June 28, 2009

in: Reviews

Solid Performance from Jupiter String Quartet at Rockport Chamber Music Festival

by Elizabeth Perten

Performing in front of a sold-out audience, the Jupiter String Quartet gave a solid performance of works by Beethoven, Shostakovich and Mendelssohn last Thursday evening, June 25. at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival. Jonathan Vinocour, newly named principal violist of the San Francisco Symphony, played, in lieu of  Liz Freivogel, with regular quartet members violinists Nelson Lee and Meg Freivogel and cellist Daniel McDonough.

Lacking really crisp articulation at the beginning of the challenging Beethoven  String Quartet in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2, the quartet really settled into the composition midway through the first movement, and Lee emerged as a strong leader.  The other standout was McDonough.

Once again, McDonough grounded the ensemble with his solid rhythmic foundation in the Shostakovich String Quartet No. 7 in F-sharp Major, Op. 108. The Jupiter String Quartet approached this Shostakovich aggressively. The  skill of each ensemble member was highlighted in the third movement where, after a section of imitative counterpoint, each instrument veers away from the group and plays its own obviously challenging line.

The quartet and violist Mary Persin sounded at its best in a beautiful performance of the Mendelssohn String Quintet No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 87 to conclude the concert. [Click title for full review.]

June 23, 2009

in: Reviews

TF3 Swells Rockport’s Sails, Spirits

by Fred Bouchard

The pleasantly low-key barn-like gallery of the Rockport Art Association, long-time temporary home of the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, became an unusually apt stage for the amiable antics and “aw-shucks” musicianship of Time For Three on June 18. TF3 exhibit purebred classic schooling and disciplined ensemble, while its repertoire is tail-wagging mongrel, rich in texture and quick-cut, memorized arrangements.

Tall, slender Zach De Pue blithely reeled off glittering cadenzas and technical fireworks with debonair aplomb, while short, feisty Nick Kendall, with his spiky modified Mohawk, sawed away at gritty folk themes and country swing licks. Bassist Ranaan Meyer played the role of leader, composer.

Giddy patter and self-deprecatory jokes leavened the pleasant evening and further ingratiated a mixed audience of strait-laced classical listeners and impressionable ingénue teenagers. [Click title for full review.]

June 22, 2009

in: Reviews

Young Musicians Give Excellent Performance at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival

by Elizabeth Perten

Pianist Gilles Vonsattel, violinist Frank Huang, and cellist Nicolas Altstaedt presented a program of piano trios by Haydn, Brahms and Tchaikovsky last Sunday, June 21 at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival.

Consisting of only two movements, the Haydn Trio in F Major (1784) was a light-hearted, witty opener to the difficulty and weight of the next two works. In the Brahms Trio in C Minor, Op. 101, the communication between these musicians, whether in conversation, counterpoint or unison, was impressive.

Tchaikovsky composed the piano part of Piano Trio in A Minor, Op. 50 in epic, almost concerto-like proportions, at times even overwhelming the violin and cello parts. Vonsattel played with great skill, seemingly unfazed by the difficult nature of his part; and Huang and Altstaedt successfully provided a unified front, with their lines often weaving in and out of one another, in imitative counterpoint or exact unison. [Click title for full review.]

June 18, 2009

in: Reviews

Sick Puppy at NEC

by David Patterson

An eager crowd appeared at New England Conservatory’s Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice at Jordan Hall Wednesday June 17 for a rare opportunity to hear live Three Quarter-tone Pieces devised by American icon Charles Ives. One piano is tuned “50 cents lower” as renowned Boston piano tuner Mark Whitlock put it.

Unbelievably, Stephen Drury and long-time friend Paul Hanson made these two differently tuned pianos appear as one singular instrument with ever so alluring sound and fashioned images of a small American town of yesteryear-Ives’ environment.

Sick Puppy composer-in-residence, Jonathan Harvey, took a far different tack. If there were philosophical or physical motives underpinning this music, they passed me by. Cellist Francesco Dillon brought absolute involvement and reverence to the demanding instrumental techniques and strange sonic stances called for in Harvey’s scores, and pianist Emanuele Torquati brought unflagging commitment to Harvey’s Tombeau de Messiaen,

Pianist Aki Takahashi and five brass players tackled a 1960s piece by Iannis Xenakis entitled Eonta. Brasses and piano form an odd couple, you would think, but not here where they summon up an industrial environment.With more bodies to absorb sound in resonant Jordan Hall the very loudest of passages would not have verged on the intolerable. There were imbalances in ensemble playing and dynamics were too often roughly hewn, all of which contributed to more fatigue than to life-giving energy. [Click title for full review.]

June 16, 2009

in: Reviews

A Windfall of Musicians - Hitler’s Émigrés and Exiles in Southern California

by John Ehrlich

A review of a new book by Dorothy Lamb Crawford

This concise and well-written story of the migration of mostly Jewish musicians and artists fleeing Hitler’s onslaught in Europe and eventually “washing ashore” in Southern California is, in a word, essential.

