United States Sun Valley Music Festival [2]: Sun Valley Pavilion, Sun Valley, Idaho, 13 & 14.8.2024. (RP)
Beethoven and Brahms favorites were on the schedule in two back-to-back concerts at the Sun Valley Music Festival. Last-minute substitutions – pianist John Wilson in Beethoven’s ‘Triple’ Concerto and violinist James Ehnes in the Brahms Violin Concerto – had to be found. The concerts, however, went off without a hitch, with Ehnes in particular beguiling the audience with his expressive playing.
A work by a living composer opened each of the concerts. For the first one, it was Jessie Montgomery’s Strum. Montgomery, who was born in New York City and attended Juilliard, served as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s composer-in-residence. She won the 2024 Grammy Award for Rounds, her mini piano concerto.
Montgomery originally conceived Strum as a string quintet in 2006, but she has reworked it several times, including a version for string orchestra that was performed here. Drawing heavily on American folk idioms, Montgomery infused the piece with both melody and exciting rhythmic pulses. Alasdair Neale led a performance that was notable for its clarity, lyricism and energy. Melodies emerged like brightly colored threads from Montgomery’s carpet of complex textures and exciting rhythms. Neale shied away from indulging in the air of nostalgia that pervades the piece, instilling it instead with happiness.
Beethoven’s ‘Triple’ Concerto dates from the same time as his ‘Eroica’ Symphony, but it is cut from entirely different musical cloth. The concerto seems to hearken back to an earlier era, which is undoubtedly due to the solo piano part having been composed for the sixteen-year-old Archduke Rudolf. The young man was the composer’s friend and one of his most important patrons.
Beethoven never composed a cello concerto, and the ‘Triple’ Concerto is as close as he got, especially in the second movement. The work poses challenges, mostly relating to balance, which this performance did not completely meet. It wasn’t an issue between orchestra and soloists – violinist Jeremy Constant, cellist Amos Yang and pianist John Wilson – for conductor Stephanie Childress was attentive to that. Rather, it was due to the intimate scale of the playing from the soloists.
Yang instilled Beethoven’s melodies with great emotion and elegance. His interplay with Constant was polished to perfection, but the violin sound lacked presence. Wilson anchored the performance with playing that was equally refined but more in keeping with the acoustical space in which the work was performed. This was simply a case of louder undoubtedly being better.
The second concert opened with Quinn Mason’s A Joyous Trilogy. The twenty-eight-year-old hails from Dallas, where his musical activities ran the gamut in high school. Mason got hooked on classical music at the age of ten and, after winning a competition for high school-aged composers, realized that he had a shot at achieving his ambition of having a career as a composer.
Mason has focus. In his words, ‘I grew up around the orchestra, and my mentors were professional musicians. The orchestra is where my heart is’.
Mason composed A Joyous Trilogy in 2019, and it was premiered by the Harmonia Orchestra a year later. He subsequently revised it, and this version has been performed by orchestras around the world; Neale conducted it with the New Haven Symphony in 2023. As the title implies, A Joyous Trilogy is an ebullient musical ride. In pre-concert remarks, Quinn said the piece is an embodiment of joy, happiness and gratitude that he hopes puts a smile on your face. Neale led a performance notable for its clarity and crispness, and principal trombonist Gordon Woolfe’s solos were both beautiful and pensive. The gleaming, triumphant waves of sound in the final section elicited the response that Quinn had intended.
Brahms’s Violin Concerto was born out of his friendship with Joseph Joachim, one of the greatest violinists of his time. Brahms was a fine pianist, but he relied on Joachim for advice when it came to composing the concerto, to whom it was dedicated. Joachim was the soloist in the concerto’s 1879 premiere in Leipzig on New Year’s Day.
Melody poured out of Ehnes’s violin in the first movement. His sound was always refined, but it also encompassed great warmth and richness. The entry of the orchestra as Ehnes played the final notes of cadenza in the first movement was pure bliss. His playing in the third movement was as notable for expressiveness as virtuosity, and the smile that flashed on his face after he played the final notes of the coda captured the spirit that characterized his playing throughout.
Principal oboist Erik Behr played the simple melody of the Adagio with the utmost sensitivity, accompanied by the equally refined playing of the woodwinds. When Ehnes and Behr alternated phrases of that melody at the end of the movement, it was a musical moment to savor.
Throughout, Neale drew the same quality of playing from the orchestra. Balance was never an issue, and his tempi maintained a forward propulsion that culminated in the boisterous Allegro giacoso that concludes the concerto. Under his baton, the unexpected softness of the final measures made perfect sense.
Having heard both Beethoven and Brahms over the past two days, Ehnes offered an encore from the other of ‘The Three Bs’ – the Largo from Bach’s Violin Sonata No.3 in C major. It was playing that was pure and profound, and inspiring to the audience in both the pavilion and on the lawn.
Rick Perdian
13.8.2024 – Jeremy Constant (violin), Amos Yang (cello), John Wilson (pianist), Sun Valley Music Festival Orchestra / Stephanie Childress & Alasdair Neale (conductors).
Jessie Montgomery – Strum
Beethoven – Concerto in C for piano, violin and cello, Op.56, ‘Triple’
14.8.2024 – James Ehnes (violin), Sun Valley Music Festival Orchestra / Alasdair Neale (conductor).
Quinn Mason – A Joyous Trilogy
Brahms – Concerto in D major for Violin, Op.77