Laurence Vittes

Maxim Vengerov to Conduct Montreal Violin Competition Finals

2013-05-14T09:48:43-04:00

Maxim Vengerov. Photo credit: Sheila Rock

At the stroke of midnight on Saturday, the six survivors in the 2013 edition of the Montreal International Musical Competition, this year devoted to the violin, were announced from the stage of Bourgie Concert Hall at the Montreal Fine Arts Museum. What had begun on May 7 with 24 competitors from 14 countries was now heading into the finals Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the spectacular new Maison symphonique de Montréal. In a major challenge and opportunity bearing inevitable comparison to athletic playoffs, each finalist will play either the Brahms or Tchaikovsky concertos with the Montreal Symphony conducted by the great Russian virtuoso Maxim Vengerov, whose own career was accelerated by winning international competitions from the time he was ten.

Because of the emphasis on technique, classical music competitions will always be controversial events; as Debussy famously said, "Competitions are for horses."

At their best, however, as Vengerov told me in an interview, "competitions are a celebration of music, of the instrument and of the players," where the competitive spirit, especially at the highest levels, burns incandescently bright. Vengerov recalled admiringly how one of his heroes, David Oistrakh, after taking second prize in the 1935 Wieniawski Competition (Ginette Neveu took first, Henri Temianka took third), was determined to take a major international first prize and did so three years later at the first ever Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels (then named after the great Belgian virtuoso, Eugene Ysaye).

During the grueling semi finals last Friday and Saturday, each of the six eventual finalists was given 45 minutes to dazzle and persuade the eight judges, headed by Andre Bourbeau who helped found the Competition in 2002. Each of the six presented their distinct musical profile and personality in performances of memorable intensity, technique and style.

South Korea's Ji Young Lim began with Beethoven's early Sonata Op. 12 no. 3 in a performance of unusual elegance and grace, then finished with a richly dense account of Wieniawski's Faust Fantasy. Taiwan's Chi Li gave a sublimely etched reading of Prokofiev's First Sonata Op. 80 and brought the house down with his blistering playing of Antonio Bazzini's iconic La Ronde des lutins. Belgium's Marc Bouchkov took on Brahms's Third Sonata Op. 108 with a command and eloquence which held the audience riveted from the first note to the last, and ended with a superhuman performance of Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst's nearly unplayable, definitely insane variations on "The Last Rose of Summer" from Friedrich von Flotow's once popular opera Martha.

For his semi final performance, China's Zeyu Victor Li played with rare grace and mercurial poise Prokofiev's Second Sonata Op. 94a (originally for flute but later transcribed for the violin by the composer--with the help of Oistrakh!), then set the audience ablaze with Paganiniana by Nathan Milstein, a mind-bending riff on Paganini's famous 24th Caprice--the one used by Rachamninoff in his famous Rhapsody. France's Fédor Roudine took on and untangled the myriad webs and interstices of the first Prokofiev Sonata then stunned the audience with Franz Waxman's Carmen Fantasy, written for Jascha Heifetz. The United States' Stephen Waarts, so tall and thin that when he turned sideways he almost disappeared, captured with almost indecent sexuality the jazz and the Jazz Age of Ravel's Sonata in G Major before ending with Karol Szymanowski's ecstatic, emotionally confusing Nocturne and Tarantella.

In addition to the sheer exhilaration and prestige, and a gateway to engagements on the world's great concert stages, the first prize winner will take home $30,000; the second and third prize winners will take home $15,000 and $10,000 each, the three unranked finalists $2,000 each. There will also be additional prizes awarded to the best performance of the compulsory Canadian work, for the best semifinal recital, and for the best bow maker. There will even be a People's Choice Award from Radio Canada which spearheaded the comprehensive national and international media coverage.

It can only be a matter of time before social network voting becomes part of the Competition's exciting musical fray, although what that will add to the event is a totally open question. Of course, we know what Debussy would have thought.

Blanca Uribe in Bogotá: A Beacon For Beethoven

2013-05-06T11:09:55-04:00

Blanca Uribe in Bogotá, April, 2013. Photo credit: Marina Camacho de Samper.

After stepping down as George Sherman Dickinson Professor of Music at Vassar College in 2005, Blanca Uribe returned to her native Colombia, and her home town of Medellin. No one who knew Blanca during her 35 years at Vassar will be surprised to learn that Blanca has since remained active as a performer, educator and jurist, and has become widely and wisely influential in the lives of her students, city and country. She will serve as a juror at the upcoming Van Cliburn finals in Fort Worth.

"When one speaks of the music of Colombia," the young conductor Alejandro Posada said recently, "the first person that comes to mind is Blanca Uribe."

Blanca's importance was acknowledged when Bogotá's first International Music Festival invited her to perform a special recital of three Beethoven piano sonatas. Her gracious acceptance and compelling playing confirmed the new Festival's seriousness of purpose and legitimacy. The recital on March 30 at 11:30 was the most intimate of the 25 Festival concerts I attended. In the space of an hour, Blanca and Beethoven embraced the overflow audience in the Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo's recital hall. It was typical of the life-enhancing relationships that classical music make; Blanca listens carefully to Beethoven while she is playing and so the listeners become wrapped up in the gradually unfolding process.

In Beethoven's Sonata Opus 78 in F sharp major, for example, which the composer dedicated to a young, intelligent, passionate and talented Hungarian noblewoman, Therese von Brunswick, Blanca laid out each note as if it were part of a secret language between Beethoven and Therese -- as it certainly may have been considering that she was briefly once an "Immortal Beloved" contender.

When the adoring audience supplicated for an encore, Blanca responded with a kind and courageous gesture meant to heal wounds and bring together old friends. In honor of the great Colombian harpsichordist Rafael Puyana, who had died on March 1 in Paris, long and bitterly estranged from his native country, she played a consoling sonata by Puyana's favorite composer, Domenico Scarlatti.

