United States Aspen Music Festival 2023 [14]: Benedict Music Tent, Aspen, Colorado. (HS)
Expectations for the Aspen Music Festival’s last weekend focused on Sunday’s big finale, The Creation by Haydn. The outsized oratorio for orchestra, soloists and chorus depicts the biblical story of creation, from chaos to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, a perfect fit for the festival’s 2023 theme: ‘Adoration of the Earth’, music inspired by our human connections with nature.
It was pretty good, and especially the superior vocal solos. Tenor Matthew Polenzani deployed a dazzling range of vocal color and shaded his every phrase lovingly. Soprano Maeve Höglund’s creamy tone and pinpoint coloratura (even after two hours of singing) made her another standout. The orchestra sounded fine, as did Seraphic Fire, the Miami-based professional chorus that has become a regular visitor for the last week of the festival.
What was missing was the sort of impassioned energy that Haydn’s seminal work calls for. After all, as festival president Alan Fletcher noted in his introduction, this piece inspired Beethoven to write his Missa Solemnis and use a chorus for the first time in a symphony, his Ninth.
Seraphic Fire sang properly, but could not quite whip up enough heft for the big finishes, even supplemented by the Professional Choral Institute singers they have been working with here. For his part, music director Spano seemed more intent on keeping tempo and general dynamics where they should be, at the expense of shaping orchestra phrases with the punch this score requires.
It all felt obligatory rather than joyful, but in the end it was well worth it to sit back and appreciate Haydn’s endlessly inventive music played with skill.
All that was outclassed by the Chamber Symphony’s final concert of the season on Friday. That one was an unalloyed winner. Pianist Yefim Bronfman and violinist Robert McDuffie were at the top of their game, Bronfman in the Schumann piano concerto, McDuffie in a long-lost movement from an unpublished concerto by a much-lauded twentieth-century composer.
Cristian Măcelaru, rapidly rising as a star conductor, spun gold out of very different new works by Gabriela Lena Frank and Gabriella Smith, then hit the jackpot by leading a spectacular performance of Stravinsky’s The Firebird suite (in its 1919 revision).
Măcelaru spurred the orchestra into tremendous climaxes, startling shifts of tempo and tone, and the sort of listening-to-each-other unanimity that makes for a great performance. The ‘Infernal Dance’ drew startling offbeat rhythms, and the softer ‘Round Dance’ intrigued with its burnished tone.
Kevin Rivard (principal horn of the San Francisco Opera orchestra) found a perfectly soft and pure legato, the best I have ever heard, to start the solo that begins the famous finale. Harpist Renée Murphy (a protégé of longtime Aspen harpist Nancy Allen) punctuated the succeeding measures with a golden touch, and we were off on a steady build-up to a great finish.
‘Aria’, a newly discovered movement from a never-finished violin concerto by Peter Mennin, created a sublime ten minutes of tuneful storytelling under McDuffie’s hands and gentle conducting from Măcelaru. Best known as president of Juilliard in the 1960s and 1970s, Mennin mentored both McDuffie and festival CEO Alan Fletcher. When ‘Aria’ surfaced, having been squirreled away in a drawer, Fletcher jumped at the chance to present its world premiere here in Aspen.
The contrast between two arresting, more recent pieces was also fascinating, and both fit into the festival’s 2023 theme. Frank’s Contested Eden led things off, using rumblings of low instruments to create a feeling of foreboding in a rumination on wildfires in California. Smith’s Field Guide evoked a morning chorus of birds with its light spattering of random instrumental sounds that coalesced unexpectedly several times into impressive climaxes.
Bronfman’s traversal of the lightweight Schumann concerto felt like a walk in the park for such an accomplished pianist, detailing the buoyancy of the dancelike themes and the jewel-like beauty of the Andantino Grazioso intermezzo, all of it nimbly supported by the orchestra. His encore seemed to say ‘that was nice but fasten your seatbelts, here comes some Rachmaninoff’. He launched into the brisk Russian march of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude No.5 in G minor with grandeur, finishing with a puckish single note.
Harvey Steiman
18.8.2023: Yefim Bronfman (piano), Robert McDuffie (violin), Aspen Chamber Symphony / Cristian Măcelaru (conductor).
Gabriela Lena Frank – Contested Eden
R. Schumann – Piano Concerto in A minor
Gabriella Smith – Field Guide
Mennin – ‘Aria’ from Violin Concerto (world premiere)
Stravinsky – The Firebird Suite (1919)
20.8.2023: Haydn, The Creation: Soloists, Aspen Festival Orchestra / Robert Spano (conductor), Seraphic Fire / Patrick Dupre Quigley (artistic director).
Raphael – Joseph Park
Uriel – Matthew Polenzani
Gabriel, Eve – Maeve Höglund
Adam – Vinicius Costa