Three contrasting examples of this summer\u2019s Aspen Music Festival Theme \u2014 \u201cBeing American,\u201d pieces by American composers in a range of flavors \u2014 enlivened Sunday\u2019s Aspen Festival Orchestra concert.<\/p>\n
The American pieces framed a nice performance of Tchaikovsky\u2019s Violin Concerto in D major. An alum of the festival\u2019s school who has made her career so far in Europe, soloist Esther Yoo played with precision and deftness, if not quite the stirring drama that permeates Tchaikovsky\u2019s score. Conductor Christian Macelaru, also an Aspen alum, drew carefully balanced playing from the orchestra, especially in the slow movement when members of the woodwind section took turns metaphorically dancing with the soloist.<\/p>\n
The range of American music made the biggest impact.<\/p>\n
The sound of the afternoon\u2019s final piece, Copland\u2019s Four Dance Episodes from \u201cRodeo,\u201d probably defines American music for most of us. Under Macelaru\u2019s vital conducting, Copland\u2019s treatment of cowboy songs and folk rhythms seemed to distill our musical culture, ending with a rousing hoedown.<\/p>\n
American-born Gunther Schuller brought his classical music training to bear on jazz in the 1950s. So did Gershwin before him, but as Schuller carved out a career in both genres he developed more sting to his harmonic and melodic palette. Three short pieces from his \u201cSeven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee,\u201d from 1959, opened the concert, the third of which broke into full-on hard-edged jazz, and well-played.<\/p>\n
Jake Heggie, who emerged in this century as a composer of vivid art songs and oft-performed operas, represents another aspect of American music. Macelaru\u2019s own 20-minute compilation of segments from the opera \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d demonstrated the composer\u2019s keen ear for orchestral scene-painting a la Richard Strauss and command of emotional triggers a la Benjamin Britten, but clearly dressed in American clothing. Having conducted the opera\u2019s premiere, Macelaru led the orchestra in a performance that made a case for all this, and impressively. You could smell the ocean breeze in the beginning and feel the presence of the great white whale in the final measures, while outlining all along the central message: obsession.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s chamber music offerings in Harris Hall offered different kinds of contrasts. In a highlight of the afternoon program, Copland\u2019s music for four Emily Dickinson poems found soprano Jessica Niles and pianist Charles Prestinary caressing the inner beauty of both the music and poetry.<\/p>\n
Then the ageless violinist Sylvia Rosenberg, surrounding herself with three old friends \u2014 Michael Mermagen on cello, James Dunham on viola and Anton Nel on piano \u2014 gave us a glimpse into what chamber music is all about. They played Mozart\u2019s Piano Quartet in E-flat major as if they were gathered in a living room, relishing the music they made together. We got to eavesdrop, and we could only be grateful.<\/p>\n
British composer Philip Cashian\u2019s \u201cLeonora Pictures\u201d opened the program with a series of brief, pointillistic impressions of modern art, ably played by the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble with Timothy Weiss conducting and Abigail Ensle featured on harp. Equally tart, but much briefer and funnier, Schnittke\u2019s \u201cMoz-Art\u201d finished the afternoon, ribbing Mozart from a 20th-century perspective, violinists Almita Vamos and Espen Lillesl\u00e5tten aiding and abetting. Earlier, violinist Renata Araldo joined Vamos for a deliciously sweet suite showing the lyrical side of Shostakovich.<\/p>\n
Saturday evening\u2019s recital introduced pianist George Li to Aspen audiences with a performance high on energy, often at the expense of subtlety.<\/p>\n
Li can play anything, and he\u2019ll apply those talents to making soft arpeggios bubble up like a mountain spring or goosing the music into ever-faster tempos. Beethoven\u2019s 32 Variations on an Original Theme in C minor showcased every aspect of his formidable technique. The Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major \u201cWaldstein\u201d took off in a frenzy and let up only for the brief Adagio that separated the two outer movements. The Allegretto Moderato of the finale felt more like vivace \u2014 thrilling to hear, but so many details never registered.<\/p>\n
The all-Schumann second half started with the composer\u2019s three-minute \u201cProphet Bird,\u201d which proved how persuasive his playing can be when it has a chance to breathe, before he launched immediately into \u201cCarnaval.\u201d Li took the 20 scenes as opportunities to show off his pianistic virtuosity. If he hadn\u2019t taken every forte as a signal to amp it up to fortissimo (and fairly clangy ones at that), the results might have better resembled what Schumann was after.<\/p>\n
Of the two encores, a breathless race through Liszt\u2019s \u201cLa Campanella\u201d allowed for some real delicacy to shine through the sheer velocity.<\/p>\n
What to say about Friday\u2019s Aspen Chamber Symphony concert? The five-minute opener, a luminous performance of Alan Hohvaness\u2019 \u201cPrayer of St. Gregory,\u201d was the best thing on the program. The solo trumpet, Stuart Stephenson, pierced a soft carpet of resonant chords with clear and fervent playing.<\/p>\n
What followed was not the orchestra\u2019s finest hour. In the Barber violin concerto, music director Robert Spano let the orchestra overwhelm the slender sound of the soloist, Stefan Jackiw, who played the piece artfully, at least what we could hear of it. The saving graces were Jackiw\u2019s lyrical fluency and a ravishing oboe solo in the slow movement by Mingjia Liu, principal of the San Francisco Opera. In the rapid-fire moto perpetuo finale, the orchestra\u2019s rhythmic interjections also lacked crispness.<\/p>\n
Jackiw did not play an encore. One wag suggested he should play the finale again, this time without the orchestra so we could hear him.<\/p>\n
Even worse, the Schumann symphony in the second half plodded ponderously in a lifeless performance. It must have been a heavy winter, because the music\u2019s \u201cspring\u201d thaw seemed to take forever. What the program listed at 30 minutes took 36 minutes to play.<\/p>\n
NOT TO MISS IN THE COMING DAYS<\/p>\n
The American Brass Quintet always peppers its tasty programs with contemporary pieces by American composers, and its Wednesday annual recital in Harris Hall is no exception. Singers from the Opera Center take on American song from Stephen Foster to Duke Ellington and Rodgers and Hammerstein in Thursday\u2019s \u201cRed, Hot and Blue\u201d in Harris Hall. There\u2019s even a little more American music on Friday\u2019s Chamber Symphony concert with Charles Ives\u2019 haunting \u201cUnanswered Question\u201d opening the tent program.<\/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