I talked to Blanca briefly in the green room afterwards, about the Festival and its charismatic actor/director/playwright Ramiro Osorio, one of Colombia's most iconic male heartthrobs and the country's first Minister of Culture.

The Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogotá, which Osorio had started in 1988, she told me proudly, now brings in theatrical companies and troupes from all over the world, and she was proud too that the public response to the new Festival Internacional de Musica, devoted entirely to Beethoven, was so overwhelming. Osorio's approach to building public-private alliances in support of the arts bears watching, Blanca believes, for it is based on the assumption that the best outreach for art is universal access and great quality.

She was also impressed by the youth and talent of Osorio's staff. You couldn't help but like them, she said. During the course of the Festival I had come to know some of them well myself, including a 27-year old lawyer and single mom hoping to break into management at the Cirque du Soleil; a young musician whose street smarts and musical sparks could ignite the Festival's multi-cultural parties; and a young anthropologist who wants to work in the field on behalf of long-neglected social needs.

With her customary generosity and enthusiasm, Blanca agreed that the kids at the Teatro were more than just first rate. "They are the future of Colombia," she said, "it is they who will build the new infrastructure."

For my Spotify playlist, I have selected several gentle movements from Beethoven's late sonatas, which Blanca made her own, a graceful little Argentinean lyric by Albert Ginastera, and Rafael Puyana playing an inimitable Romanesca.

Finals Week Opens at Indianapolis Piano Competition

2013-04-16T15:52:16-04:00

L-R: Andrew Staupe, Claire Huangci, Eric Zuber, Sean Chen, Sara Daneshpour
Photo credit: Lamar Richcreek

In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, Indianapolis seems even more than usual like an extremely safe and solidly middle American stronghold. The nine-story Indiana Power & Light building next to Hilbert Center Theatre, where the Indianapolis Symphony plays, usually displays a grid of oblong lighted squares in alternating colors. During Christmas, it displays a Christmas tree. Monday at midnight, it changed to an American flag.

It is the final week of the American Pianists Association's ProLiance Energy Classical Fellowship Awards competition. For the five remaining hopefuls it holds the promise for the winner of a $50,000 cash prize plus two years of career assistance including recitals and a recording opportunity. Indianapolis, which has hosted the awards and the companion jazz awards in alternating years since their inception in 1981, seems like a perfect intersection of American culture and commerce.

After months of grueling rounds of the usual knuckle-grinding etudes and superhuman virtuoso showpieces, the last week began on Monday with the first of five free noontime concerts at Christ Church Cathedral across from Lilly Hall; at each one of the finalists will play a short recital of solo pieces followed by a major piano quintet with the young, Cleveland-based Linden String Quartet.

The atmosphere on Monday at noon was electric. With the five internationally-renowned judges (three distinguished pianists and two industry executives) comfortably ensconced in the organ loft, Eric Zuber played Schubert dreamily and Liszt brilliantly before diving into a rousing performance of Dvorak's Piano Quintet Op. 81, which explored and exploited the inevitable musical dynamics between a virtuoso pianist and a virtuoso string quartet. It was just the beginning of the week's musical fireworks.

The competition continued on Monday night, at Butler University's Eidson Duckwall Recital Hall, where the five finalists each played a specially commissioned short piece (five to eight minutes long) by American composers, each of which was well crafted to give the contestants something to sink their chops into on both a musical and pianistic level.

Missy Mazzoli's Heartbreaker (played by Sara Daneshpour) was the shortest and edgiest, and the most satisfying musical experience; Gabriela Lena Frank's Karnavalito #1 (played by Claire Huangci), with its delightful comic book accents and lyrical energy, was the most delightful. (An interesting human if totally non-musical observation was that each of the three men made a legitimately practical and entertaining show of adjusting the height of the piano bench while the two women didn't even bother.) On Thursday night at the Glick Indiana History Center, each of the five will collaborate with superstar soprano Jessica Rivera in an ambitious program of songs by Mompou, Richard Strauss, Debussy, Turina and Barber.

The stakes will ratchet up on Friday and Saturday nights when the finalists each play a complete major concerto with the Indianapolis Symphony conducted by Gerard Schwarz: Chopin No. 1 (Daneshpour), Prokofiev No. 3 (Huangci), Bartok No. 2 (Sean Chen), and Rachmaninoff No. 2 (Eric Zuber) and No. 3 (Andrew Staupe).

Despite their being a mainstay of the classical music business, competitions remain a controversial practice. Even pianists who have survived and thrived on competitions often decry the lack of substance and an emphasis on a "game" mentality; looking over the list of Indianapolis winners yields only a few who have made it to the highest levels of their profession, most notably Frederick Chiu and Stephen Prutsman. The challenge of facing down rivals, judges and audiences (including radio listeners to live broadcasts of the noon concerts on WFMT Radio Network and a four-program, eight-hour syndicated series to air in October on WFMT Radio Network), all keen on the spectacle and hoping to discover the next Van Cliburn, can leave the losers, and the winners, too, as disoriented and disillusioned as Texas cheerleaders.

Even in the gloom of an intermittently rainy Tuesday morning, however, the excitement of the competition has put all such considerations into the shadows. Right now, there is only hope. When the winner is announced at the conclusion of Saturday's night concert, the future (for the winner, at least) will seem very bright indeed.

The World's Greatest Beethoven Festival: 'Bogotá es Beethoven'

2013-04-06T11:19:11-04:00

Bogotá's First International Music Festival in the city's three-year-old Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo was a huge success. It expanded the city's own faith in itself, and was a great first step to putting Bogotá on the international classical music map. The festival's impact has been so great that when Gustavo Dudamel and his Simon Bolívar Orchestra perform Beethoven's Ninth in Bogotá in July, this city could explode onto the world scene. It was more than just a musical celebration of the highest quality, it was a brave new world model of how classical music can serve its community, from bringing people together to attracting new business.

