Karen Dixon’s flute playing moved from a slow, pulsating vibrato to find its way through one of Schubert’s most joyful late creations. Lisa Leonard continues to impress, as she has done throughout this series, by capturing just the right style, touch, and sound for everything she plays.

Jean-Paul Holstein’s Photogenies for bassoon and harp is a Frenchman’s tribute to the English photographer David Hamilton. Thankfully its five movements, sporting such titles as Abandon, Evasion, Invasion, are mercifully short. While the music might be described as abstract and conservative-contemporary, it’s one of those works that is probably more fun to perform than to listen to. The two instruments rarely play together since the composer treats them as a dialogue rather than a duo. Michael Ellert made the most of its bassoon intricacies, and Kay Kemper’s harp made some pleasant sounds. Holstein’s obscurity will not be reversed by this piece.

The String Quintet No. 2 by Brahms bears a late opus number, and was originally planned to be the composer’s swan song. Fortunately this was not to be so, and he went on to produce some of his greatest autumnal works. The music, particularly in the first two movements, is of great melodic beauty.

The ensemble’s playing was firmly thrust forward from the start, emphasizing the rich scoring in ravishing sonorities with the cello lending its deep tones without reticence. The slow movement gives the lion’s share of the work to the violas, the composer’s favorite instrument, and was played with just the burnished quality the music calls for. The Allegretto third movement serves as a somewhat pensive intermezzo before the Hungarian flavored finale. The quintet is among the least often heard of Brahms’s chamber music, and hearing it so well performed gave cause to anticipate the 18th installment of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival.

The program will be repeated 8 p.m. Saturday at Palm Beach Community College’s Eissey Campus Theatre, 3160 PGA Blvd., Palm Beach Gardens; and 2 p.m., Sunday at the Crest Theatre, 51 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach. Tickets are $21. Go to http://www.pbcmf.org/ or call 800-330-6874.

Alan Becker has reviewed concerts for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Miami Herald. He has also written feature articles and CD reviews for the American Record Guide, and holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and Syracuse University, with additional graduate studies at the University of Miami.

Cellist strikes a fire in Coral Gables

2008-08-01T17:56:00.002-04:00

Gaps on the local classical music scene are so numerous, that one sometimes isn’t even aware of a specific absence until the void is filled. In eight years in South Florida, I can’t recall ever hearing a solo recital by a visiting cellist.

Kudos then to Mark Hart, artistic director of the Community Arts Program at Coral Gables Congregational Church, for breaking the violin and piano hegemony with the appearance of Mark Kosower Thursday evening. The extraordinary recital by the American cellist and pianist Jen-Won Oh served up one of the most outstanding concerts of the year, making the programming even more laudable.

Kosower, 31, earned several competition prizes in his youth and currently divides his time between solo appearances and weeks as co-principal cellist of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in Germany. With his wife and recital partner Oh, Kosower presented a generous, uncommonly venturesome program that serves as a model of what a recital program should be.

His mild-mannered persona and relaxed ease on stage belie a fiery musical personality. The cellist from Eau Claire, Wisconsin possesses a stellar technique and his laser-like articulation and whirlwind bravura were rivetin in showpieces by David Popper.

But even more than the fireworks, what most impressed was Kosower’s intelligence, elegance, beauty of tone, and a keenly focused musicianship that was put entirely at the service of the music. With Oh an equally strong musical personality, the performances had a unified communicative thrust and impassioned level of engagement.

Bach’s Viola da Gamba Sonata in G minor, BWV 1029 made an apt calling card for the duo, in a stylishly turned reading, with vigorous counterpoint and buoyant rhythms. In the Adagio, Kosower took a very spacious approach but sustained it well, the burnished tone and rich but calibrated vibrato conveying the music’s stoic strength

It took seven years for Francis Poulenc to complete his Cello Sonata for Pierre Fournier, unusual for a composer who rarely had difficulty getting things done. The opening Allegro’s mercurial mix of light hearted caprice and passing shadows is wholly characteristic, and Kosower and Oh had full measure of this music. In the somber melancholy of the ensuing Cavatine, Kosower and Oh played with the greatest delicacy, marking the contrast with their vivacious teamwork in the ensuing boulevardier joie de vivre of the final two movements.

For a composer as popular as Mendelssohn. his two cello sonatas are comparatively little known (at least to non-cellists). The Cello Sonata No. 2 is a delightful work, which received first-class advocacy. Equally demanding for both players, the outer movements have the youthful exuberance and headlong excitement of Mendelssohn’s piano concertos and the duo’s hair-trigger virtuosity was well suited to this vivacious music.

Their recent Naxos CDs of Ginastera and Hungarian music were represented with shorter works. As indicated by its title, Ginastera’s Pampeana No. 2 was inspired by the rolling plains of the Argentine Pampas in music that mixes edgy driving momentum, with a sense of solitude amid florid solo passages. Kosower provided such sterling advocacy one wondered why Ginastera’s music is so rarely performed.

The Hungarian disc was represented byPopper and Zoltan Kodaly’s introspective Adagio, the latter given a warmly eloquent rendering enhanced by the glorious low tones of Kosower’s instrument.

A celebrated cello virtuoso and composer of the late 19th century, Popper wrote several brilliant showpieces for his instrument including the Hungarian Rhapsody. Kosower fairly attacked the music with blinding speed and lightning articulation in a thrilling performance that sailing effortlessly through the landmine of complexities.

For an encore, Kosower and Oh offered another Popper dazzler, Spinning Song, the rollicking pyrotechnical flash rounding off a terrific evening of music.