Author/musicologist/historian and Cambridge, Massachusetts resident Dorothy Lamb Crawford has penned a highly readable and engrossing account of the cause and effect of the arrival on American shores of hundreds of persecuted European artisans, some well-known, others not, but all who, with their individual gifts of creativity and sheer determination to survive, shaped the music and arts scene in southern California from the late 1930s and ultimately to the present day. [click title for full review]

June 15, 2009

in: Reviews

Courtly Entertainment Delights Festival Audience

by Virginia Newes

Theatricals of all kinds were banned in Puritan England, but the return of the Stuart dynasty in 1660 brought about a revival of elaborate court festivities. Two of these were presented in “An Evening of Chamber Opera”: Venus and Adonis, by John Blow, and Actéon, by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, as part of the Boston Early Music Festival, Saturday, June 13, 8 pm, at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall.

Stage director Gilbert Blin and choreographer Lucy Graham collaborated in an exquisite production in which the two “mini-operas” were framed as courtly entertainment with courtiers and their children — five accomplished members of Rebecca Kenneally’s BEMF Youth Ensemble. Elegant costumes in off-white tones by Anna Watkins remained the same throughout both operas; scarves, cloaks, and masks identified the singers and dancers variously as shepherdesses, huntsmen, cupids, nymphs, and hounds. The onstage chamber orchestra was ably led by violinist Robert Mealy.

Canadian mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel, playing Cupid in Venus and Adonis, sang the beautifully nuanced recitatives and dancelike airs of the Prologue with equal stylistic sensitivity. The opening recitative of Act I, with soprano Amanda Forsythe as a resplendent Venus and baritone Jesse Blumberg as Adonis, was deeply affecting.

Juno was grandly played and sung by mezzo-soprano Laura Pudwell, in Actéon. In his portrayal of the dying Actéon, Sheehan managed to sing with beautiful tone and expressive articulation and to collapse gracefully at Diana’s feet, all while encumbered with a large stag mask.

Saturday night’s performance was a polished reprise of that offered by the Boston Early Music Festival concert series last November. Let’s hope the Festival continues to bring such unexplored chamber opera gems to light. [Click title for full review.]

June 15, 2009

in: Reviews

Surprising Sensuality from Stile Antico

by Tom Schnauber

The 1500s were a period of sea-changes in Western music, and the sacred music of the time can, upon first hearing, sound staid and cold, the musical equivalent of luminous yet motionless stained-glass painting. Yet, as the British vocal ensemble Stile Antico recently demonstrated, there are worlds of expression to be found in this beautifully crafted church music.

The tripping counterpoint and dense imitative textures favored by Clemens non Papa became delicious devices, with a somewhat different flavor from the more mild homophony and parallelisms prominent in the pieces by Francisco Guerreo; the darker hues and striking harmonies of Nicolas Gombert and Jean Lhéritier - holdovers from practices of the previous century - were vividly colored; and the seamless cadences that make the music of Giovanni Palestrina and Tomás Luis de Victoria so vast were delivered with a tactile smoothness. All the singers in the ensemble sang to each other with as much joy and sensitivity as they did to the audience. [Click title for full review.]

June 15, 2009

in: Reviews

Fine Organ Playing, Lecture, at BEMF’s Organ Festival

by Larry Phillips

The fourth biennial Organ Mini-Festival of the 2009 Boston Early Music Festival on Friday, June 12, 2009, under the direction of William Porter, was held at the First Lutheran Church, Boston. Organist Joan Lippincott, who began the day with Bach’s Art of the Fugue, was not afraid of applying the full resources of the excellent Richards, Fowkes organ in her fine performance. Particularly effective was her handling of the three-voice Contrapunctus 8 as compared to the four-voice Contrapunctus 11, which shares the same material.

The lecture by Dr. Christopher Boyd Brown, Assistant Professor of Church History at Boston University, on “Rhetorical Forms in Lutheran Worship,” were illustrated by organ performances from the 17th century by Bálint Karosi, who was born in Budapest, Hungary and now serves as Music Director at the First Lutheran Church in Boston. Karosi then was given a chance to demonstrate his considerable improvisational skills on one of Bach’s chorale tunes.

The third part of the day was a long organ recital by William Porter illustrating the musical differences between J. S. and C. P. E Bach. (”Father and Son Together.”) [Click title for full review.]

June 12, 2009

in: News & Features

The Harpsichord in America 1884 – 1946

by William Lyman Johnson

Editors Note: The article which follows, from a Harvard Musical Association Bulletin of April, 1946 should be of interest to votaries of the Boston Early Music Festival. If readers know the whereabouts of the cited instruments and collections please respond by blogging.