In addition to the social and artistic goals that were accomplished, the festival further defined Teatro Mayor director Ramiro Osorio's vision of theaters as public workspaces to the point where that vision can now serve as a template for replication and localization. Expansion is already planned to Calli; other centers of Colombian music, like Medellin and Cartagena, may follow soon.

Osorio's is a uniquely Colombian vision, one that bears contrasts with René Martin's Centre de réalisations et d'Études artistiques in Nantes. Additionally, the idea that classical music of this quality and community embrace would make Bogotá attractive to foreign investors is a credit to InvestinBogota.org, who hosted me. Investors with a cultural portfolio should take note.

Several aspects stood out from a Los Angles perspective

A broadly democratic approach

The festival seems to have acted as if it their brief was to anticipate and meet demand, recruit high-quality performers, and price tickets at whatever people could afford, including nothing; in doing so, the calculation may have been that the Teatro could slash overhead costs and operate on a cost-efficient budget (the operation overall was enormously efficient).

It was a broadly democratic approach: Ticket prices came down for rich people and corporations, too, excepting those who wished to pay equal to their means.

Quality

I went to 25 of the 56 concerts, and was staggered by the brilliant array of international and Colombian artists, by their wide range of style and their global scope.

There were performers finding fountains of youth, like the craggy British lion John Lill who found a deeply consoling Beethoven in Bogotá. Always a man of the people, Lill played an incomparable Waldstein Sonata in the main hall of the Teatro after having talked to me about it earlier in the day, sitting at the upright piano in his dressing room to demonstrate.

There were brilliant stars like Andrei Korobeinikov, a pocket rocket Rachmaninov whose reading of Beethoven's Sonata, Opus 111, the composer's last, transfixed a typically sold out crowd of young and old, families with children, couples dating and even critics (from Madrid, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Los Angeles). At the end, as in all the greatest performances, they didn't know whether to laugh or cry; instead they shouted. Such audience response happened often during the Festival.

Chemistry

Bogotá wouldn't have been Beethoven without the audiences, the demographics of which would make North American orchestras cry (and raise questions about the methods and goals of their outreach programs). The musicians I talked to said that Bogotá's audiences were equal to or surpassed in open-hearted generous warmth, and innocence and freshness of response, those in other great cities like Berlin, Vienna, London, Tokyo and New York.

Complaint

Colombia's own Manolov Quartet, which drew high raves from every critic who heard them, didn't play in the Teatro Mayor.

Hint, hint: The Manolov Quartet could make up for Colombia's defeat in futbol if they could beat Venezuela's Simon Bolivar Quartet in a special concert when Gustavo Dudamel returns to Bogotá next week!

Next: The Top 10 Concerts at the Festival ...

Seattle's Ludovic Morlot Conducts the LA Phil in Disney Hall

2013-01-25T15:41:00-05:00

You can get a taste of what's turning on classical music in Seattle at the Walt Disney Concert Hall this weekend when Ludovic Morlot, the Seattle Symphony's sexy young music director, conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Mozart, Beethoven and Henri Dutilleux. If the chemistry is right, you'll get an idea of how Morlot's open-heart engagement with music is captivating Seattle, including teens and 20-somethings used to the Northwest's best regional bands. I saw Seattle Symphony audiences like these in action during an October weekend of the piquantly-named, Symphony Untuxed and [untitled] concerts: three concerts on one Saturday night.

My trial by Seattle Symphony began at 7 p.m. with Morlot leading a reduced version of his full band (the rest were off playing for Seattle Opera) augmented by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) playing in Benaroya Hall, famed for its spectacular audiophile sound. They played Mozart, Haydn (a sterling Symphony No. 103) and the world premiere of an enchanting new work by Dai Fujikura called Mina, inspired by the birth of the composer's first child, commissioned by the Symphony's enlightened donors.

The subsequent concerts that followed at 9 (free) and 10 (paid) took place in the Hall's lobby which had been turned very convincingly into a lounge, complete with a bar -- one that an out-of-town journalist, musicians and a lot of very cool, young people definitely visited on their way to hit some clubs deep into the night, but hung around and even paid to hear the new sounds. At the free concert, ICE played Gabriel Prokofiev's Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra; at 10, it was a trip back to a past which turned out to be the future -- music written in 1962 by Ligeti, John Cage, Xenakis, Earle Brown and friends celebrating in an odd way the 50th anniversary of Seattle's World Fair.

The music on Morlot's L.A. Phil program takes the listener through two deep emotional experiences illuminated by the beauty of Mozartian light.

The catalyst for Dutilleux's Shadows of Time was the half-century anniversary of the end of World War II in 1995, of the discovery of Anne Frank's diary and, specifically, a memory of the deportation by the Nazis to concentration camps of an entire orphanage of Jewish children. Its 20 minutes pass transiently, with the distilled, haunted quality of a Bergman film. Dutilleux's precise architecture is like applying Seurat to vast, plastic dimensions of time and space, which are likely to glow in the dark, curl up with you or sock you on your nose. Morlot shares his love for Dutilleux with Esa-Pekka Salonen (who recently recorded Shadows with a French orchestra). When the musicians connect with the emotional intimacy of Dutilleux's bare musical blueprints, Shadows is a magical, moving work.

Mozart's 25th Piano Concerto, which follows, sweeps along in broad, open strokes, often with a martial air and is frequently adorned with tender, sweet asides of the most evocative kind. The soloist is tested with lots of notes, which sound easy to play but which must be rolled off the cuff with effortless ease. Other keys: The pianist has an exquisite solo with a solo cello in the last movement, and the evening's soloist, Emanuel Ax, has to supply his own cadenza for the first movement (Mozart didn't leave one) -- and the cadenza needs to be a brute because in these days everybody knows cadenzas, and because K. 503 demands the biggest of Mozart cadenzas. Another spot to watch: More than any other Mozart piano concerto, No. 25 depends on chemistry between the soloist and the conductor, and the orchestra's intensity.