Cellist's offbeat tastes are hitting the mark

2008-07-28T16:55:00.020-04:00

When Mark Kosower takes the stage, or sanctuary, Thursday night at Coral Gables Congregational Church, his recital will offer fare by familiar names like Bach, Mendelssohn, and Poulenc.

But it is his taste for the repertorial path less traveled that is garnering increasing renown for the 31-year-old cellist from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Kosower and pianist Jee-Won Oh will also perform rarely heard music by Alberto Ginastera, Zoltan Kodaly and David Popper, composers represented on their two recent Naxos recordings: the complete cello works of Ginastera and a bracing disc of Hungarian music for cello and piano.

Though Kosower is not Hungarian by heritage, like many a young cello student he imbibed the tutelary works of Popper, the 19th-century composer-virtuoso. "Early on, of course, I learned the forty Popper cello etudes like everybody does," says Kosower with a laugh. But his fascination with Hungarian music was sparked by his studies at Indiana University in Bloomington with Janos Starker. The celebrated Hungarian cellist proved a catalyst for Kosower’s interest in music of the region, as well as communicating to his younger colleague an idiomatic approach to the complex, sharply rhythmic music with its flattened harmonics and pungent folk accents.

"What's important when you play any music is to understand the musical stresses that go along with the language that is the mother tongue of the composer," says Kosower. “With Hungarian music you have to have the strong yet flexible downbeat that trademarks all Hungarian music. You also have very long lines and high arching phrases, yet at the same time a very flexible tempi that accompanies this music."

Kosower’s well-filled disc includes a wealth of stylistically varied material. Erno Dohnanyi’s Cello Sonata in B flat minor is the most substantial work, but there’s also Miklos Rozsa’s late solo showpiece, Toccata capricciosa, written for Piatigorsky; Popper’s Mazurka and Serenade; and transcriptions of Bartok’s First Violin Rhapsody and Liszt’s song Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth.

The disc also includes Zoltan Kodaly’s lovely Adagio, a Kosower favorite, originally written for violin. "This is one of Kodaly’s early works that has a distinctly Hungarian flavor,” says the cellist. “But at the same time it also shows the strong influence of Brahms, which you wouldn't necessarily expect.”

Kosower has an additional reason for his fondness for Hungarian repertoire---it was at Bloomington that he met his wife and piano partner Oh, who was studying with Gyorgy Sebok, Starker's recital partner. "My wife and I feel very close to this music because of our training,” says Kosower. “We dedicated the disc to both of them because we feel they both had such an impact on our lives."

From Budapest to Buenos Aires

Recorded simultaneously with the Hungarian CD, was the complete cello music of Alberto Ginastera.

The brilliantly colored Variaciones concertantes makes an occasional concert appearance when an orchestra feels the need to add Latin color to standard classical programs. But 25 years after his death, much of Ginastera’s music remain in the shadows, his chamber and instrumental works in particular. "Ginastera is an underrepresented composer," says Kosower. “He's an interesting case: he's famous and everyone knows his name, yet a lot of his music isn’t performed very often."

Though the musical styles are as different as their national homelands, there are similarities between the Argentine Ginastera and the Hungarian Bartok. Both composers delved deeply into their nation’s folk music, transmuting its naïve essence into a modern esthetic while adding an astringent modernist edge.

Ginastera’s cello output is not vast, consisting of just three original works: the late, enigmatic Cello Sonata, the Pampeana No. 2, and the virtuosic, folk-inspired Punena No. 2 for solo cello. Kosower's artful cello and piano arrangement of Ginastera's Cinco canciones populares argentinas fills out the CD.

The Pampeana No. 2, which he will perform in Coral Gables, is one of three in that series, along with No. 1 for violin and No. 3 for orchestra. As indicated by the title, all were inspired by the Pampas, the rolling green plains south and west of Buenos Aires, where Ginastera loved to take long walks.

"There's a haunting solitude at times and also in the faster sections he conjures up images of the gauchos galloping on horseback through the Pampas,” says Kosower. “It's striking and there's a lot of fire---it’s kind of Argentine cowboy music.”

By contrast Ginastera's Cello Sonata (1979) shows the composer moving in a more experimental direction. "Tonally, the late works become more advanced," says Kosower. "He started incorporating a lot of avant-garde techniques and cluster writing within the harmony. But at the same time the music is very straightforward because the rhythmic drive and excitement propel it, so it's always appealing to an audience."

Between Two Worlds

As with many musicians, Kosower's career is split between two professional pursuits. He spends 22 weeks a year as “solo cellist”---the European equivalent of section co-principal----of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in Germany. The rest of the time he maintains an active schedule of touring, solo appearances and, now, recording. "The two types of playing really complement one another and serve a different function,” he says. “I think taking the stage with an orchestra has added so much to my solo playing."

Kosower was raised in Eau Claire, where his first cello teacher was his father, a fixture at the University of Wisconsin for 37 years. The young musician attended UW before moving on to Bloomington and, eventually, Juilliard where he studied with Joel Krosnick.

Married for seven years, Kosower finds it amusing how often cello-playing colleagues wind up marrying pianists, like himself and Oh, the Emerson String Quartet’s David Finckel and Wu Han, and others. "Of course, cellists always need a pianist," says Kosower with a laugh.

Also, perhaps, says Kosower, it could just be that the personalities of cellists and pianists are more complementary than that of other instrumentalists.

“There's always the joke that cellists are silently competitive, violinists are outwardly competitive, and pianists just don't talk to each other at all!”

Mark Kosower and Jee-Won Oh will perform Bach's Sonata in G minor, Mendelssohn's Cello Sonata No. 2, Poulenc's Cello Sonata, Ginastera's Pampeana No. 2, Kodaly's Adagio, and Popper's Hungarian Rhapsody. Concert time is 8 p.m. Thursday at Coral Gables Congregational Church, 3010 De Soto Blvd. Tickets are $25 and $35 in advance, $30 and $40 at the door. Kosower will also present a cello master class at 10 a.m. Friday. Admission is $10. Call 305-448-7421 (ext.33) or go online to http://www.communityartsprogram.org/.

