The Gathering Note

The audience filled every seat at the Cabell Center on the campus of the Catlin Gabel School in eager anticipation of an all-Mozart concert that took place on Tuesday (June 30). This performance ushered in the second week of concerts presented by Chamber Music Northwest with a program consisting of music for string quartet, a quintet for piano and winds, and a quartet for piano and strings. Read the rest of this entry »

Harold in Italy – actually at Café Umbria in Portland's Pearl District

Harold Gray, now in his 31st year as artistic director of the Portland Piano International, is getting geared up for the 2009 Portland International Piano Festival. Running from July 12th through the 19th at the World Forestry Center, the festival is jam packed with an intriguing slate of artists, teachers, and films.

I chatted with Gray at Café Umbria in the Pearl District where he gave me the lowdown on the festival. Read the rest of this entry »

I came to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall with great anticipation on Saturday evening (June 27), because Helmuth Rilling and the Oregon Bach Festival choir and orchestra were in town to perform Haydn’s “Creation.” I had sung this piece under Rilling at least ten years ago (more about that later), so I willingly took a seat in the balcony where this hall’s acoustics are best.

Rilling knows this music forward and backwards, and he conducted the entire piece from memory, but this performance needed more spark and much more volume from the chorus. The lack of vocal heft from the chorus became evident right away when the choir sang “Und es ward Licht” (“And there was light”). The orchestra easily overpowered the singers so much that the word “Licht” was completely obliterated – even the final “t” couldn’t be detected. Later in the first part of the piece, the orchestra overwhelmed the chorus again. Fortunately, the balance between the orchestra and the choir was a lot better in the second and third parts of the piece, but the chorus still needed to project a lot more. Read the rest of this entry »

The Seattle Symphony subscription season ended Thursday and Friday night much as it began, with a large-scale choral symphony. In September, the piece Schwarz and the orchestra put on display for Seattle was Mahler’s 8th Symphony. Thursday and Friday, the SSO took on a brand new piece by the American composer Aaron Jay Kernis.

A few years ago the Seattle Symphony and Lara and Jeff Sanderson commissioned Kernis to compose a compact, new piece of music for chorus and orchestra. Originally the work was scheduled for the 2007/2008 season. However, as Kernis was writing the piece, the size and scope of the piece grew and the premiere was delayed so Kernis could put the finish touches on what would become his 3rd Symphony — “Symphony of Meditations.” Like the 8th Symphony, vocal music is at the core of Kernis’s new piece. “Symphony of Meditations” debuted Thursday night alongside Gustav Holst’s popular orchestral suite “the Planets.”

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Haydn and Mendelssohn have been dead for a very long time, but their presence is felt every time their music is played by virtuosic musicians like the ones who took the stage on Tuesday  (June 23) at Chamber Music Northwest’s opening concert series. I attended the concert at Catlin Gabel School and found the each  performance inspiring, because the performers got inside the music. Read the rest of this entry »

Music critic David Stabler of The Oregonian has a full report on the financial problems at the Oregon Symphony online here. It’s a tough time for arts organizations everywhere, and the orchestra’s president Elaine Calder says that she will scrutinize every nook and cranny in its budget and operations. Calder was in Chicago a week ago for the 64th National Conference of the League of American Orchestra, and I’m sure that fund raising and budgets were among the issues most discussed.

Chicago is where Oregon Symphony conductor Carlos Kalmar is leading the Grant Park Orchestra. Here’s a very positive review of Kalmar and the orchestra in the Chicago Tribune. I don’t know how long the link will be available, so I’ll excerpt a quote from the article by the Tribune’s classical music critic, John von Rhein:

Just as the festival is observing a major milestone, so is Carlos Kalmar, who’s celebrating his 10th season as music director. The orchestra is playing better than ever under his vigorous leadership, a fact that was evident in the two Russian war horses that made up the program, Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” heard in the Ravel orchestration.

Here’s a link to a positive review in the Chicago Classical Review of another Kalmar-led concert at Grant Park.

All in all, the Oregon Symphony is not the only orchestra that has made great strides under Kalmar.

Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony premiere Aaron Jay Kernis’s 3rd Symphony this week.  The composer shares his thoughts about the piece and his relationship with Seattle and the Seattle Symphony.

Zach Carstensen: Your Symphony Nr.3, “Symphony of Meditations”, is a number of years in the making.  I may be wrong about this, but initially, the piece was not intended to be a symphony.  When you first put pen to paper, what were you thinking this commission would be?

Aaron Jay Kernis: Initially I was asked by Seattle Symphony to write a large piece for orchestra of about 25-30 minutes. As my ideas for the work took shape, I could tell I wanted most to write a piece that voices as well. During the year that it was originally to be premiered, the SSO chorus was not available, I asked to work with a group of 12 solo singers, but once I began setting the text it was clear that I really needed a large choir and 2 solo singers, so the premiere was moved to this season, when the choir was available.The piece is about an hour long, so it grew quite a bit in size and scope.

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Midori, the Japanese violinist who goes by only her first name, comes to Seattle on a fairly regular basis, sometime in recital and sometimes with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. She played the first of four concerts Thursday night at Benaroya Hall.

The program was a curious one in that the violinist played three works with a much reduced orchestra in the first half, then abandoned the stage in order for the orchestra and its music director Gerard Schwarz to tackle the formidable Fifth Symphony of Prokofiev in the second half. I doubt if many would complain. There was Bach to begin — his Second Violin Concerto — and Schubert’s charming and fluent Rondo in A to conclude. In the middle was Schnittke’s First Violin Sonata arranged for violin and chamber orchestra.