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which finishes off the program, is not only a great ringtone, but is also iconic and profoundly redemptive in its agony, torment and eventual triumph. Of course, the Los Angeles Philharmonic could play it in their sleep. It will be Morlot's final challenge of the night to see if he can keep them, and us, awake.

Stellar Cellists Come From Oklahoma City, Too

2012-11-13T10:29:20-05:00

Friday, Nov. 2, 2012 Joshua Roman played an enormous four-movement cello concerto by Osvaldo Golijov at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The piece is called Azul and requires three additional soloists-a digitally-equipped turbo-accordion, and two percussion soloists with a roomful of exotic percussion including bird tweets and drums. Also featured were a very Technicolor Los Angeles Philharmonic and guest conductor Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony.

The result is music of transcendent beauty assembled from Golijov's toolkit of half-remembered memories of musics from a wide spread of classical music, ethnic, world and other cultural heritages. The 28-year old Roman held his own so bravely against the incessant soundtrack which Golijov has the orchestra lay down that the audience quickly fell in love with his musical intensity, good looks and tousled hair.

Without an intermission (it was a Casual Friday concert, after all) the Philharmonic threw itself into a powerful performance of Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony. The woodwinds made incredibly beautiful noises and the brass was loud and glorious. Conducting precisely and attentively, Alsop unleashed the full impact of the composer's personality.

I caught up with Joshua Roman by phone a few days before the concert.

LV: What's it like, traveling around, playing in different cities?

Joshua Roman: Wherever I am, there are differences in local pride. In Seattle, where Hendrix and especially Nirvana created examples of going off and doing things their way, the kids there took as the lesson that if you just do what you love, you will find people to connect with. But the pockets of musical culture, and even musical micro-cultures, that exist in Seattle might not be the same in every city.

LV: How do you connect?

Joshua Roman: You have to be curious about people's lives. Connecting with people in every city is knowing where they're coming from, what they need, and connecting on their terms. In Seattle, it's in bars and clubs. In Omaha, it's in a coffee house. The night life in Seattle and New York City stays up late; not so much in Oklahoma City, where I grew up, and where the action is more likely to be at a church or house concert.

LV: What makes playing in L.A. special?

Joshua Roman For one thing, the Philharmonic has a great outreach program. Yesterday I played at LA County Jail, and I am also working in the Phil's Street Symphony program, with Robert Gupta, taking classical music to the homeless, incarcerated and mentally ill. They were some of the best audiences I've ever had. They connected with the music in a direct and emotional way. The experience reaffirmed my belief that classical music should be everywhere: in the concert hall, in the street-like The Knights and Brooklyn Rider and many others are already doing. We have a responsibility to play, and to show how classical music can be more relevant to the world and to those around us.

LV: Why does the term "classical music" have such power that everybody wants to be a part of it now?

Joshua Roman: That's a very good question. I'm constantly asking that myself. Some of it has to do with playing music that has been around for a while. For example, Bach, who is my favorite composer, has had his ups and downs as a classical composer; he had become Old Father Bach until he was resurrected by Mendelssohn in the 19th century. The great thing with old music is if you can play it in a setting that is now-and that's not something that's so easy to describe because it's different for every performer and every setting-you can definitely have an immediate connection through the music on a human and personal level.

LV: Are today's concert experiences also changing?

Joshua Roman: My friends and I have ongoing conversations about where classical music has come from, and it affects the way we think of the concert experience so that, whoever the composer, we strive to do things that makes us feel the excitement and risk of reaching for the highest musical goals.

LV: You think audiences can tell?

Joshua Roman: It's very easy for the audience to pick up on. Maybe they can't tell the difference between a few missed notes, but they can hear if the musicians are on the edge of their seats.

Renaud Capuçon: LA Phil's Blockbuster Lineup to Take Over Disney Hall

2012-10-28T15:22:53-04:00

This weekend as Disney Hall, the Violin Concerto of Erich Wolfgang Korngold will be played by French heartthrob Renaud Capuçon and conducted by Manchester United-fan Daniel Harding. After halftime for Mahler's Fifth Symphony, the symphony with the beautiful, slow music from Death in Venice.

Renaud talked to me about Korngold's concerto earlier this week, and why it makes so much sense in L.A.

LV: Do you like playing Korngold in Disney Hall?
Renaud Capuçon: I love it, it's a great hall; and I love to play it in L.A., because it was premiered here with the L.A. Phil and Jascha Heifetz -- and I've played it in Paris with Gustavo conducting!

LV: Korngold wrote a lot of great Hollywood film music, like Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood. Does the "Violin Concerto" sound like film music?
Renaud Capuçon: He was absolutely not a Hollywood composer. He was a Viennese, a central European composer, and the "Violin Concerto" is Korngold from Europe mixed with Korngold of the cinema. It's not film music.

LV: What's it like to play the same music with different conductors?
Renaud Capuçon: It's a magical thing when you change conductors. You listen and talk to the conductor, like in chamber music. Of course, I still have my own ideas and my own sound, but it can change in the collaborative process. Even when I tour with the same conductor, the result will be different because of the different halls, or the audience or, sometimes, just a mood.

For a conductor to be able to balance their own ideas of the performance's dynamic range and speed with me in real time -- while the performance is actually going on -- requires that the conductor knows how I use my violin and bow as intimately as that conductor would know how a singer uses their voice. In each, the inevitable, continual adjustments make a performance unique -- not only for the audience, but for the musicians, as well, who are equally curious to see what the results will be.

LV: Do you like to play around with different instruments and bows?
Renaud Capuçon: I loved the violin straightaway, and have played it from the time I was five. It was the sound that got me, and I just kept on looking for more sound -- which meant trying as many violins as I could, because each one sounded different. When I discovered that bows could also change the sound -- well, now I've become a bit crazy about bows. Right now, I have a beautiful Tourte which is so wonderful that I use it all the time, although I am tempted to use a different one for big demanding pieces like Bartok's #2 or Shostakovich's #1.