[Photo of Mark Kosower by Hyun Kang.]

Miami Lyric's "Butterfly" takes a late flight

2008-07-27T01:04:00.011-04:00

By now Miami Lyric Opera regulars know what to expect. As with an eccentric but loveable, well-intentioned relative, you overlook the faults to focus on the positives. In the case of Raffaele Cardone’s fledgling company, aficionados shrug off the ill-fitting costumes, undernourished orchestra and chintzy sets for a fleeting taste of the real thing: exciting and idiomatic Italianate singing.

Puccini's Madama Butterfly is an ambitious work for Cardone's financially challenged ensemble to tackle. But even with the best of intentions and some inspired moments Saturday night at the Colony Theater in Miami Beach, this Butterfly was not one of the company’s conspicuous successes, undone by a soprano ill-equipped to cope with the title role’s demands.

Bao-Guo Wang possesses an admirable technique and clear voice but her lightweight instrument is simply too small for the part, even in an intimate venue like the Colony. The Mongolian soprano’s shallow tone and lack of body were fatally underpowered in the big dramatic moments; her cool Un bel di dispatched with little feeling, Wang’s voice simply vanishing at the climax. She brought belated fire and desperation to the tragic final scene, which proved too little, too late. Dramatically too, Wang failed to convey the innocent character of Cio Cio-San, with a lack of animated facial expression and too often relying on stock stage gestures and outstretched arms. Also, to put it bluntly, the veteran soprano is a bit too mature to be credible as a teenage geisha.

Conversely, Pinkerton is a fine, suitable role for Jorge Antonio Pita. Despite being handicapped by a uniform two sizes too large, the company’s house tenor made an aptly swaggering cad, as the American naval officer who casually breaks the young Japanese girl’s heart. Pita provided the evening’s vocal high points, ardent in the love duet and serving up a terrific, emotionally intense Addio, fiorito asil.

Some pitch issues apart, Emilia Acon made a vitally sung and empathetic Suzuki, establishing a well rounded character. Veteran Cuban baritone Hugo Marcos was a worthy Sharpless, the huge-voiced Diego Baner, a more intimidating Bonze than usual. Eduardo Valdes showed an attractive tenor as the unctuous Goro, and as Butterfly’s son Trouble, Kaylee Riverta, Pita’s grandchild, was a silent charmer.

Pablo Hernandez’s chorus sang with greater ensemble cohesion and Cardone provided graceful traditional direction. Conductor Jeff Eckstein had the measure of the score but the rather scrappy playing and intonation marked a step backward after a more polished outing from the orchestra in May’s Lucia di Lammermoor. And even in this venue, the tiny string section had a clearly deleterious effect, with Puccini’s sumptuous lyricism sounding decidedly threadbare.

Daniella Carvalho will sing the role of Butterfly August 2 with Lissette Jiminez as Suzuki. Performance time is 8 p.m. at the Colony Theater, 1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach. Tickets are $30. Go to www.miamilyricopera.org, call 305-674-1040, or purchase tickets at the box office.

"Boheme" times two

2008-07-26T14:35:00.022-04:00

Puccini: La Boheme.
Anna Netrebko, Rolando Villazon, Nicole Cabell, Boaz Daniel
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Bertrand de Billy (Deutsche Grammophon)

Puccini: La Boheme
Norah Amsellem, Marcus Haddock, Georgia Jarman, Fabio Capitanucci
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/Robert Spano
(Telarc)

What crisis in classical recording? When the world’s most popular opera gets two simultaneous new releases to compete with the vast mountain of classic Boheme sets, the record industry can’t be in as bad shape as, say, American newspapers.

Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon provide the requisite starpower in Deutsche Grammophon’s new Boheme, conducted with swift momentum and theatrical élan by Bertrand de Billy. Villazon is an ardent, vivid Rodolfo, contributing an impassioned Che gelida manina, some fleeting grit at the top apart. Netrebko provides more mixed rewards. The Russian soprano’s Italian pronunciation takes some getting used, though her velvety mezzo-like tone is undeniably beautiful. The flamboyant Netrebko is not a Mimi by nature, taking a while to grow into the gentle character, yet by the latter acts, the soprano is an affecting heroine with alarmingly congestive coughing, and sensitive vocalism matched by Villazon in the final scene. Nicole Cabell is a spunky if intermittently fluttery Musetta, though she delivers a lovely Quando me’n vo. Boaz Daniel as Marcello leads an exuberant band of supporting bohemians, with high-gloss playing and outstanding choral work by the excellent Bavarian forces.

The new Telarc set is taken from concert performances by Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus taped last September. The cast is solid enough but the performance overall feels restrained and inhibited compared to the bold theatricality of the DG set. Marcus Haddock tends to bluster as Rodolfo, and his attractive tenor turns raw at times, with a not-very-tender Che gelida manina. Like Netrebko, Norah Amsellem as Mimi grows stronger as the performance unfolds and is at her best—as is Haddock-- in Acts III and IV. Georgia Jarman is a serviceable Musetta, Fabio Capitanucci a richly Italianate Marcello, and Denis Sedov, a huge-voiced Fafner-like Colline. Spano’s accompaniment is scrupulously prepared and well played by the Atlanta Symphony musicians, with the celebrated ASO chorus predictably brilliant in Act II, and the clear enjoyment of the audience provides some compensating atmosphere for the lack of sizzle on stage.

