{"id":2454214,"date":"2020-02-06T10:10:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T17:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=320357"},"modified":"2020-02-06T10:10:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T17:10:00","slug":"violinist-william-hagen-and-pianist-albert-cano-smit-open-aspen-music-festival-winter-recital-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/violinist-william-hagen-and-pianist-albert-cano-smit-open-aspen-music-festival-winter-recital-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Violinist William Hagen and pianist Albert Cano Smit open Aspen Music Festival winter recital series"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Violinist William Hagen will perform with pianist Albert Cano Smit on Thursday night at Harris Concert Hall.<\/strong>
Courtesy photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

As the Aspen Music Festival and School unveiled its 2020 summer season<\/a> Wednesday, festival-goers undertook the annual ritual of studying the 400-event feast of a schedule, strategizing attendance, parsing themes, Googling new artists and curating new playlists from the program.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, as the festival begins its three-concert winter recital series, an Aspen audience will get a taste of what\u2019s to come during the \u201cBeethoven\u2019s Revolution\u201d-themed summer season.<\/p>\n

The recital brings two of music\u2019s brightest young stars \u2014 violinist and Aspen alum William Hagen with pianist Albert Cano Smit \u2014 to Harris Concert Hall for the first of dozens of Beethoven to come in 2020 as the music world celebrates the 250th anniversary of the composer\u2019s birth. The pair will open the program with Beethoven\u2019s uplifting \u201cSpring\u201d violin sonata.<\/p>\n

Hagen, 27, has a refreshingly nontraditional approach to performing Beethoven.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s easy to overthink it,\u201d he said recently from his home in Salt Lake City. \u201cHe writes a lot of dynamics and a lot of direction, so it can easily turn into an academic endeavor. That\u2019s the last thing I want to sound like. So my approach to Beethoven is like my approach to karaoke.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hagen strives to connect with the humanity of Beethoven, not the intimidating figure that some believe young musicians must mature into understanding. Hagen plays Beethoven from his gut reaction to a piece like the violin sonata.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been freeing to me to leave that music school idea that Beethoven is pure and untouchable,\u201d Hagen said. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018He was a human being \u2014 an unbelievably talented human being \u2014 but what made him so great is his ability to express human emotion.\u2019 The best way for me to interpret him is to just take my first reaction to it and build on that, to not overthink things.\u201d<\/p>\n

(An Aspen audience will hear another interpretation of the \u201cSpring\u201d sonata in August, as violinist James Ehnes finishes his complete Beethoven sonata cycle with pianist Andrew Armstrong.)<\/p>\n

Hagen and Cano Smit, 23, met as classmates at the Coburn School in Los Angeles. They regularly perform and tour together, work out musical ideas together, while leaning one another as these young concert musicians rise in the ranks on the global stage.<\/p>\n

Hagen recalled first seeing Cano Smit in a Coburn student series called \u201cPerformance Forum.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe played and I thought, \u2018Who is this guy?\u2019\u201d he recalled. \u201cIt\u2019s so rare to have somebody on an instrument like piano where they really have a style to them. And Albert really has a style \u2014 he will interpret a piece in a way that is just a little bit different from anyone else. He has a personal touch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with the Beethoven \u201cSpring\u201d sonata, they will perform Stravinsky\u2019s Divertimento \u2014 \u201ccrazy and extroverted,\u201d in Hagen\u2019s words \u2014 and Schumann\u2019s Violin Sonata No. 2 (Hagen calls it \u201cas deep and intimate a piece of music as exists in the violin sonata repertoire\u201d).<\/p>\n

Hagen also will play one solo piece, the violinist and contemporary composer Jessie Montgomery\u2019s Rhapsody No. 1, which also offers a preview of things to come in summer 2020, when the Aspen Music Festival has a robust \u201cUncommon Women of Note\u201d theme planned that will spotlight female composers like Montgomery.<\/p>\n

Thursday will mark Hagen\u2019s first time playing it in concert. He selected it, he said, as a way to \u201cclear the air\u201d in the program\u2019s second half as a bridge between the Stravinsky and Schumann pieces.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a much more introverted piece,\u201d Hagen said. \u201cI\u2019m excited to give it some of the attention it rightly deserves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The winter music series will continue with pianist Joyce Yang on Feb. 13 and cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han on Feb. 20.<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Violinist William Hagen will perform with pianist Albert Cano Smit on Thursday night at Harris Concert Hall.Courtesy photo As the Aspen Music Festival and School unveiled its 2020 summer season Wednesday, festival-goers undertook the annual ritual of studying the 400-event feast of a schedule, strategizing attendance, parsing themes, Googling new artists and curating new playlists […]<\/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":["post-2454214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 17:07:04","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\/2454214","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=2454214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2454214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2454214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2454214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}