LV: I'm starting Suzuki with my granddaughter. How hard is the Korngold to play?
Renaud Capuçon: You'll have to wait until you can play the Brahms or Tchaikovsky violin concertos. And then, if you want to play it really well, you must try to guess what Korngold -- what any composer -- wanted to say. Just playing the notes is not the goal; serving the music is.

Violin Concerto
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Composed: 1937-1939, revised 1945
Length: 25 minutes

Orchestration: 2 flutes (2nd = piccolo), 2 oboes (2nd = English horn), 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons (2nd = contrabassoon), 4 horns, 2 trumpets, trombone, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, gong, vibraphone, xylophone, bells, chimes), harp, celesta and strings.

First Los Angeles Philharmonic performance: January 8, 1953, Alfred Wallenstein conducting, with soloist Jascha Heifetz.

Read Hugh Macdonald's liner notes here.

Eastman Scores With Comic Books, Martyrdom and Claude Achille Debussy

2012-10-22T17:59:34-04:00

The Eastman School of Music did Claude Debussy and Rochester, New York proud this past weekend with an array of cultural presentations culminating in a multi-media recreation of the life, times and musical excitement that changed the course of classical music history.

It was part of Eastman's celebration of Debussy's 150th anniversary called The Prismatic Debussy, comprising three weekends of performances and a month-long exhibition of manuscripts at the school's Sibley Music Library, the largest academic music library in North America.

Using the resources supplied by Sibley, which holds several invaluable Debussy autographs, artistic director Marie Rolf's entrepreneurial team of internationally renowned musicologists, faculty and deans fueled dazzling demonstrations by Eastman's elite student performers, faculty and alumni. And there are lots still to come through October 27 including Debussy in the comics (thanks to P. Craig Russell) and the North American premiere of five newly discovered songs.

I asked Professor of Musicology Ralph Locke, who played a key role in the design and planning of the celebration, to fill us in.

LV Why does his music matter in 2012?

Ralph Locke Debussy's music is experimental without becoming obscure, passionate but never mawkish, inventively colorful but to an expressive purpose, not merely a decorative one. Composers from Stravinsky and Bartók onward have been inspired by him. He is often described as one of the founding forces of twentieth-century music, and with good reason.

I suspect he was an unusually instinctive artist, yet the songs he wrote at age 19 and 20 -- some of which are only now coming to light -- show that he mastered the craft of composition quite early. He had trouble getting works published in his early years, but the recently published early songs help us see how skilled he was -- and how many different styles he could command -- at an early age.

LV If the center of your listening universe were Debussy instead of Beethoven, who would be the equivalents of Haydn, Handel, Mozart and Bach?

Ralph Locke Debussy drew on a wide range of stylistic and aesthetic models. Painters and poets of the time were immensely important to him. But among composers, I hear César Franck in some of the works, such as Printemps and -- I'm not alone in this! -- the last movement of La mer. He knew the works of earlier composers very well: Palestrina, Bach, Chopin (he published an edition of some of Chopin's works), and -- in many important ways -- Musorgsky. Fauré was an immediate predecessor and contemporary, working almost "in parallel" with Debussy (like Picasso and Matisse). Ravel was another: the relationship between them was deeply fraught. Well-meaning followers pitted them against each other, claiming that one preceded the other in doing this or that. (As if "priority" were all that matters in art!) Debussy was greatly taken with the music to the ballet Namouna, by Edouard Lalo. He got so excited hearing it at a concert that he had to be ushered out of the hall.

The biggest influence was perhaps Wagner. Pelléas et Mélisande is an extremely close successor to the Wagnerian "model" of operatic writing: the orchestra often carries the main musical material, leaving the voices free to declaim Maeterlinck's remarkable poetry-drenched text in natural speech rhythms. Pelléas et Mélisande is also suffused with an almost suffocating sense of hopelessness: there isn't even an overflowing River Rhine at the end to give us the feeling of life beginning anew.

LV What are your favorite Debussy recordings

Ralph Locke I love all different kinds of Debussy performances. The famous Pierre Boulez recordings are luminously clear and precise. The first recording of Pelléas (conducted by Roger Désormière) still has a naturalness about it that has never been surpassed. I'm currently swimming happily around in Natalie Dessay's CD of early Debussy songs, including four that were not published until this past winter. These songs will receive their North American premieres at our Debussy Premieres conference on October 27 (performed by soprano Elizabeth Calleo and pianist Russell Miller). Two other songs will receive their world premiere (by students from the Eastman School and -- via Internet2 -- from the Royal College of Music).

I urge all Debussy lovers to locate a copy of Leonard Bernstein's out-of-print recording of The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. Debussy's 1911 work -- using a four-hours-long spoken text by Gabriele D'Annunzio -- has received many remarkable recordings with a single narrator speaking selected lines, but Bernstein uses two narrators instead of one so he can create very theatrical dialogues between the work's two main characters. It helps that the dialogues are declaimed in English using Bernstein's own, very faithful translation.

LV Tell me about the comic book event

Ralph Locke Theatrical Debussy is a highly unusual, perhaps unprecedented chance for an audience to encounter a great masterpiece--his opera Pelléas et Mélisande -- from a totally different vantage point. I expect that my comfortable sense of "knowing" this work from recordings, DVDs, and live performances -- and my expectations when I enter the hall -- will be challenged repeatedly over the event's two hours.

Comic Book Debussy is a talk by artist P. Craig Russell about his comic books based on great operas, and Theatrical Debussy is a two-hour presentation of the opera's music in an arrangement for a mixed chamber ensemble plus live electronics, while the panels of P. Craig Russell's comic book--complete with dialogue "balloons" -- are projected on a large screen. I wonder if some members of the audience will be quietly singing along! Well, participatory music making is a hallmark of a thriving musical culture, right?