If you desire a Boheme in 21st-century sound, the DG performance largely provides the goods. I have a guilty fondness for the Herbert von Karajan Decca set, with Pavarotti and Freni in their glorious primes, and the Berlin Philharmonic, no less, as the world’s glossiest pit ensemble. Of more recent vintage, the underrated EMI Boheme with Roberto Alagna and Valentina Vaduva is the most impassioned and theatrical of all, with Antonio Pappano conducting magnificently, and a Café Momus climax that will lift you out of your chair.

South Beach "Butterfly"

2008-07-24T13:41:00.006-04:00

In May, Miami Lyric Opera presented a startlingly good Lucia di Lammermoor, in a production that was well sung and dramatically compelling. Raffaele Cardone’s fledgling company will tackle a much greater challenge Saturday night with Puccini’s epic Madama Butterfly. The tragic love story of the teen geisha Cio Cio-San and her ill-fated love for the heartless American naval officer Pinkerton will be presented the next two weekends at the Colony Theater.

Bao-Guo Wang will portray the title role this Saturday with Daniela Carvalho as Butterfly on August 2. Jorge Antonio Pita is Pinkerton, with Emilia Acon as Suzuki, and Hugo Marcos as Sharpless, Jeff Eckstein conducting. Performance time is 8 p.m. Saturday at the Colony Theater, 1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach. Tickets are $30. Go to http://www.miamilyricopera.org/, call 305-674-1040, or purchase tickets at the box office.

From Mozart to Martinu

2008-07-24T13:05:00.003-04:00

The Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival presents another distinctive program this weekend, featuring Mozart’s Duo for violin and viola, Max Reger’s Flute Trio, Martinu’s delightful Revue de Cuisine and the Air and Variations by Wawrzyniec Jerzy Żulawski for flute, clarinet, and piano.

Performances are 8 p.m. Friday at Palm Beach Atlantic University’s Helen K. Persson Hall, 326 Acacia Road, West Palm Beach; 8 p.m. Saturday at Palm Beach Community College’s Eissey Campus Theatre, 3160 PGA Blvd., Palm Beach Gardens; and 2 p.m., Sunday at the Crest Theatre, 51 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach. Tickets are $21 for each program or $72 for a four-concert subscription. Go to www.pbcmf.org or call 800-330-6874.

Sounds of near-silence

2008-07-19T10:47:00.024-04:00

Feldman: The Viola in My Life I-IV
Marek Konstantynowicz
Cikada Ensemble
Norwegian Radio Orchestra/Christian Eggen
(ECM)

The art of Morton Feldman, like the man himself, is a study in contrasts. The chain-smoking, Brooklyn-born composer created vast canvases that make Bruckner symphonies seem like Webern. Yet on the surface, not very much happens. A single note sounds, then silence. The same note repeats, followed by a longer silence. A brief fragment or spare progression appears, notes added or subtracted, a new instrument introduced amid widely spaced intervals. Yet for all its hyper-minimalism, Feldman’s music has a hypnotic quality where the tiniest harmonic shift or change in timbre takes on seismic significance.

In our age of microbial attention spans and instant web-surfing gratification, Morton Feldman’s glacial sound word is a strange, ascetic language not easy to assimilate—witness the many walkouts during the performance of his Piano and Orchestra by the New World Symphony last season. Nor are recordings of Feldman’s music thick on the ground, so all credit to ECM for admirably filling the gap with this new performance of The Viola in My Life.

By Feldman’s monumental standard---his Second String Quartet spans six hours---The Viola in My Life is a work of atomistic compression, totaling just 39 minutes.Written from August 1970 to March 1971, these scrupulously notated four movements feature the title string instrument set against a handful of chamber forces in I and II, a piano in III, and full orchestra in IV.

This is profoundly anti-virtuosic music, the polar opposite of Late Romantic concerto flame-throwers. The Viola in My Life I opens with a solitary, shimmering viola note emerging from the darkness against malign percussion tremolos; isolated solo notes are echoed by flute, violin, cello, and piano creating an atmosphere of hushed, expectant unease. The single notes evolve into fragments that coalesce into discernible melodies, though an elliptical, enigmatic mystery prevails. The Viola in My Life III is the most concise section at just five minutes, with music evanescent to the point of almost disappearing completely. The 14-minute part IV is just as precisely calibrated, yet the restless crescendos and dense orchestral chords feel almost Mahlerian.

Alert, conscientious playing by Marek Konstantynowicz and accompanying forces who convey the infinitesimal gradations of color and dynamics. At just 39 minutes, the CD is extremely short measure, yet so rich and compelling is Feldman’s subdued sonic landscape that no one will feel shortchanged.

A festive musical repast

2008-07-19T09:54:00.011-04:00

by Alan Becker

The second program of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival continues its juxtaposition of rarely heard music with more standard items. Once again, the Helen K. Persson Hall at Palm Beach Atlantic University was filled to near-capacity Friday evening. Designed primarily for solo recitals and chamber music, the hall acts as a small speaker baffle, with the listener cozily ensconced inside. Acoustical panels over the stage project the sound well forward, perhaps too much so at times.

Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 was heard in a version for flute and string quartet, arranged by the composer’s contemporary and supporter Johann Peter Salomon. This last, and possibly greatest, of Haydn’s symphonies suffers significantly in this transcription for small forces. While there was volume aplenty in the hall, the textures seemed thin, and the color, power, and depth an orchestra provides were not to be heard. The performers took to their task with enthusiasm and cannot be blamed for the sometimes twee results.

At more than 40 minutes, Anton Reicha’s Octet for winds and strings sparkled with the joy of creation. Reicha, a contemporary and friend of Beethoven, was born in Prague in 1770, settled in Bonn, and eventually became a naturalized French citizen and mentor to Hector Berlioz, Cesar Franck, and others. His own music adheres mostly to the doctrines of Viennese classicism.

