The opening concert on May 20^th is to be a staged production of Tchaikovsky’s opera, Iolanta, the subject of an earlier article here. The remaining events present a large and varied roster of artists and ensembles, culminating in a Jordan Hall finale with three Russian choruses, a German youth orchestra, The Festival Orchestra, Juventas New Music Ensemble, pianist Vassily Primakov and numerous impressive vocalists.  “Two years ago we brought a men’s choir, “Blagovest,” from Moscow, said Artistic Director Irina Shachneva. “The response was overwhelming and we couldn’t find seats for everyone. That’s why we’re having our finale in Jordan Hall this year.We’ve planned to host two guest choirs from Moscow and one from St. Petersburg. We’ve also invited vocal and instrumental soloists from Germany and Russia, such as the great pianist Vassily Primakov, who will not only offer a solo recital but will also be accompanying some of the singers. We’re also very proud to have one of this year’s winners of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Andrey Nemzer as soloist. Since first I heard him as a soloist of “Blagovest” two years ago, I knew he had a great future.”

Shachneva conceived the idea of organizing the festival in 2009, with close friends. “We wanted to bring the best singers from Orthodox churches around America, uniting all generations of Russian émigrés, to present a high quality of choral singing in the Slavic tradition. The idea then spread wildly beyond just a choir. The Boston Russian Choir, which I had led for years, grew into the Festival Choir, which then organized the current festival itself.

“It’s my firm belief that Russian music should be important part of American culture. The connection is very strong — consider the popularity of Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky — but  I also hope to introduce audiences to other composers, such as Ledkovsky and Shvedov, lesser-known but perhaps just as important. The audience for our 2010 festival finale was about half Russian and half a general audience. We hope that this year’s program will bring inspire even more of the concert-going public to share our love of Russian music.”

The Festival’s website is bursting with riches here.

Dina Kuznetsova, the Iolanta

The Second International Rachmaninoff Russian Music Festival opens on May 20^th with a rarity, a staged performance of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta produced by the Boston Vocal Arts Studio. “Our tightly-knit Russian community is rich in cultural events,” explained BVAS’s Executive Director Olga Lisovskaya, “so it was logical for our Artistic Director Alexander Prokhorov to team up with International Rachmaninoff Russian Music Festival’s titulaire, Irina Shachneva. They have been colleagues and friends for many years and are both living their lives for the music.

 “Iolanta is BVAS’s first major production of a full-length (1.5 hours) opera. It’s fully staged and costumed with great soloists. [Details are here.] We’re very fortunate that this project came together, rather magically, I would say, with the Rachmaninoff  Festival. We have some wonderful international stars in the cast including the Russian-American Met Opera soprano Dina Kuznetsova in the title role (on May 20^th.) Count Vaudémont will be played by Met tenor Adam Klein. He does not have the advantage of Russian as his mother tongue but has benefited enormously from our talented language coaches and will sing like a native. Probably half of our soloists are Russian speakers, though!”

The production of Iolanta will be taking place in Makor Concert Hall, 1845 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. A synagogue that seats about 800 people and has a very large stage, it was built, according to Lisovskaya, “with the intention of making the un-amplified human voice intelligible with both liveness and crispness. It has the required wing-space and dressing rooms for an opera company, though it’s not up to the Metropolitan Opera standard. We can’t fly scenery or make significant scene changes, so we have to be creative in how we use it.”  The setting is a castle garden in Mediaeval France, “a simple arrangement that allows the emphasis to remain on the costumes and the passionate story.”

Tchaikovsky’s brother Modest wrote the libretto, which Lisovskaya called “surprisingly good.” Lisovskaya also commissioned an arrangement of the score from Moshe Shulman to allow for fewer winds. The 20-piece orchestra will be seated to the side of the singers but off the stage. There will be supertitles with both English and Russian texts. (The performance is in the original Russian.)

Boston Vocal Arts Studio was founded by Russian emigrés in 2006 and at first did mainly scenes and excerpts except for a full production of Mozart and Salieri by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. In 2010 the company began mounting complete one-act operas such as La serva Padrone by Pergolesi, which was reprised several times. Since there are so many opera companies in Boston offering the standard repertoire, BVAS decided to stand out from the beginning by concentrating on Russian operas. “One might have seen a production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin or Snow Maiden in recent years, but since 1970 there have been no more than five Russian operas staged in Boston by local companies. I was in the recent Snow Maiden production by Harvard’s Lowell House, and four of six performances were sold out. So there does seem to be an appetite from the mostly American audience. … Boston Vocal Arts Studio will continue to focus mainly on Russian music as our niche. But certainly you can expect some Ukranian offerings and the occasional rarities like Pergolesi’s La serva Padrone or Mozart and Salieri byNikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Our long-term goal,” Lisovskaya stresses, “is to become a folk-opera company like ones that exist in Europe, ones using a company of equals with a few stars.”