Exclusive Interview With Yo Yo Ma on the Spirituality of Music

2012-09-30T19:53:30-04:00

Tonight in Chapel Hill, N.C., Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble will give the world premiere of Dmitry Janov-Janovsky's hour-long Stravinsky fantasy called Sacred Signs at the University of North Carolina. Based on the writings of the great Russian painter and yoga pioneer Nicholas Roerich, it's the opening concert of Carolina Performing Arts' 100th anniversary celebration in the form of a year-long Rite of Spring @100 Festival, and it's tapping into a game-changing Russian vein of spirituality.

Coming two days before the first presidential debate, in a closely-watched state, the festival launch also affirms that classical music together with academia can play a unique role in finding spiritual expression and perhaps guidance at an uncertain world.

During an exclusive phone interview, Yo Yo Ma told me that Janov-Janovsky draws on many of the same traditions Stravinsky drew on in the Rite of Spring, but written for an ensemble of 13 instruments (including shakuhachi, sheng, pipa and three percussion instruments) instead of a whole orchestra, reflecting today's faster global, internet world.

"Dmitri's music is strange, personal, evocative; it makes you sit up. When I look at the score it appears to be a musical macro view of our lives, like Hawking's Brief History of Time, the music has that kind of interpolating timeline quality."

Ma's central musical quest remains devoted to a concept of music as "an expression, a form of thinking and feeling which, at the same time, can get to the measurable and immeasurable sides of people." He says, "When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling ... our actions and lives are always the richer for it."

Referring to the diversity of musical influences on the opening concert and throughout the festival, Ma explained that listening to and playing different musics "allows you to get into so many different worlds that you can be very focused on one thing and yet extremely aware of your environment." He talked about this sensitivity as if it were a skill we need more than ever in today's world:

"Collaboration, flexibility, imagination and innovation. As you begin to realize that every different type of music, everybody's individual music, has its own rhythm, life, language and heritage, you realize how life changes, and you learn how to be more open and adaptive to what is around us."

This playlist is designed to provide a brief respite during the day. It touches on some of the many kinds of music Yo Yo Ma likes to play.

Orchestras for Sale to the Highest Bidder

2012-09-20T13:35:42-04:00

With all due respect to the conventional wisdom about how America's orchestras have gotten into their present fix, in order to move forward it may be necessary to do more than just twist the kaleidoscope.

I wrote the following in Gramophone in 2003, when the fear that classical music was dead was in full hue and cry:

It's pretty much a given that, sometime soon, the 30 or so top orchestras in the U.S. will form themselves into cooperative leagues under the aegis of a national marketing and governing organization, much like the professional sports teams already do.

In a big, media-oriented country like the U.S., regional and local marketing is of increasingly limited effectiveness not to mention that, in the competitive music industry, classical music needs all the help it can get. Right now, of course, all you hear is complaints about aging audiences, dead-white-men repertoire, high prices and elitist management. Enjoy the complaints while you can.

Now that the classical music industry is once more on the rise, the solution to the orchestras problems may be to convert orchestras into businesses.

Deborah Borda, photo by Matthew Imaging

If the orchestras were to set up competitive leagues organized under a national marketing umbrella and hire a czar, the Los Angeles Philharmonic's CEO Deborah Borda would be ideal for the job. She positioned the Philharmonic to take advantage of its unique position at the center of the classical music industry -- and she could do it with America's orchestras by making LA Phil's success the lynchpin of a nationwide initiative.

It would not be the first time Los Angeles gave birth to a powerhouse executive who grew a sector of the entertainment industry. In 1960, Pete Rozelle moved from running the professional football Rams, the sport's most exciting team, to creating a modern league-based entity that has shaped history. Just like classical music.

Like Rozelle, with Gustavo and Los Angeles classical music's most exciting team, Borda is also at the right time and place to assemble a critical mass of orchestras for fun and profit.

Similarly to HMOs, converting an orchestra into a business is simple and legal:

Find a buyer

Set a price

Get the government’s approval

Put the money into a trust fund for new orchestral ventures

Of course, symphonies may not seem like good investments. But then, neither did pro football teams 45 years ago. Buffalo’s football franchise, for example, sold for only $25,000 in 1965. Today, it’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

When converting orchestras into businesses becomes standard practice, musically-inclined portfolios will be all the rage. You can get in at the ground floor if you invest now, while major American orchestras can be had for a song. Detroit and Philadelphia may no longer be on the market, but Atlanta, the Twin Cities and Indianapolis might be willing to talk.

Even in Los Angeles, the purchase and proper funding of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra could pose problems to the LA Philharmonic, perhaps by using guerrilla tactics and demanding playing time in Disney Hall.

Sort of like the problems Blake Griffin poses to Kobe Bryant.

Could President Obama's Tweet Save America's Orchestras?

2012-09-07T16:18:41-04:00

When President Obama tweeted, "she's the conductor and I'm second fiddle," after his wife's speech at the opening session of the Democratic National Convention, he provided the perfect tool for a long overdue revolution in the classical music orchestra industry.

It couldn't have happened at a better time. Orchestras in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Atlanta, Indianapolis and Detroit are or have recently been in crisis stage. The President might not have had this in mind, but the advent of women conductors on a large-scale could grow the classical music industry exponentially by uniquely illuminating classical music in ways that have not been heard before.

The arrival in a meaningful way of women conductors would provide inspiring role models for children, give a boost to music education, and hand America's orchestras something new and exciting to sell at a time when they desperately need the help.

Before the President's tweet, women like Michelle LaVaughn Robinson stood a better chance of becoming the nation's First Lady than they did of becoming the conductor of an American orchestra. Post tweet, however, the situation could quickly change.

