United States Aspen Music Festival [6]: Aspen, Colorado. (HS)
In an Aspen Music Festival week that began with a dutiful performance of the 60-year-old Broadway classic Fiddler on the Roof and included with a highly personal recital by composer Missy Mazzoli and violinist Jennifer Koh, leave it to violinists Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony to deliver an evening of satisfying music that ranged from Bach to Freddie Mercury.
Shaham and Anthony, who are married, launched their Thursday recital with a curious but dazzling arrangement by Ruggiero Ricci of the Presto finale of J.S. Bach’s Violin Sonata No.1. Ricci arranged Brahms’s version for piano, which expanded on Bach with additional counterpoint. Then came ‘Ecstatic Dance’ by the Australian composer Ross Edwards, who based it on Aboriginal music – a nod to Anthony’s heritage.
The program was part of a 75th-anniversary series that features headliner musicians who got their starts at this festival’s school, most sharing the music-making with Aspen friends (and a few current students).
A set of three pieces by the British violinist and sometime composer Julian Milone added two young violinists and a bassist to play clever versions of Weill’s ‘Mack the Knife’, Mozart’s ‘Der Holle Rache’ (the Queen of the Night’s aria) and Mercury’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, before pianist Anton Nel joined the two soloists in an energetic and virtuosic gallop through Moszkowski’s Suite for Two Violins and Piano.
The topper, though, was a thoroughly elegant, poignant and beautifully played Clarinet Quintet in B minor by Brahms (in a way bringing the program full circle). Clarinetist Joaquin Valdepeñas was especially eloquent, melding a soft tone with the strings, along with fellow faculty standouts, violist Choong-Jin Chang and cellist Brinton Averil Smith.
Wednesday in Harris Hall, Missy Mazzoli, the festival’s composer-in-residence this summer, stepped into the performer spotlight with violinist Jennifer Koh, for whom she has written music off and on for 15 years. In the spirit of a thread running through this year’s programming, the music veered away from the usual classical model of sonatas, solos and duos in favor of using electronics to extend possibilities.
Clad in army boots, a feathery black dress and pink hair, Koh applied amplification to her violin. Mazzoli, also in combat boots and black, dialed up prepared music on a computer, played a small electronic keyboard and occasionally turned to a grand piano for sonic variety in a series of short pieces that ranged from original soundscapes to mellow meditations on familiar classical tropes.
A gesture to J.S. Bach’s famous Chaconne launched the first piece, ‘Dissolve, Oh My Heart’, which spirals into its own world over eight minutes. Controlling computer-generated sounds, Mazzoli underlined the violinist’s lithe melodic lines. Foundational bass lines occasionally supported more florid passages. It revealed a side of both musicians that we do not often hear in their bigger works.
The best for me were ‘A Song for Mick Kelly’, which seemed to come from a child’s mind if that child had a vivid imagination, and the ethereal, dreamlike ‘Vespers for Violin’.
Monday’s concert staging of Fiddler on the Roof, the beloved musical by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick that opened on Broadway 60 years ago, filled the music tent with the biggest crowd of the season so far. It was the annual semi-staged joint effort of the music festival and Theatre Aspen. Headlined by several singing actors with Broadway credits, the presentation benefited most from a 60-piece orchestra playing John Williams’s brilliant orchestration for the 1971 film. The knowledgeable and insightful Andy Einhorn conducted with his usual flair.
Neither the cast nor the production were bad, but little was up to the standards set in recent summer presentations, including The Sound of Music and South Pacific. Shuler Hensley, who directed and played the lead character Tevye with a resonant baritone, missed many of the character’s details, and some of the magical moments of the piece wafted by with lesser impact than needed.
All the voices were amplified, a necessity against the big orchestra. Among the standouts were Broadway veterans Anne L. Nathan as a very human Golde, Danny Kornfeld as an energetic Motel the tailor and, as Tevye’s three daughters, Sydney Borchers (Hodel), Sophia Gunter (Tseitl) and Aliyah Douglas (Chava). A stunningly athletic Russian dance number by Gabriel Bommarito-Logan as Fyedka stole the show in the first act.
As the titular fiddler on the roof, student violinist Ezra Shcolnik played the familiar music (which Williams enhanced) well. It is perhaps unfair to compare him to the film score’s (unseen) Isaac Stern, but subtleties of articulation were lost in the amplification.
The program note focused almost entirely on the story, with hardly a word about the music.
Harvey Steiman
23.7.2024, Fiddler on the Roof: Soloists, chorus, Aspen Festival Ensemble / Andy Einhorn (conductor), Shuler Hensley (director). Klein Music Tent.
Cast:
Tevye – Shuler Hensley
Golde – Anne L. Nathan
Lazar Wolf – David Benoit
Motel – Danny Kornfeld
Hodel – Sydney Borchers
24.7.2024, Recital: Jennifer Koh (amplified violin), Missy Mazzoli (keyboards, electronics, piano). Harris Concert Hall.
Mazzoli – ‘Dissolve, O my Heart’, Interlude, ‘A Thousand Tongues’, ‘Tooth and Nail’, ‘Kinski Paganini’, ‘The Night Ahead and No Real Fate’, ‘A Song for Mick Kelly’, ‘Hail, Horrors, Hail’, ‘All I Want Is All of It’, ‘Procession Ascending’, ‘Vespers for Violin’
25.7.2024, Recital: Gil Shaham, Adele Anthony (violins). Harris Concert Hall.
J.S. Bach (arr. Ricci) — Presto from Violin Sonata No.1 in G minor
Ross Edwards — Ecstatic Dance for Two Violins
Julian Milone — Selections for 4 violins and double bass [ Yvette Kraft, Eunice Lee (violins), Liam Jankelovics (bass)]
Moritz Moszkowski — Suite for Two Violins and Piano, op.71 [Anton Nel (piano)]
Brahms — Clarinet Quintet in B minor [Joaquín Valdepeñas (clarinet), Choong-Jin Chang (viola) and Brinton Averil Smith (cello)]