Reicha is best known for his wind quintets, and the melodic fecundity and folk-like themes he used with great skill give this music a lift and buoyancy that are hard to resist. Themes are tossed from one instrument to another, virtuosity is required for each player, and the rich palette of instrumental colors is fully exploited with nary a touch of Beethoven’s influence to be found. The entire ensemble covered themselves with glory in this imaginative and creative music.

After intermission the music took a turn toward the dinner table. The Tafelmusik (Table Music) in D by Telemann is one of several such works by the composer. This piece is scored for trumpet, oboe, strings and harpsichord, and makes for high-class background music to accompany a repast at a wealthy household. Brian Stanley’s bright, clear toned and accurately embellished trumpet was most impressive, although all the players superbly conveyed the spirit of the music.

Paul Schoenfield’s Cafe Music for violin, cello and piano is a fun, clever piece, with nary a moment of the klezmer influence for which this composer is known. It was inspired by musicians Schoenfield heard at a restaurant in Minneapolis, and is a curiously effective amalgam of Gershwin, jazz, swing and pops, leavened with a tad of Claude Bolling. The two rhythmic outer movements form a tasty sandwich surrounding the bluesy Andante and it was a delicious entertainment. Schoenfield states that he attempted to write “high-class dinner music that could at the same time find its way into the concert hall.” All three players devoured this music with the passion of a child that has just discovered ice cream.

The performance will be repeated 8 p.m. Saturday at Palm Beach Community College’s Eissey Campus Theatre, 3160 PGA Blvd., Palm Beach Gardens; and 2 p.m., Sunday at the Crest Theatre, 51 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach. Tickets are $21. Go to http://www.pbcmf.org/ or call 800-330-6874.

Alan Becker has reviewed concerts for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Miami Herald. He has also written feature articles and CD reviews for the American Record Guide, and holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and Syracuse University, with additional graduate studies at the University of Miami.

Cafe Table and musical chairs

2008-07-17T17:03:00.009-04:00

Part deux of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival spans the centuries with an emphasis on works inspired by or arranged for the salon, café, or dining hall. Telemann’s Tafelmusik or “table music” in D major will lead off with prominent trumpet solos, followed by Anton Reicha’s delightful but rarely heard Octet for mixed strings and winds. Haydn’s London Symphony (No. 104) is heard in the arrangement for flute and string quartet, and Paul Schoenfield’s rollicking piano trio, Café Music, will bring the evening full circle with its when-worlds-collide panoply of “dinner music” styles.

Performances are 8 p.m. Friday at Palm Beach Atlantic University’s Helen K. Persson Hall, 326 Acacia Road, West Palm Beach; 8 p.m. Saturday at Palm Beach Community College’s Eissey Campus Theatre, 3160 PGA Blvd., Palm Beach Gardens; and 2 p.m., Sunday at the Crest Theatre, 51 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach. Tickets are $21. Go to http://www.pbcmf.org/ or call 800-330-6874.

Love songs, live from Aspen

2008-07-17T11:51:00.025-04:00

Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs comprise the most moving and unearthly beautiful song cycle since Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs. Like Strauss’s valedictory work, these five settings based on the Chilean poet’s subtly hued stanzas, are imbued with sadness and nostalgia. But primarily, they are intensely felt love songs with the looming shadow of mortality. The composer wrote the settings for his wife, the extraordinary mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who premiered the Neruda Songs in 2005 and recorded the cycle before her death the following year.

Kelly O’Connor (above) will perform Lieberson’s Neruda Songs at the Aspen Festival, a performance that will be broadcast live 8 p.m. Friday via Performance Today on Classical South Florida (89.7 FM and 101.9 FM in West Palm Beach). The concert, featuring David Zinman and the Aspen Chamber Orchestra, will also include Yefim Bronfman performing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3, and interviews with Lieberson, Zinman and the two soloists.

Exiting the stage

2008-07-15T14:33:00.010-04:00

A personal note about my friend Jack Zink, theater, music and cultural affairs writer at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. A fixture in the region's critical community for nearly four decades, Jack has been courageously battling cancer since last fall while still tackling the theater and classical music beats with characteristic dedication, energy, and enthusiasm.

Amid the current wave of buyouts at the Sun-Sentinel, Jack will be taking an extended disability leave from the paper starting Tuesday.

Regular readers know Jack for his graceful writing style, encyclopedic knowledge of theater, and astonishing prolificacy. In addition, his friends know him for his unfailing optimism, great humor, generous collegiality, and fundamental decency. All best for a steady recovery, Jack, and we hope to see you back on the aisle soon. Send get-well wishes to jzink@sun-sentinel.com.

Beethoven rarities spark Chamber Fest opener

2008-07-12T10:52:00.012-04:00

By Alan Becker

The Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival is the perfect answer for listeners feeling concert deprivation during the summer doldrums. Each of the four weekend programs is repeated at three venues, and the 17th festival opener was held Friday night at Palm Beach Atlantic University at the intimate Helen K. Persson Hall in West Palm Beach.

Ordinarily, an all Beethoven program might appear to be pandering to conventional tastes. This one, however, featured four works for different combinations of instruments with two rarities for winds framed by two chamber standards.

While the Octet in E flat bears the late opus number 103, it’s really an early work, composed when Beethoven was 22, but not published until after his death. The Octet calls for two each of oboes, clarinets, horns, and bassoons, and is in four delightful movements. For all of its charms, and the brilliant playing of the musicians, the piece is a lightweight among the composer’s output.