With Michelle Obama the conductor in the White House, and the President only the second fiddle, it's time for America's orchestras to take their cue. This is the right time to invest in woman conductors.

It's a curious fact about the classical music industry: Women have been kept off the podium for so long that not only audiences but musicians, critics and management have no idea how much they would bring in terms of unique expressive content and emotional dimensions to classical music's most beloved symphonies and concertos. The women know, but theirs has been a largely unheard legacy.

Until Tuesday night, if you wanted to avoid heartache, you wouldn't let your daughters dream of growing up to be conductors. Now that the President has tweeted, hand your girls a baton and Beethoven, watch out!

Grand Teton Music Festival Opens Triumphantly With Beethoven and Wagner

2012-07-12T14:32:10-04:00

Sitting pretty in its geographical patch of political Wyoming blue, the Grand Teton Music Festival opened its 51st Teton Village season Friday night. Given the quality of the music making in a program of Beethoven and Wagner, it was immediately clear that this festival is developing along the Aspen model, presenting classical music of the highest quality in surroundings of formidable luxury (symbolized by a Four Seasons hotel) against a backdrop of iconic mountain majesty.

Over the course of seven weeks, the Festival Orchestra will play on Friday and Saturday nights at Walk Festival Hall; this weekend it was Beethoven's Eighth Symphony and excerpts from Wagner's The Valkyrie. Led by the Festival's dynamically leonine Music Director Donald Runnicles, the Beethoven was rich and engaging, and featured horn playing in the Trio of exceptional sweetness and beauty with the enchanting cello triplets played solo (instead of by the whole cello section) by Toronto Symphony's Igor Gefter. For Wagner, the Orchestra was increased in size exponentially, with a huge complement of strings, and filled the acoustically brilliant hall with stunning sound while Runnicles and the singers infused the narrative with wonderful humanity.

As she had the night before in a recital of German romantic songs and American cabaret, soprano Heidi Melton stressed classical music's eternal youth; in the Wagner, Melton found refreshingly light emotional moods in both Sieglinde and Brunnhilde; although there was plenty of bitter moral tragedy and some spectacular Valkyrie cries in her magnificent singing, the occasional girlish note in her acting made both heroines seem appealingly young and remarkably healthy.

Stuart Skelton's heroic Siegmund was the ideal lover for Melton's sumptuous Sieglinde. He strode out onto the Walk Festival Hall's stage, seemingly seven feet tall, resplendent in an ample vest of purple. He mouthed his words with outstanding relish and spun them out stentorian and proud; when his character allowed him to be, as in the "Winter Storms" song, Skelton delivered rapt poetry and long, elegant lines.

No Wotan could have suffered more eloquently nor carried out the terrible ritual demands his position required than Donnie Ray Albert. The authentic, fine emotion in his burnished baritone rode triumphantly the alternating waves of Wagner's mythology until, at the end, his powerful love ignited the flames of glory protecting Brunnhilde until her Siegfried comes (next opera).

The Festival Orchestra was made up of America's best, many from major orchestras off the mainstream radar screens, including Kansas City, Saint Paul, Minnesota and Utah. As the best orchestras do, it took Wagner's immensely difficult music to a parallel dimension beyond the story and the words, where the opera lives an entirely instrumental life, and where, on Friday night that instrumental life overwhelmed a breathless audience with its size and power.

Teton Village lies at the base of the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, located adjacent to the gates of Grand Teton National Park. The valley in general is called Jackson Hole and then there is the town of Jackson as well. So, there is plenty to do between the Festival's musical events, like para-gliding for two at a few hundred bucks a pop, encountering moose on the trail (hint: respect their space), or just cruising through the open spaces, the mountain passes and the comforting presence of the surrounding, similarly western states.

Musical Instruments: The Oboe

2012-07-12T07:35:06-04:00

Of all the instruments that bring relief to the heart and soul of women, and men, the oboe is one of the oldest, and one of the most deeply sympathetic, perhaps because the lips of the player touch the reeds directly. Although you rarely encounter an oboe recital outside of a university or conservatory setting, the oboe's repertoire as a solo instrument includes much to treasure, much to adore and much to console.

French oboist Celine Moinet

The oboe works well with meditation to gently lessen the stress in your body, mind, mood and behavior. It works, too, when you have only a few minutes in which to recoup and regroup. In both cases, classical music can be used to embrace stress and release it through breathing to achieve an in-the-present-moment frame of mind and reconnect positively and creatively with reality:

1. Lose yourself in music
2. Breathe along with music's rhythm and pace
3. Cherish and share the energy you feel

Classical music's magic works very quickly if given just some time to itself. As you align your breathing to the music's beat, your mind will be free to observe that all is a flow. The best cure for serious stress, of course, is prolonged relaxation and rest, but if time is short and the urgency real, classical music can provide a place of safety, as if it were accompanying the dance of a yogic spirit in your world, and then the energy for a fresh start.

I made today's playlist after reflecting back on oboists I know and the music they play; it is short and a little silly, but it curiously comes together as a way of exploring the miraculous beauties of the oboe. In some deeply intimate, small, personal way, the oboe at its heart is always celebrating our eternal youth and renewal.

Benjamin Britten's pipe-playing "Pan" is wistful, releasing, letting go

Carl Phillipp Emanuel Bach's wistful reflections are emotional, restrained, salvational

Giovanni Battista Sammartini's Mozartian aria is devotional

Richard Strauss's oboe concerto is rich in memories from the bloom of youth

Bohuslav Martinu's dark night ends in radiant embrace

Vivaldi brings back our souls with music of soaring beauty

Two oboes chortling Mozart fall in love with life

Macedonian oboists run naked through village streets

For more by Laurence Vittes, click here.

For more on unplugging and recharging, click here.

Summer Music Festivals: Tools of the Reviewer's Trade

2012-07-05T14:08:07-04:00

The best of America's summer music festivals evoke a nostalgic sense of small-town, community-driven folks getting together after the ice cream fountains in the park, the hot dogs and the picnics.

