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July 23, 2008
A supergroup plays Mozart
Last week, Colorado's Aspen Festival hosted a concert that offered a rare opportunity to hear three masters of their instruments playing chamber music together. We'll go there to hear violinist Gil Shaham, pianist Yefim Bronfman and cellist Lynn Harrell play a Mozart Piano Trio. Find out why this was the festival's toughest ticket.
Today's Playlist
hour 1 Listen
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Frederic Chopin
Mazurka in C-sharp Minor, Op. 50, No. 3
Pianist Leon Fleisher
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Alfred Schnittke
Polka
The Moscow Soloists with violinist and director Yuri Bashmet
Coolidge Auditorium, Washington, D.C.
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Peter Tchaikovsky
Third movement from Quartet No. 1 in D, Op. 11
The Artemis Quartet
Dalton Center Recital Hall, Kalamazoo, Michigan
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"The Piano Puzzler"
This week's contestant is Richard Reese from Sarasota, Florida
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Gabriel Faure
"Vocalise-etude"
Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and pianist Malcolm Martineau
Jordan Hall, Boston
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Maurice Ravel
Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D
Pianist Leon Fleisher with the Ile de France National Orchestra and conductor Yoel Levi
Dvorak Hall, Prague, Czech Republic
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Henri Sauguet
"Brezairola"
Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and pianist Malcolm Martineau
Jordan Hall, Boston
hour 2 Listen
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Sergei Prokofiev
Fourth movement from Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat, Op. 10
Pianist Yefim Bronfman with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Zubin Mehta
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Isaac Albeniz
"Asturias"
Pianists Yuri Kuznetsov and Tanja Starchenko
Grand Concert Hall of the Belarussian Philharmonic, Minsk, Belarus
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Piano Trio in C, K. 548
Violinist Gil Shaham, cellist Lynn Harrell and pianist Yefim Bronfman
Aspen Music Festival and School, Aspen, Colorado
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Jean-Marie Leclair
Violin Concerto in G Minor
Violinist Stephanie-Marie Degand with Le Concert d'Astree and conductor Emmanuelle Haim
The Palace of Versailles, Versailles, France
Choral Summit, part 2
Posted by Fred Child at 10:32 AM on July 22, 2008
This week, my colleague Brian Newhouse is in Copenhagen at the World Choral Symposium. Brian is joining me on the air today with a live report, and music from a concert on Sunday. (You can also hear that remarkable performance by the University of Johannesburg Choir here, in Brian's notes from yesterday.)
Here's part 2 of Brian's notes from Copenhagen:
What to pack? When you're coming to sing at the World Choral Symposium, make sure you throw something in the bag that you sing better than anyone else in the world.Read previous entries | Comment on this postA perfectly polished choir from Korea, the Anyang Civic Chorale, came to the stage last night and sang French music. This afternoon, they returned and sang American music.
You could tell they'd done their homework. The nasal French 'n' was right there in the nose where it should be; the gnarly American 'r' was deep in the back of the throat--no small thing for an Asian choir.
You had to appreciate that kind of effort at learning another nation's music.
You also had to be awake for it.
We've all come across a few time zones and are still duking it out with jet lag. And if the choir is, I hate to say it, boring, then Nature wins. Before I succumbed, I looked around and, sure enough, there were dozens of chins on chests across the auditorium.
That's sad because you could tell this choir had worked hard on this stuff, but they'd worked the life right out of it. Or maybe it is just too foreign for them to have ever really gotten under their skin in the first place. Whatever. They got golf-clap applause.
Until the end when they did a little folk opera about threshing the grain and men tussling with one another to get a lady's attention. It sounds kind of kitschy, but there was something so authentic about it. They loved this piece that's based on an old Korean folk tune and had the story in their bones. Their bodies were alive with it. We all woke up out in the audience because something was suddenly real. Afterward the crowd went nuts.
Special Features
Fred Child and the PT team were in Aspen, CO last week for the Aspen Music Festival and a live concert on Friday night, July 18th, in the Benedict Music Tent. Music by Alberto Ginastera, Peter Lieberson, Sergei Prokofiev and Frederic Chopin. The Aspen Chamber Symphony led by David Zinman, featured mezzo soprano Kelley O'Connor and pianist Yefim Bronfman.
1st half
2nd half
As a child Romanian pianist Mihaela Ursuleasa was a musical phenom. She took a giant leap of faith as a teenager and put on hold her performance career, moved to Austria and began studying the piano literature at the Vienna Conservatory. Mihaela says she went from playing on intuition to playing with insight. She joined Fred Child in the studio recently to play Chopin and Rachmaninoff--works that show her maturity but haven't tamed her wild streak.
Wild At Heart
Joseph Horowitz has written a new book about immigrant musicians coming to the U.S. It's called Artists in Exile. Horowitz talked with Fred Child recently about the difference between German and Russian composers who came to America, and about the strange but true story of conductor Leopold Stokowski, an American original.
Germans and Russians
The Aspen Music Festival was recently the site of the world premiere of a new composition, Cello Sonata by Pierre Jalbert. American Public Media program Saint Paul Sunday commissioned the piece which was performed by cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han. We caught up with David, Wu Han and Pierre the morning after the premiere.
A Conversation Between Artists
Cello Sonata
Jon Lord says he never aspired to be one type of musician--he aspires to be all types of musicians. Lord is keyboardist and founding member of the band Deep Purple whose hits included "Smoke on the Water" and "Hush." All the while Lord was performing in rock bands, he was also composing classical music. Listen to his interview with Fred Child about his newest works: a piano concerto titled "Boom of the Tingling Strings" and "Disguises," a piece for string orchestra.
Boom of the Tingling Strings
Through their masterworks, great writers and great composers have inspired and enriched each other for centuries, as they do today. This week, Performance Today explores this perennial love affair with recent performances and insightful interviews from around the country and the world.
Visit the feature page
The legendary piano trio, the Beaux Arts Trio, is on its final U.S. tour. Violinist Daniel Hope is keeping an audio diary along the way. Click to listen to his reflections, backstage jokes and interviews with other musicians, family and friends about the trio.
Visit the feature page
The Piano Puzzler® with Bruce Adolphe is now available for download and as a podcast.
Performance Today is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts - which believes that a great nation deserves great art - and also by The Huss Foundation, the Mardag Foundation, the Katherine B. Andersen Fund of The Saint Paul Foundation, the Phyllis S. Poehler / Walter E. Stremel Trust, and Emily Anne & Gedney Tuttle, and the Friends of Performance Today: Cy and Paula DeCosse, Connie and Dan Kunin.
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