The sound of three horns dominates the texture of the Quintet in the same key, joined by an oboe and a bassoon. Much of this piece survives only in fragments, although the opening allegro brings us a little closer to the Beethoven we know. Almost 100 years later an Austrian composer named Leopold Zellner prepared a performing version, but that too is now missing sections. What we are left with is a wonderful, lyrical, and rustic piece, with an expressive slow movement and a sprightly, if truncated, Menuetto. It may not accurately represent the composer’s final word, but the winning combination of instruments, and spirited music provided sheer joy. The horns performed with facility and were free of noticeable bloopers.

String Quartet No.11 in F minor is known by Beethoven’s own nickname “Serioso.” Serious it is, but not any more than the host of his other quartets that precede this one. The performance sounded a little raw at first, but soon settled in to make the most of the first movement’s unison proclamations and drama. The violence and oppressiveness of the minor tonality was convincingly handled, as was coping with the hall’s unforgiving acoustics, which can’t have been an easy task.

Beethoven’s well-known Archduke Piano Trio in B-flat is a genuine late composition. Dedicated to the composer’s friend and student, Archduke Rudolph of Austria, the trio is a masterpiece of sustained lyricism and inspiration. It was also performed with attention to drama and flow, with each of the young players contributing something new and fresh to this warhorse. If all was not perfection, the performance never sounded dutiful or boring, in a way that has pervaded recent readings by some better known groups.

The performance will be repeated 8 p.m. Saturday at Palm Beach Community College’s Eissey Campus Theatre, 3160 PGA Blvd., Palm Beach Gardens; and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Crest Theatre, 51 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach. Tickets are $21. Go to www.pbcmf.org or call 800-330-6874.

Copland from the Heartland

2008-07-10T20:51:00.008-04:00

Copland: The Tender Land Suite; Piano Concerto; Old American Songs, Sets 1 and 2.
Benjamin Pasternack, pianist
St. Charles Singers
Robert Hanson/Elgin Symphony Orchestra
Naxos

The Naxos label’s invaluable American Classics series has excavated a wealth of intriguing, undersung homegrown repertoire, and an added bonus has been the exposure it has afforded many superb regional American orchestras. James Judd and the Florida Philharmonic recorded an admirable Bernstein disc before the ensemble’s demise, and orchestras in Buffalo, Nashville, and even Fort Smith, Arkansas, have made their presence felt far outside their own concert halls.

This new Copland release adds the Elgin Symphony Orchestra to the American Classics roster. Elgin is located in the Kane County suburbs far northwest of Chicago, and the city's 58-year-old orchestra is a source of deserving pride for its 100,000-plus residents. Conductor Robert Hanson has been associated with the Elgin Symphony for 34 years---the past 23 as music director---and it is clear from the opening bars of the Tender Land suite that Hanson has built the Elgin Symphony into a very impressive ensemble.

The conductor has a sure feel for Copland’s music, with its combination of naive sentiment, pastoral gentleness, and sharp rhythmic cut. Hanson often draws the music out spaciously, conveying the vein of deep sadness in Copland’s long lyrical lines. While somewhat light in corporate sonority, the orchestra sections are polished and consistent, with the Elgin trumpets notably brilliant. This warmly molded Tender Land suite is one of the most beautiful Copland recordings of recent years.

The other performances are worthy if not quite on the same level. Benjamin Pasternack released a disc of Copland piano music in the American Classics series a few years back, yet in the jazzy Piano Concerto his playing is stiff and rather heavy, with Hanson and the orchestra having more fun and showing greater swing in the finale’s syncopations. Pasternack is no match for Garrick Ohlsson with Michael Tilson Thomas (RCA), let alone the composer with Leonard Bernstein (Sony).

The great William Warfield made life uncomfortable for all that followed him in Copland’s engaging Old American Songs. These choral arrangements, mostly by Irving Fine, add some tart vocal counterpoint, keeping a soloist in three of the settings, though baritone Nathanial Stampley is a workmanlike presence. The songs make a better showcase for the St. Charles Singers who make up in unjaded enthusiasm and down-home honesty what they sometimes lack in polish and gleam. The devotional settings tend to work best, as with Long Time Ago and At the River, though the St. Charles Singers display nimble articulation in Ching-a-ring Chaw.

But it is the notable recording debut of the Elgin Symphony under Robert Hanson and that affecting Tender Land suite that make this disc worth picking up. Let’s hope this inspired Midwestern partnership will be represented in future Naxos releases.

Got Ludwig if you want it

2008-07-10T14:20:00.004-04:00

Yes, it's peak summer in South Florida, and, yes, there is scant classical music happening. But for those of us unwilling or unable to escape the godless seasonal humidity, there is annual consolation in the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival. Featuring gifted members of the Palm Beach Opera Orchestra and some of the region’s finest freelance musicians, the four-week festival opens Friday night and offers an array of smartly varied music through August 3. And even with gas running more than $4 a gallon, the high level of performance makes it worth the drive.

The opening weekend will serve up an all-Beethoven program mixing strings and winds, including the Serioso String Quartet in F minor, the Archduke Piano Trio, the Wind Octet and, a real curio, the Quintet for oboe, three horns, and bassoon.

Performances are 8 p.m. Friday at Palm Beach Atlantic University’s Helen K. Persson Hall, 326 Acacia Road, West Palm Beach; 8 p.m. Saturday at Palm Beach Community College’s Eissey Campus Theatre, 3160 PGA Blvd., Palm Beach Gardens; and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Crest Theatre, 51 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach. Tickets are $21 for each program or $72 for a four-concert subscription. Go to http://www.pbcmf.org/ or call 800-330-6874.