The Grand Teton Music Festival kicking off this weekend in Jackson Hole, and running through August 18, is like that. The music reflects classical music's diverse heritage and American roots, the performers are some of the best musicians you may never have heard of, the orchestra is made up of some of the finest players in the land, and the setting is grand as only the Tetons as a backdrop can be (although the numerous concerts, rehearsals, discussions and other fun events take place in Walk Festival Hall, an acoustical marvel constructed entirely of wood).

The Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra. Photo by W. Garth Dowling.

The season's highlights include:

• Excerpts from Wagner's Die Walküre with Heidi Melton, Stuart Skelton and Donnie Ray Albert July 6, 7

• Lou Harrison's Violin & Percussion Concerto July 19

• Mozart's Bassoon Concerto July 27, 28 (the best joke Mozart ever wrote)

• Handel's Water Music Aug. 3, 4 (performed "among the bends and curves of our very own Snake River," the season prospectus says proudly)

• James Ehnes playing Sibelius' Violin Concerto Aug. 17, 18

The most remarkable events of all may be the seven open rehearsals, comprising the final dress rehearsal prior to each weekend orchestra performance, each of which is open for a very nominal charge to the public ($10) and students ($0).

How to capture a summer music festival for all time

A summer festival is the ideal opportunity for a classical music journalist, young, budding or senior. But writing about classical music is not just about having a good time, or even about having an opinion. There's the actual reporting to do: concerts, notes, interviews, observations, images, poetry, hard facts (such as they are) and criticism (starting with even a soupçon of a gut reaction). It's a challenging process which often results in writing that expresses some unique truth about a piece of music as much as any performance does.

There are basically two ways to prepare for such an assignment. One is to structure every day, schedule every activity, write to length, and meet your deadlines. Another is to wing it. In either case, you'll need a good set of tools. If you're planning on journaling a festival like this, here's what you'll need:

Pen and paper

No matter how far the proliferation of electronic devices has gone, and no matter how proficient we may be at using them, there is something about using a pen and paper that allows us to feel what we are writing from the heart in addition to guiding it from the head. Clairefontaine, Moleskine and Doane Paper (the last with a curiously delicious "grid+lines" technology), are three of the best brands of specialty notebooks, journals and papers. When used with TWSBI's marvelous 530 fountain pens, they make you feel (and even write, sometimes) insanely creative.

If you insist on doing it with your digits:

HTC's brilliant new One S for T-Mobile is one of the new breed that can do everything even if you're not clever enough: Write your blogs using voice recognition technology. Shoot visuals in spontaneous environments, get stunning color or black and white, everything as emotionally alive as the shooter. Put it all together with a few swipes. It's not iPhone flash, but there's a lot of horsepower under the hood.

Great HD camcorder that can take it on the trail

If you want a separate camera to just have fun with, hang around with and take to bed sometimes, the Samsung S200 could be a very good friend -- it takes excellent pictures, too.

Tablet

The new Asus Transformer Pad TF300 is a charming, efficient iPad alternative; the dock/keyboard accessory at $139 is a remarkable ROI.

Headphones
Headphones are indispensable to me, and also very personal. Here are a few I've been checking out:
• Beyer's DTX 101iE earbuds for unobtrusive aural pleasure
• Sennheiser PX 200-II portable headphones for beauty and calm
• Shure's SRH940 professional reference headphones for high-amped analytical types
* Bower & Wilkins' new P3 portable headphones for the music's full reach into our minds

How Classical Music Helps Me Cope With Stress (With Playlist)

2012-06-13T00:57:42-04:00

I met an industrialist in Montreal last month who believes that art transcends all other ways of connecting with the human spirit. He told me about how, even before his six-year-old daughter was born, he and his wife played carefully selected classical music to accompany specific stages and environments along their first child's journey through life. When she was first brought home and placed in her bed, where she heard Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier for the very first time. No wonder the industrialist and his company played a major role in supporting the Montreal Chamber Music Festival.

Throughout the day, whenever I feel stress in my body or in my mood and behavior, I use classical music to embrace the stress and release it through breathing to achieve an in-the-present-moment frame of mind and reconnect positively and creatively with reality:

1. I lose my thoughts in the beauty of music
2. I align my breathing with its rhythm and pace
3. I give thanks for the joyful energy I feel

Music is like that. Quickly, and without any conscious input, the heart adjusts to each composer's unique language, and frees the mind to let go. When the body learns to align its breathing to the music's ever changing beat, the mind freely observes the flow. Classical music can be a workout for your mind. It is the dance of a yogic spirit in the real world.

I made today's playlist after reflecting back on the Montreal Chamber Music Festival; it offers a range of possibilities for slowing down, finding inspiration and beginning renewal.

• Pacifica Quartet - Shostakovich String Quartet No. 4 Andantino (for losing thoughts)
• Olivier Messiaen, ondes Martenot (for losing thoughts, for the ondes Martenot)
• Marthe Keller, Seiji Ozawa - Honegger Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher (for losing thoughts, for a moment of ecstasy)
• Antonín Dvořák - When Thy Sweet Glances On Me Fall - Cecilia Quartet (for consolation, for young romance)
• Jules Massenet - Massenet Thais Méditation - James Ehnes (for consolation)
• Fabio Bondi, Vivaldi viola d'amore, lute & strings (for consolation)
• Denis Brott, Samuel Sanders - Divertimento / Adagio - Haydn (for consolation)
• Carol Rosenberger - Bartok Dance on the Lawn (for joy and dancing)
• Brentano String Quartet - String Quintet In D Major, K. 593 : Allegro (for joy and dancing)
• Danny Kaye - Tschaikowsky (And Other Russians) (for joy and dancing)

Skateboarding in Mount Royal Park Above Montreal, by Larisa Pilinsky, using HTC's new One S smartphone