United States Aspen Music Festival 2026 [2]: Aspen, Colorado. (HS)
Cellist Alisa Weilerstein and her husband, conductor Rafael Payare, are regular visitors to the Aspen Music Festival – Weilerstein literally since birth and Payare more recently. Sunday’s program brought them together in performance here for the first time, and the results were stunning in a thrilling Dvořák Cello Concerto. A clearly inspired orchestra delivered the details in the score and only occasionally overrode the soloist (and never in the parts that really count), making for an especially satisfying performance.
Weilerstein can sometimes stray into her own odd interpretations, but this one focused on the essence. Everything flowed without holding anything back yet never went too far. Her formidable technical ability never tipped over into showoff mode; instead, she used it to enlighten the music’s meaning. She chose the Sarabande from Bach’s Cello Suite in E-flat major for an encore, again using her proficiency to make the complex (if slow-moving) counterpoint emerge with heartfelt grace.
To top off the afternoon Payare, music director of orchestras in Montreal and San Diego, led a charge through Prokofiev’s Symphony No.5 that hit all the big moments and paid welcome attention to the details.
A highlight of Friday’s Chamber Symphony program, conducted by the irrepressible Nicholas McGegan, was a technicolor ride through Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks that showed off the woodwinds and brass in this year’s collective talent. In contrast, Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro got a particularly warm and elegant performance. In the first half, which opened with a boisterous romp through Beethoven’s King Stephen overture, soloist Leonidas Kavakos approached Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.4 with a darker, heavier style than we usually hear: impressive but not quite elegant.
In his recital on Wednesday, Kavakos played sonatas by Beethoven, Mozart and Franck with surprising intensity for a musician who doesn’t make a big show of virtuosic playing: clarity and emotional content were very much present. With little body movement, his mind was on where the music most go, and he got there without excess visual dramatics. Best was Stravinsky’s Divertimento for Violin and Piano. Pianist Enrico Pace, who has recorded all of Beethoven’s violin sonatas with Kavakos, brought a deft touch and lively rhythmic feel to a suite based on the composer’s ballet The Fairy’s Kiss. Stravinsky’s music embraces the Romantic expansiveness of Tchaikovsky with delightful near-quotations of the composer’s songs and various piano pieces. This piece is not played often enough, especially in the hands of a violinist and pianist this good. Franck’s Sonata in A major topped off the evening with generous expression but without going over the top.
Saturday evening’s program, a mixed bag titled ‘Time-Traveler’s Suite’, emerged as an ultimately fun idea by pianist Inon Barnatan that traced a path from J.S. Bach to more modern music inspired by great Baroque suites. An ad hoc chamber orchestra (with the redoubtable Alexander Kerr as concertmaster) surrounded Barnatan’s grand piano and harpsichord on the Harris Concert Hall stage. The opening salvo – the Allegro from Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.2 – featured colorful playing by all, topped by Mauricio Garcia de Jesús’s precise piccolo trumpet. A lovely Larghetto from Handel’s Trio Sonata in G minor fit nicely as a sort of slow movement, followed by two cheeky Rameau miniatures, making it seem like we were finding our way through a Baroque suite.
An orchestration by contemporary composer Thomas Adès of a Couperin harpsichord piece, Les barricades mistérieuses, was the first of several modern takes. Barnatan’s brash and surprisingly loud performance of the Rigaudon from Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin followed.
Much better was the lilt of the Serenata from Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne – an arrangement for violin and piano from the ballet Pulcinella that quotes music of the Baroque era. Kerr caressed the solo part, then delivered punchy playing in two of composer Charles Wuorinen’s original modern takes in Baroque style.
Since Baroque suites usually comprise dance music, contemporary French composer Guillaume Connesson (whose music has been described as ‘a blend of Ravel, John Williams and James Brown’) topped things off with a rhythmic and whacky impression of techno music. After that, the finale of the Brandenburg Concerto that started the evening made perfect sense with its own driving rhythms.
There was more Bach after intermission with Barnatan conducting. He kept the orchestra together in the Italian Concerto and generated an engaging run through Olli Mustonen’s Concerto for Three Violins from 1998 (much better than the composer’s more acidic ‘A City Called Heaven’ on Monday’s Chamber Music concert).
The highlight of Saturday afternoon’s chamber music program was an extraordinarily robust yet elegant Mendelssohn Piano Trio No.1 by three of the Aspen Festival’s finest. Violinist David Coucheron (concertmaster of the Atlanta Symphony), cellist Desmond Hoebig and pianist Anton Nel (both of whom have solo careers and teach at Glenn Gould School in Toronto) were uncannily channeling the same goal, each with his own thoughts of how it should meld together. Glorious stuff.
Harvey Steiman
Featured Image: Cellist Alisa Weilerstein and conductor Rafael Payare take bows in Aspen © Harvey Steiman
8.7.2026, Recital: Leonidas Kavakos (violin), Enrico Pace (piano). Harris Concert Hall
Beethoven – Violin Sonata No.4 in A minor
Stravinsky – Divertimento for Violin and Piano
Mozart – Violin Sonata in E minor
Franck – Violin Sonata in A major
10.7.2026: Leonidas Kavakos (violin), Aspen Chamber Symphony / Nicholas McGegan (conductor). Klein Music Tent
Beethoven – Overture to King Stephen
Mozart – Violin Concerto No.4 in D major
Elgar – Introduction and Allegro, Op.47
Handel – Music for the Royal Fireworks
11.7.2026: ‘Time Traveler’s Suite’: Inon Barnatan (piano). Harris Concert Hall
J.S. Bach – Allegro from Brandenburg Concerto No.2 in F major; Allegro assai from Brandenburg Concerto No.2 in F major; Italian Concerto
Handel – Larghetto from Trio Sonata in G major
Rameau – ‘La Poule’; ‘Entrée de Polymnie’ from Les Boréades
Couperin/Adès – Les barricades mistérieuses
Ravel – Rigaudon from Le Tombeau de Couperin
Stravinsky – Serenata from Suite Italienne
Wuorinen – ‘Pauli de Broda’, ‘Dy Ezels Crone’ from Bearbeitungen über das Glogauer Liederbuch
Connesson – ‘Techno-Parade’
Mustonen – Concerto for Three Violins
12.7.2026: Alisa Weilerstein (cello), Aspen Festival Orchestra / Rafael Payare (conductor). Klein Music Tent
Still – Darker America
Dvořák – Cello Concerto in B minor
Prokofiev – Symphony No.5 in B-flat major
Encore: Bach – Cello Suite No.4 in E-flat major, Sarabande