On his 100^th birthday celebration at Symphony Hall, he still displayed, according to conductor David Hoose, “…the personal qualities that made him such an endearing presence in our musical and educational community — mischievously twinkling, irrepressibly generous, and brilliantly noble.”

“I am a little self-conscious about it,” Totenberg told the Intelligencer [here]. But he was also delighted at those who attended, including one of his former violin students in Krakow, composer and violinist Marcin Markowicz, now with the Krakow Symphony and Krakow String Quartet.

Born in Poland in 1911, Totenberg was a child prodigy, appearing as soloist with the Warsaw Philharmonic when he was 11. He spent his early years in Russia, Poland, and France before emigrating to New York City just before the start of World War II. “Musical life there was very active there,” he said. Most memorable were chamber concerts with the New Friends of Music. He toured South America with Arthur Rubinstein and gave joint recitals with Szymanowski. Acclaimed for interpretations of both classical and contemporary music, he has introduced audiences to the Darius Milhaud Violin Concerto No. 2, the William Schuman Violin Concerto, and the Penderecki Capriccio for Violin and Orchestra. Totenberg also premiered the Hindemith Violin Sonata in E, the Barber Violin Concerto (new version), and a Martinů Sonata, as well as giving the American premiere of the Honegger Sonata for Solo Violin. Among his awards are the Wieniawski and Ysaÿe Medals of Poland and Belgium, the Mendelssohn Prize (Berlin Academy), and BU’s prestigious Metcalf Cup and Prize in 1996; and in 1981 he was named Artist Teacher of the Year by the American String Teachers Association.

Robert K. Dodson, recently named Director of the BU School of Music, recounted that soon after he arrived, a young man stopped by his office. He had been a student at Lawrence University when Dean Dodson was there. “He was so excited,” Dodson recalled, “because he had just had a lesson with Mr. Totenberg.” And Totenberg was 98 at the time.

Roman Totenberg’s family is planning a memorial in September.

In a reprise before the regular season starts, Bramwell Tovey conducts a special concert performance of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (Sept. 27-29). Itzahk Perlman will make his conducting debut with the BSO in the non-subscription opening concert, appearing in the dual roles of soloist and conductor in an all-Beethoven concert on September 22 ^nd. BSO Conductor Emeritus Bernard Haitink closes the season with music of Brahms, Schubert, and Mahler (April 25-30 and May 2-4). In between, Charles Dutoit, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, and Daniele Gatti lead three programs each, and Christoph von Dohnányi leads two. Vladimir Jurowski makes his BSO debut leading Mendelssohn and Shostakovich (Oct. 11-13), Andris Nelsons makes his subscription series debut with music of Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky (Jan. 31-Feb. 5), and Stéphane Denève returns to Symphony Hall for the third consecutive season (program TBA, Nov. 29-Dec. 1). Composer-conductors Thomas Adès (Nov. 15-17) and Oliver Knussen (April 12-13) lead programs including music of their own; an impressive list of other 20th-century and contemporary composers includes works by Henri Dutilleux, James MacMillan, Kaija Saariaho, Roberrto Sierra, and Augusta Read Thomas. Pianist-conductor Christian Zacharias is showcased in music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (Nov. 23-27). Other returnees to the Symphony Hall podium include Christoph Eschenbach, Giancarlo Guerrero, and Juanjo Mena, as well as New York Philharmonic Music Director Alan Gilbert and BSO Assistant Conductor Marcelo Lehninger.

The BSO press office provided this week-by-week summary:

 ITZHAK PERLMAN LEADS THE BSO AS CONDUCTOR AND SOLOIST IN ALL-BEETHOVEN PROGRAM SEPTEMBER 22
Legendary Israeli-born violinist Itzhak Perlman joins the Boston Symphony Orchestra as both soloist and conductor on September 22 to begin the 2012-13 season with an all-Beethoven Opening Night at Symphony. The program begins with the composer’s lyrical early Romances No. 1 and 2 for violin and orchestra, dating from 1798-1802, and concludes with the dance-infused Symphony No. 7—dating from about a decade after the Romances—which the composer himself acknowledged as one of his finest works.

BRAMWELL TOVEY CONDUCTS CONCERT PERFORMANCES OF GERSHWIN’S PORGY AND BESS
SEPTEMBER 27-29
Reprising one of the highlights of Tanglewood 2011, English conductor Bramwell Tovey, the BSO, a distinguished cast of soloists—headlined by Alfred Walker and Laquita Mitchell in the title roles—and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus present concert performances of George Gershwin’s great American masterpiece, the blues-and-jazz-inflected Porgy and Bess, a view of African-American life in the South Carolina fishing community of Catfish Row during the 1920s. Described by the composer as an “American folk opera,” Porgy and Bess premiered on Broadway in 1935 and only slowly gained traction in the traditional world of opera. Three quarters of a century later, it has assumed its rightful place among the greatest works of America’s music.

