{"id":2446119,"date":"2019-07-08T21:52:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-09T03:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/review-powerful-opening-week-to-start-aspen-music-festival\/"},"modified":"2019-07-08T21:52:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-09T03:52:00","slug":"review-powerful-opening-week-to-start-aspen-music-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/review-powerful-opening-week-to-start-aspen-music-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Powerful opening week to start Aspen Music Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With complete command of a 10-foot Steinway grand piano, Yefim Bronfman took hold of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1, made it stand up straight, and highlighted all of its subtleties in a riveting performance Sunday in the Benedict Music Tent. The expected rain graciously held off to allow an attentive Aspen Music Festival audience to hear it.<\/p>\n

Conductor Joshua Weilerstein, who won the Aspen conducting prize as a student in 2010, let the Festival Orchestra stomp over a few phrases, but mostly kept the intensity high in his first go at this concerto. Despite a slow tempo in the opening movement, he kept it properly majestic and short of ponderous. The Adagio created a sensuous balance with the woodwinds, and the finale charged ahead with controlled energy.<\/p>\n

But the energizer-in-chief was Bronfman, sprinkling dazzling filigrees around phrases here and there, generating his trademark power in the big chords and rapid-fire double octaves, and creating deliciously lyrical moments in quieter sections. His encore, a short Scarlatti sonata full of delicate trills, made the perfect dessert.<\/p>\n

Although parts of Sibelius\u2019 Symphony No. 5 scrolled by with less effect, Weilerstein captured the big gestures in the opening and closing pages, riding nicely rounded legato playing from the brass to conclude a meaty concert.<\/p>\n

The program opened with an Aspen premiere from another festival regular, composer August Read Thomas. Her 12-minute tone poem \u201cBrio,\u201d trades in nervous rhythmic shifts and colorful splashes of orchestral color. An homage to one of the festival\u2019s prime supporters Kay Bucksbaum, it was perhaps louder and more astringent than the ebullient and popular Mrs. Bucksbaum, but certainly just as busy.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrio\u201d fits into the festival\u2019s 2019 theme, \u201cBeing American.\u201d Through the seven-and-a-half weeks of programming several dozen works by American composers from the past century-plus are spread around. The opening weekend in late June offered a new orchestral piece by Edgar Meyer, works by Gershwin and a tribute to Nat King Cole, but also pieces written elsewhere that were inspired by the United States.<\/p>\n

That was the case for the opener for the Chamber Symphony\u2019s Friday evening program in the music tent, Gustav Holst\u2019s early Walt Whitman Overture, a British composer\u2019s ode to the American poet. Conductor Nicholas McGegan, himself British, made the piece stride into the spotlight with good intentions, even if it came off as more dutiful than soulful.<\/p>\n

The program included Prokofiev\u2019s dynamic Violin Concerto No. 1 and Schubert\u2019s elegant Symphony No. 5, but the surprise hit was a Vivaldi concerto originally for two cellos, here played by two flugelhorns.<\/p>\n

The Vivaldi was in McGegan\u2019s wheelhouse. He recently completed a long tenure with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and although the orchestra\u2019s role in this concerto mostly supports the soloists with springy rhythms and appropriate harmonies, he laid the foundation for brilliant playing from Hungarian trumpet virtuoso Tam\u00e1s P\u00e1lfalvi and the Atlanta Symphony\u2019s principal trumpet Stuart Stephenson.<\/p>\n

Hearing this music with a brass instrument\u2019s clarity and articulation was a revelation. Staccato passages lifted off the page with extra zip, and the mellow tone of the flugelhorn \u2014 the same range as a trumpet, but with a darker texture \u2014 gave the softer, legato moments real presence.<\/p>\n

The marquee concerto, the Prokofiev, found soloist Simone Porter (another Aspen alum) playing with her trademark agility and purity in the silky opening pages. She dug into the rougher sections, but not hard enough to realize the potential of the contrasts. This put more emphasis on the sweeter lyric sections, and that\u2019s how the concerto ends, the result leaving a cuddly impression.<\/p>\n

The Schubert symphony, with McGegan\u2019s sprightliness leading the way, spun itself out with pleasing inevitability.<\/p>\n

Saturday afternoon\u2019s chamber music program included vocal selections from American operas, which nodded to the summer\u2019s theme. Soprano Avery Boettcher, slated to sing the Countess in \u201cLe Nozze di Figaro\u201d later this summer, started with beautifully soft tone and applied unexpectedly powerful high notes to Floyd\u2019s \u201cAin\u2019t It A Pretty Night\u201d from \u201cSusannah.\u201d Another standout was tenor River Shayne Guard, who shaped Martin\u2019s Aria from Copland\u2019s \u201cThe Tender Land\u201d with appropriate simplicity and ringing high notes. Both of them topped the ensemble in an emotionally resonant quintet, \u201cThe Promise Of Living,\u201d from \u201cThe Tender Land.\u201d<\/p>\n

To finish off that program, violinist David Halen, cellist Desmond Hoebig and pianist Anton Nel grabbed onto Dvor\u00e1k\u2019s Piano Trio in F Minor and didn\u2019t let go for its 40-minute duration.<\/p>\n

For Saturday night\u2019s recital program in Harris Hall, Aspen regulars David Finckel (cello) and Wu Han (piano) joined forces with violinist Paul Huang, a longtime chamber music partner of theirs from concerts in Lincoln Center. Huang and Wu Han opened with Beethoven\u2019s Violin Sonata No. 8 in G major, but the highlights were two piano trios of totally different style and intent.<\/p>\n

The group made Saint-Sa\u00ebns Piano Trio No. 1 in F major dance and brim with wit, especially in the fleet Scherzo and the bobs and weaves of the lively and playful Allegro finale. Tchaikovsky\u2019s Trio in A minor oozed tragedy and grief in its minor-key harmonies and perpetually falling melodic shapes. If a little more variety in tone and phrasing might have been welcome, the musicians shaped each episode with unanimity, care and fervency to create a powerful statement.<\/p>\n

Harvey Steiman has been writing about the Aspen Music Festival for 24 years. His reviews appear Tuesdays and Saturdays in The Aspen Times.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With complete command of a 10-foot Steinway grand piano, Yefim Bronfman took hold of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1, made it stand up straight, and highlighted all of its subtleties in a riveting performance Sunday in the Benedict Music Tent. The expected rain graciously held off to allow an attentive Aspen Music Festival audience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2446119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-21 01:47:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}