It appears, from research by the writer, that there was only one harpsichord in Boston in 1885 in playable condition. It was the property of Mr. Morris Steinert, founder of the house of M. Steinert and Sons. Mr. B. J. Lang, who did much for enlarging the horizon of music in Boston, organized a festival for the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Bach, born March 21, 1685. In Bach’s “Coffee Cantata” there is the need of a harpsichord, and Mr. Steinert’s instrument was played by Mr. Lang. This was probably the first time for a period of sixty years that a harpsichord had been used in a public concert in Boston.It is interesting to know how little the compilers of the Comprehensive Dictionary, published in 1871, knew relative to the harpsichord. They give the meaning of the word harpsichord: “A keyed instrument, or harp, strung with wire.” That of the virginal is worse: “A musical instrument.” These definitions show the lack of knowledge relative to the instruments because of their rarity.In 1884 there was probably only one harpsichord in the United States in playable condition, and only one player who knew how to use it properly relative to tone colors and the proper touch for the keys and that was Mr. Morris Steinert. At this time of writing (1946), there are fourteen professional harpsichordists in the United States. There is also a maker of harpsichords whose instruments are as splendid in qualities of tone as the best instruments made by the famous makers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and their volume is considerably larger, a virtue needed in these years of large halls. [continued...]

May 29, 2009

in: News & Features

Early Music World Looks To Boston

by Shannon Canavin

Every other summer, the city of Boston becomes the ultimate destination for connoisseurs of early music - that is, music written many centuries ago and performed in the style popular at the time of its composition. But as music lovers of all types have discovered over the years, this “rarefied” music is as beautiful, exciting, and relevant as anything written in recent times. Next month from June 6 through 14^th, the Boston Early Music Festival will present its “weeklong extravaganza of early music” (The Boston Herald), jam-packed with fully-staged opera performances, concerts by the world’s leading soloists and ensembles, over 100 concurrent events including lectures and dance workshops and the world-famous Exhibition. [continued...]

May 29, 2009

in: News & Features

Rockport Chamber Music Festival, June 4 - July 2

by BMINT STAFF

Every summer since inception of the Rockport Chamber Music Festival in 1981, distinguished musicians from around the country have come to Rockport to perform concerts of extraordinary quality. The festival has been under the direction of Artistic Director and renowned pianist David Deveau since 1995.

Chamber Music - the foundation on which Rockport Music’s rich traditions are built - embodies the key to what is special about the experiences of this community of artists and listeners.

Rockport, a shore community, is a 45-mile drive north of Boston. it is also the final stop on one of the T’s commuter rail lines from North Station.

Most concerts are held at the Rockport Art Association, 12 Main Street, about a half mile from the train station, in the heart of the downtown.

In June 2010, the Festival plans to move into its permanent home, the Shalin Liu Performance Center.

Located on Main Street in Rockport, the Center will be a lively, year-round community resource. Alan Joslin, of Epstein Joslin Architects of Cambridge is Principal-in-Charge of the building, and R. Lawrence Kirkegaard of Chicago, an internationally known acoustician for concert hall and performance spaces, is overseeing acoustic design. Joslin and Kirkegaard, collaborators on music venues for over 17 years, both played key roles in the design of Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, MA.

For concert listings, see the BMInt Upcoming Events.

April 22, 2009

in: News & Features

Historic Concert at Methuen Music Hall

by Lee Eiseman

The Harvard Musical Association collaborated with The Methuen Memorial Music Hall Association on the re-enactment of the Inauguration of the Great Organ at the Boston Music Hall. (The organ was moved to the Methuen Memorial Music Hall in 1909.) Organists Peter Sykes, Sandra Soderlund, Mark Dwyer, and Brian Jones played the original program of works by Bach, Palestrina, Handel, Lefébure-Wély, Paine, Purcell, and Mendelssohn. An addition was the world premiere of a new work, Odyssey, written for the Methuen organ by Herbert Bielawa. click here for review

In April, 1851, Harvard Musical Association issued a circular soliciting from the public and its membership commitments of funds to build a grand music hall seating 3,000 people. Sixty days later, $100,000 had been raised— much from the HMA Directors and members. The Boston Music Hall opened on November 20, 1853 with a miscellaneous benefit concert dedicated to raising monies for a Great Organ.

Jabez Baxter Upham, president of the Boston Music Hall Association and Treasurer of the Harvard Musical Association, spent the next several years campaigning on behalf of acquiring “the greatest organ in America” for the Boston Music Hall. His exploratory trips to Europe convinced him that the firm of E. F. Walcker of the Kingdom of Wurtemberg should build the great instrument. The firm, Herter Brothers of New York, was chosen to construct the heroic and magnificent casework of American Walnut.

On November 2, 1863, the largest organ in America was introduced to the press and public in one of the the greatest musical media events of 19^thcentury Boston. This is the account from Dwight’s Journal of Music: [continued...]