United States Aspen Music Festival 2025 [8]: Klein Music Tent, Harris Hall, Aspen. (HS)
Conductor Xian Zhang supercharged the Aspen Festival Orchestra in Sunday afternoon’s concert by applying her high energy to a rich program: an opener that turned an invented hymn into an all-embracing piece of hope, one of Prokofiev’s less performed (but explosive) symphonies and a platinum crowd-pleaser by Tchaikovsky to finish. The music director of the New Jersey Symphony, Zhang was highly animated and communicated with broad gestures and emphasis on rhythm.
This paid dividends in Prokofiev’s Symphony No.6, an end-of-World War II work that hammers away for two movements before lightening up in a zippy finale. It was a tough go for the orchestra: the piece strides in with guns blazing and hardly eases up for its 40 minutes. The decibel level was loud and louder. Was it exciting? Yes. Did it convey the horrors of war? Sure. But not every climax had to dial it up to ten. The finale was a relief, with lots of dancelike music to lift spirits even if the underlying unease kept making itself felt. For the audience’s benefit, a bit more easing up here and there might have made the symphony vary its textures without diminishing the effect.
That thought could also apply to the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1 which seemed set to ‘turbo’ for the first movement and most of the finale. For his part, young Canadian pianist Tony Siqi Yun blazed away at fast tempos in those outer movements. After the majestic opening measures, his flourishes might have benefited from less pedal – at those tempos the details blurred. As the piece went on he used less pedal, which made things significantly better. Best were the quieter moments, especially the duet with flutist Mark Sparks in the slow movement and the tranquil contrasting segments of the finale. The encore, Brahms’s Intermezzo No.2, spotlighted Yun’s lyrical side, for the better.
Jessie Montgomery, currently guest composer-in-residence at the festival, found the melody for ‘Hymn for Everyone’ while on a neighborhood walk in the park walk early in the COVID lockdown. The piece, which opened the concert, uses a big orchestra, and it relishes the sonorities of multiple instruments ingeniously in an uplifting series of subtle variations on the melody. The generously hopeful finish was well-earned.
Saturday evening’s recital in Harris Hall featured composer-pianist Nico Muhly and violin virtuoso (and composer too) Pekka Kuusisto. They offered a feast of inventive contemporary music that was eminently approachable. The program was bookended by J. S. Bach, opening with the Largo from the C major Sonata for unaccompanied violin. It ended with a beautifully rendered encore of Bach’s organ prelude ‘O Mensch, bewein’ dein Sünde gross’, in an arrangement by Max Reger for string orchestra.
Without pause after the Largo, Muhly and Kuusisto strung together several pieces, each a gem, including Ellen Reid’s Desiderium for solo violin and Kuusisto’s solo violin arrangement of Barcarole by Finnish jazz pianist Iro Haarla. Most arresting was Arvo Pärt’s Fratres in a version for piano and violin that adds increasingly complex variations for the string soloist against Muhly’s piano repetitions. Muhly’s Drones & Violin explored resonances between the instruments’ sounds.
A 15-piece string orchestra, led with precision by the festival’s assistant conductor Paul-Boris Kertsman, changed the pace. Birds of Paradise by Andrea Tarrodi teemed with bird calls and soft harmonies, a lovely starter for the string orchestra alone. After Muhly found all the colors in Philip Glass’s energetic early minimalist Mad Rush on solo piano came the heart of the program: Shrink, Muhly’s concerto for violin. Kuusisto’s expressive playing won the day in the three-movement work.
Earlier Saturday, in the afternoon chamber music program, French-Canadian violinist Blake Pouliot did justice to Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Violin and Percussion. Raucous but seductively rhythmic, it was tinged with Javanese and Chinese percussion elements, bracingly offered by a percussion group led by Jonathan Haas. After two lively pieces rendered by a quartet of excellent violists, the afternoon closed with pianists Anton Nel and Cameron Stowe (a much-respected collaborative specialist) combining for an achingly beautiful Schubert Fantasy in F minor.
Friday’s Chamber Symphony concert with conductor Matthias Pintscher, newly-minted music director of the Kansas City Symphony, opened with a well-articulated performance of Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite. It swayed smoothly and showed all the colors that a Ravel score should.
Assonanza, a violin concerto that Pintscher wrote for Leila Josefowicz and the Cincinnati Symphony in 2022, came next. Among leading orchestras, the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic and London Symphony have all programmed Pintscher’s other compositions. This one did not go over well.
Pouliot did his best to articulate the wandering flares of dissonant melodic lines. The orchestra made a sort of quiet, restless grinding and scraping. It was irritating to listen to and never seemed to land anywhere. That contrasts with the new music which this season that has been impressive in its ability to communicate – including Mongtomery’s Hymn for Everyone and Kuusisto and Muhly’s entire recital.
One cannot blame Pouliot. His energetic and individualist performance of Ravel’s violin showpiece, Tzigane, which followed, was so ebullient it often outpaced the orchestra. After intermission, Pintscher sent the dwindling audience out into a particularly lovely Aspen evening by leading a sober, carefully paced Brahms Symphony No.3.
Harvey Steiman
25.7.2025: Blake Pouliot (violin), Aspen Chamber Orchestra / Matthias Pintscher (conductor), Klein Music Tent
Ravel – Mother Goose Suite: Tzigane
Matthias Pintscher – Assonanza for Violin and Orchestra
Brahms – Symphony No.3 in F major
26.7.2025: Chamber Music: Harris Hall
Harrison – Concerto for Violin and Percussion (Blake Pouliot [violin], Paul-Boris Kertsman [conductor])
Bowen – Fantasia for Four Violas
Michael Kimber – ‘Violas on Fire!’ (Zhenwei Shi, Choong-Jin Chang, Victoria Chiang, Masao Kawasaki [violas])
Schubert – Fantasy in F minor (Cameron Stowe, Anton Nel [pianos])
26.7.2025, Recital: Pekka Kuusisto (violin), Nico Muhly (piano), Aspen Festival Ensemble / Paul-Boris Kertsman (conductor), Harris Hall
J.S. Bach – Largo from Sonata in C major
Arvo Pärt – Fratres for Violin and Piano
Ellen Reid – Desiderium
Nico Muhly – Drones & Violin, Shrink (violin concerto)
Iro Haarla/Pekka Kuusisto –Barcarole for solo violin
Andrea Tarrodi – Birds of Paradise I
Philip Glass – Mad Rush
27.7.2025: Tony Siqi Yun (piano), Aspen Festival Orchestra / Xian Zhang (conductor), Klein Music tent
Jessie Montgomery – Hymn for Everyone
Prokofiev – Symphony No.6 in E-flat minor
Tchaikovsky – Piano Concerto No.1 in B-flat minor