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Chamber Music Northwest opens its 39th summer season next week, offering five weeks (June 22 - July 26) of great music with top tier musicians from all over the nation. This summer’s programming celebrates the 200th anniversaries of Felix Mendelssohn (who was born in 1809) and Joseph Haydn (who died in 1809), and the music of many other greats in the classical field will be performed as well: Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Bach, Schumann, Vivaldi, and Tchaikovsky. Several concerts will blend pieces from Telemann, Marcello, Schoenberg, Bartok, Bloch, Korngold, Kernis, Adams, Schubert, and others to keep your ears tuned up. Also consider the following: Read the rest of this entry »

For 28 years, Pacific Northwest Ballet has presented its school at the end of the season, from the very youngest to the professional division, at its performance home, first the Opera House and now McCaw Hall. This year was not any different, with performances Saturday afternoon and evening. The format changes somewhat from year to year to offer variety and a chance for the hundreds of students in the Seattle Center and Bellevue facilities to be on stage. Always the program begins with the youngest and continues chronologically.

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Gerard Schwarz, Seattle Symphony; Mahler: Symphony Nr. 8 “Symphony of a Thousand” (Self Release) ***
Mahler’s Symphony Nr. 8 is an oversized piece of music.  This is apparent to anyone who hears a recording of this symphony.  Even more so when you see the piece performed live.  Hundreds (not thousands) of musicians, soloists, and singers are crammed onto a stage.  Whoever the unlikely person is conducting the piece is more often than not feverishly trying to balance the bloated orchestra, soloists, and multiple choruses.  The conductor is spinning plates more or less.  Keeping everything from crashing to the floor.  Because of the difficulties in staging the “Symphony of a Thousand” the piece is seldom performed.

The Seattle Symphony took up the work last September, opening their 2008/2009 season while also simultaneously celebrating the tenth anniversary of Benaroya Hall.  With the help of Martin Selig, the Seattle Symphony was able to record and release the September 2008 performance on a limited edition recording that also includes original album art from local artist Dale Chihuly.

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Photo courtesy Lois Greenfield

Zach Carstensen: How were you introduced to the violin?

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Midori: My mother is a violinist; her teaching and practicing filled our home with music, marvelous sounds that were very intriguing to a toddler’s ears. In the nature of children wanting to imitate their parents, I asked for a violin around age 3 and my mother began to teach me.

ZC: Your professional career began at a young age - you were 12 when you performed with the New York Philharmonic - what was it like being a classical music star while you are also entering your formative, teenage years?

M: When a youngster is under scrutiny from the media, they can fall into the trap of starting to believe what is said about them (whether the stories are true or not). Feeling the gaze of others is especially tough on any naturally self-conscious teenager as he or she finds their place in the world. Strong relationships with family and friends kept me from ever losing sight of my true self; they kept my ego in check while also providing support and encouragement during the challenging times.

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MOR has chronicled their first decade in a brand new documentary that will be premiered June 14, 2009 at 6:00 pm at MOHAI.

MOR has provided a brief “teaser” for the documentary.

Composer Thomas Ades

The Seattle Symphony Orchestra season keeps going deeper and deeper into summer. While one might think it would dumb down its programs, because of the longer, sunnier days, it is doing almost the opposite with well-considered, well-crafted collections of music. But it is not only the music that is often so striking but also the music-making.

Thursday night at Benaroya Hall is a case in point. There were the popular works as well as the local premiere of Thomas Ades’ Violin Concerto tucked in between. What made the evening particularly splendid was the high level of the playing, and conducting by David Robertson.

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This year’s competition had a lot of excitement after the last concert finished. The press in attendance was very divided regarding who the medalists would be. Most of the critics agreed that Bulgarian pianist Evgeni Bozhanov played himself out of contention with his bombastic style. But all of the five remaining competitors were mentioned as possibilities. We should have done a pool to see who would’ve predicted the outcome correctly.

The awards program featured Portland-native Fred Child as the master of the ceremonies. It turns out that the blind Japanese pianist who shared the gold medal, Nobuyuki Tsujii, released a recording last year (many of the pianists in the competition have already done albums), and it’s now selling like hotcakes, according to this report. That album also contains a couple of Tsujii’s own compositions.

I was impressed to learn how thoroughly and carefully the participants are initially screened. Richard Rodzinski and John Giordano assemble a jury that travels around the globe to hear the best pianists. Still, ten of the final 30 pianists had some Juilliard connections, which either points to how good Juilliard is or means that the screening process still needs some improvement. In any case, at the competition itself, the jury puts their scores into a computer (somewhat like the BCS system for NCAA football) and the computer gives them the final results.

Of course, not everyone is happy with how things turn out. Benjamin Ivry, in his article in the Wall Street Journal, thought that the jurors were way off the mark. He sounds fairly bitter. It should be noted that Ivry incorrectly states that Giordano is the regular conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony. Miguel Harth-Bedoya is the conductor of that orchestra. Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News points out, in this posting, some other inaccuracies in Ivry’s argument. Also, Ivry doesn’t think that blind pianists should play with orchestras. That’s nonsense. Then a deaf composer like Beethoven shouldn’t write music.

Now I’m wondering if there should be a competition for pianists in which only new music is performed. Assembling a jury for such a competition would be very interesting. Just for fun, all the pianists could be asked to play John Cage’s 4′33″.