CD Review

2008-07-06T14:59:00.003-04:00

Amazing Grace: A Gospel and Bluegrass Journey
Seraphic Fire
Patrick Dupre Quigley, artistic director

Folk, bluegrass and gospel normally fall far outside the Classical Review’s charge. But even if this is not your cup of homemade apple cider, the freshness, dynamism, and joyous spirit Patrick Quigley and Seraphic Fire bring to this indigenous American music makes this disc hard to resist.

The CD by Miami’s versatile chamber choir collates live performances of the “Amazing Grace” concerts taped in November 2007, a program encored at several venues last month. From colonial composer William Billings to Roberta Martin’s 20th-century arrangement of the popular hymn, the program takes a brisk 66-minute Baedeker guide through the American musical landscape, incorporating the revivalist, folk, country, and African-American church traditions.

Artistic director Quigley and his singers bring characteristic polish, buoyant agility and the elegance one would expect in Handel’s Messiah or Bach’s motets (also available on the choir’s CDs). But the classically trained singers also manage to loosen up collectively and individually and provide the rough edge, religious fervor and rhythmic swing apt for this populist repertoire.

Highlights include a gorgeous rendering of James C. Moore’s Where We’ll Never Grow Old, a fine twangy rendition of I’ll Fly Away, Hank Williams’ I Saw the Light, and a call-and-response medley in which Quigley provides his own gutsy solos and nimble piano playing. Several live excerpts are available on YouTube including Where We’ll Never Grow Old (http://youtube.com/watch?v=W0g3MstnRiA), Precious Lord (http://youtube.com/watch?v=WiJXMpxJz1Y), and In My Robe of White (http://youtube.com/watch?v=rIKr6uavWXE).

Anyone with an interest in American music and/or superb choral singing should investigate this disc. The Amazing Grace CD is $18 including shipping and handling. Go to http://www.seraphicfire.org/, call 305-476-0260, or write to Seraphic Fire at 536 Coral Way, Coral Gables, FL 33134.

CD Review Lara goes Australian

2008-07-04T16:16:00.018-04:00

Hindson: Violin Concerto; Corigliano: Suite from The Red Violin; Liszt/Kennedy-St. John: Totentanz.

Lara St. John
Sarah Ioannides/Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Ancalagon)

With her latest CD, Lara St. John serves up the premiere of a fascinating new concerto in an envelope-pushing program that marks the Canadian fiddler's finest recording since her debut Bach disc. Though cast in the traditional three movements, Matthew Hindson's Violin Concerto is anything but conventional, with youthful, brilliant, often idiosyncratic music that reflects the rugged spirit of the composer's native Australia.

The ecologically minded first section, Wind Turbine at Kooragang Island, takes its inspiration from the title massive windmill-powered generator. The mechanical turbine sounds are unmistakable and the solo violin's jaggedly virtuosic flights and soaring leaps alternate with sections of lyrical repose. Hindson ratchets up the piston-driving clamor in nine minutes that mix Minimalist churning, beast-like brass lowing and triumphant solo writing against quasi-satiric silver screen fanfares.

Westerway is a working-class Tasmanian village and the central movement reflects the economically depressed rural milieu with the hope of better things to come. The astringent lyricism and searching melancholy are sensitively conveyed by St. John, with a more aggressive contrasting middle section and lovely wind writing at the reprise of the A material.

The Australian fondness for roughhouse sport and elbows-out revelry are vividly painted in the closing movement, Grand Final Day. This must be one of the most uninhibited concerto movements of recent years, as Hindson’s wild ride veers from hard-driving Minimalist riffs, brassy jazz-accented Broadway, and, for some reason, ironic brassy quotes from Carmen. The concerto culminates in an expansive chorale-like theme and increasingly flame-throwing violin bursts, rounded off in a final virtuosic blast from soloist and orchestra.

Even without the picaresque national program, Hindson's Violin Concerto is a brilliant, quirky and personality-plus work, one perfectly suited to the flamboyant St. John, who, predictably, plays the hell out of the piece. Conductor Sarah Ioannides and the Royal Phiharmonic Orchestra are equally fiery, fully committed partners.

The couplings are on the same high level. In its various guises, John Corigliano's music from The Red Violin is becoming standard fiddle repertoire, and St. John shows herself in synch with the score's elegant nostalgia and rhapsodic yearning. The ingenious retooling of Liszt's Totentanz by Martin Kennedy and St. John works surprisingly well, cleverly transferring Liszt's keyboard diablerie to the violin, an even more Mephistophelean instrument.

Spectacular recording on St. John's own Ancalagon label (named for her departed pet iguana) with lavishly illustrated tri-fold booklet and comprehensive notes. Check out the violinist's entertaining website to hear excerpts of the Hindson Concerto and to purchase the CD. http://www.larastjohn.com/.

Critics in a hostile world

2008-07-04T13:24:00.002-04:00

A timely, thoughtful piece by Martin Bernheimer in the Financial Times. http://tinyurl.com/6yrgwg.

Independence Day

2008-07-03T18:58:00.008-04:00

Today was my last as classical music critic of the Miami Herald, which means I am now free to devote my full attention to this blog and to building a permanent website. Many thanks to all the colleagues, musicians, readers and fellow bloggers who have posted supportive comments.

So, what exactly is the South Florida Classical Review?

It won’t be about bashing the Herald---tempting as that is, at the moment---or about the parlous state of old-media companies, or about me personally, because I wouldn’t inflict that boredom on my worst enemy.

What the Review will be about is covering South Florida’s classical music scene in an honest, fair, intelligent and comprehensive manner. To a large extent, it will carry on my newspaper beat with in-depth coverage of all major performances, advance articles, interviews, weekly critic’s picks and CD reviews.

But it will also go beyond my Herald work, in both geography and scope. As the title indicates, the South Florida Classical Review will cover the entire tri-county area, from Palm Beach to Coral Gables. I’ll be doing the majority of concert reviews, particularly in the Miami area where I reside, but other critics will weigh in from time to time as well. I’ll offer commentary on the local music scene that goes beyond reviews---an essential element that was definitely not encouraged at the Herald---columns on broader aspects of the classical world, profiles of neglected composers, and the infrequent riff on non-classical topics.

At times coverage will extend beyond Florida to encompass major national festivals, including Santa Fe Opera later this month, as well as significant new operas or revivals across the country. Unlike many music websites, all reviews will be original and exclusive, not mere links to newspaper websites or posted from other sources.

But the focus will remain on the music, delivered in a smart, timely, candid, and useful fashion. Reviews will be posted quickly, in most cases before midnight the night of the performance, allowing readers ample time to decide whether to attend a repeat. CD reviews will have audio samples to download and, eventually, there will be video for opera articles. A detailed list of upcoming classical events will be updated daily. All organizations that would like to be considered for coverage should email press releases and 2008-2009 season schedules. Those seeking information about banner advertising should drop me a line as well.

Ultimately the success of this venture will depend as much on your participation as mine. Feel free to post a comment or send a private email with suggestions to theclassicalreview@gmail.com.

American Edge Tonight on South Beach

2008-06-27T12:51:00.013-04:00

The SoBe Music Institute is serving up an intriguing program of American music with a valedictory theme Friday night. Faculty musicians and guest artists will team up for Steve Reich's Holocaust-inspired Different Trains for string quartet and tape, Barber's Adagio for Strings, and the premiere of a new version of Dear John by Carson Kievman, music from his Chamber Symphony 1(628), inspired by the 25th anniversary of the death of John Lennon. http://www.sobemusic.org/sobemusicnews.html

The concert takes place at 7:30 p.m at the Carl Fisher Clubhouse, 2100 Washington Avenue in Miami Beach. Admission is free but parking can be tricky, so allow enough time to find a space. See you there.

MusicalAmerica.com story

2008-06-26T19:22:00.003-04:00

Miami Herald Drops Its Classical Critic
By Susan Elliott
MusicalAmerica.com
June 26, 2008

Last week it was the Kansas City Star; this week it’s the Miami Herald. When will the blood-letting stop?

On Monday, Miami Herald Classical Music Critic Lawrence Johnson received an “involuntary buyout” from his newspaper. Just to be clear, the word “buyout” when preceded by “involuntary” means laid off, in this case with eight weeks severance pay. Such is Johnson’s paper parachute.

The Miami Herald is located literally across the street from the two-year-old Carnival Center for the Performing Arts (now known as the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, due to Arsht’s get-out-of-debt contribution), built at a cost to Miamians of just under $600 million and housing as resident companies the Florida Grand Opera, the New World Symphony, the Concert Association of Florida, the Miami Ballet and, for several weeks annually, the Cleveland Orchestra. Apparently, the Herald isn’t very interested in covering its neighborhood.

Like the Kansas City Star, the Herald is owned by the McClatchy Company, the third largest newspaper chain in the country. McClatchy is severely in debt from its 2006 purchase of Knight Ridder, and so is cutting ten percent of its workforce, company wide. At the Herald, it’s actually 17 percent, or 190 of its 1,400 employees.

The lay offs were apparently decided upon by grouping staffers into different pools and eliminating those with the least seniority. In the critics pool, Johnson, with only 18 months in the job, was the first to go. He was previously at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel for six years; that position was eliminated as well, but not until after he left for Miami.

The Herald’s executive editor reported to Johnson that the hue and cry from the classical music community, which has grown during Johnson’s watch, was “massive.”

“The response has really been heartening,” said Johnson by phone yesterday, “and it makes the situation easier to deal with. There’s a lot more going on in South Florida than anyone would think. I’m going to do my best to make sure these groups continue to get coverage, even if it’s on a different platform.”

To that end, he has started a new blog: classicalsouthflorida.blogspot.com.

Commented Patrick Quigley, artistic director of Seraphic Fire, a professional chamber choir, “We have a vibrant music community in South Florida, in no small part because of Larry’s coverage.”

Howard Herring, President and CEO of the New World Symphony called Johnson “an informed, articulate critical voice.” He lamented that the Herald won’t have a “dedicated voice” to cover South Florida’s emerging and established companies “in a period when this city is experiencing unprecedented investment in its cultural infrastructure. Miami is but one of a growing list of American cities without a music critic on staff at their primary local newspaper. This is a national problem, and I am talking with my colleagues around the country about old and new media solutions.”

The Palm Beach Post is also cutting its staff, by 300. Classical writers there declined to comment, apparently because their status is in limbo. For now.

Un-Heralded Beginnings

2008-06-25T17:04:00.010-04:00

Welcome. As many of you already know, I have been laid off by the Miami Herald through an "involuntary buyout" --- an Orwellian phrase --- in an effort to cut expenses. The position of classical music critic has been eliminated, and my final day will be July 3.

I'll have more to say about these events and the implications for the local music scene in future posts. But at this moment, I want to express my gratitude to the many individuals and arts and music organizations that have called or emailed the Herald's top editors on my behalf. In particular, Patrick Quigley, artistic director of Seraphic Fire, Howard Herring, president and CEO of the New World Symphony, and Dean Shelly Berg and colleagues of the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami have gone above and beyond the call of duty. Deeply felt thanks to you all.

The "massive" and heartening response by so many makes me even more determined to find a way to ensure that intelligent, honest, in-depth, and comprehensive coverage of our vital, evolving and often chaotic music scene continues in some form. This temporary blog is a first step. Stay tuned.