JOSHUA BELL JOINS BSO AND CONDUCTOR MARCELO LEHNINGER FOR BERNSTEIN’S SERENADE (AFTER PLATO’S “SYMPOSIUM”) OCTOBER 4-6
Acclaimed for his previous Boston Symphony performances at both Symphony Hall and Carnegie Hall, the young BSO assistant conductor Marcelo Lehninger leads an October 4-6 program pairing the Romantic with the ruminative. American violinist Joshua Bell is soloist in Bernstein’s five-movement Serenade—a violin concerto in all but name—inspired by Plato’s immortal dialogue on the nature and value of love, Symposium. Also on the program are two audience favorites: Tchaikovsky’s emotionally charged fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet, and Dvořák’s bucolic Symphony No. 8, written a few years before the composer’s famous visit to the United States. On October 9, in place of Joshua Bell, the Hawthorne String Quartet, made up of four BSO members, is featured in the multi-faceted Concerto for String Quartet and Wind Orchestra (1930) of Ervin Schulhoff, a gifted Czech composer-pianist whose music reflects influences ranging from Baroque and dance-based- musical forms to blues and jazz, and whose life was cut short during World War II.

IN HIS BSO DEBUT, VLADIMIR JUROWSKI LEADS SHOSTAKOVICH’S SYMPHONY NO. 4 AND MENDELSSOHN’S VIOLIN CONCERTO FEATURING ARABELLA STEINBACHER OCTOBER 11-13
Making his Boston Symphony debut, Vladimir Jurowski, principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, leads the BSO October 11-13 with German violinist Arabella Steinbacher as soloist in Mendelssohn’s sparkling Violin Concerto. Though the concerto is now a familiar repertoire staple, its solo-violin opening and three movements flowing together without pause were quite unusual for their time. The program concludes with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 4, a dark but powerfully majestic work the composer finished in 1936. He withdrew the work prior to its premiere due to fears of official condemnation, writing instead the universally acclaimed, heroic Fifth the following year. The Fourth waited another quarter-century for its first performance.

CHARLES DUTOIT, NIKOLAI LUGANSKY, AND SOLOISTS FROM THE ORCHESTRA IN DEBUSSY, MARTIN, AND RACHMANINOFF OCTOBER 18-23
Acclaimed conductor Charles Dutoit leads the orchestra October 18-23 in a program overflowing with virtuosity. Soloist Nikolai Lugansky makes his BSO debut in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, a massive and daunting work that tests every aspect of a pianist’s skill. Not to be outdone, the orchestra’s first-chair wind players step to the front of the stage to demonstrate the BSO’s own resident virtuosity in Frank Martin’s mid-20th-century Concerto for Seven Wind Instruments, Timpani, Percussion, and String Orchestra. Rounding out the program are Debussy’s Fanfares and Symphonic Fragments from The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, from the composer’s incidental music to Gabriele d’Annunzio’s mystery play of the same name.

CONDUCTOR DUTOIT RETURNS OCTOBER 25-27 FOR OPERATIC DOUBLE-BILL OF STRAVINSKY AND RAVEL
Charles Dutoit takes the podium for a second week October 25-27, leading the BSO, an international cast of vocal soloists, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in a compelling operatic double bill pairing Stravinsky’s The Nightingale and Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortileges (The Child and the Magic Spells). Stravinsky’s 1914 opera The Nightingale—begun before but completed after his famous trio of ballets for Sergei Diaghilev—is based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale about a Chinese emperor and two nightingales—one real, the other mechanical. Completed in 1925, Ravel’s one-act opera L’Enfant et les sortilèges—the story of a child movingly taught the meaning of love and affection—is infused with whimsy and magic.

JUANJO MENA LEADS AMERICAN PREMIERE OF SAARIAHO’S CIRCLE MAP NOVEMBER 1-6
Spanish conductor Juanjo Mena, chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic, leads the BSO’s November 1-6 program, including the American premiere of influential Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s Circle Map, for orchestra and electronics, a BSO co-commission here receiving its American premiere. Violinist Gil Shaham, a frequent guest with the orchestra, joins the BSO for Benjamin Britten’s rarely performed Violin Concerto, and the program concludes with Dvořák’s darkly majestic Symphony No. 7, which bespeaks both his love for his native Bohemia and the influence of his mentor, Johannes Brahms.

CONDUCTOR GIANCARLO GUERRERO AND PIANIST DANIIL TRIVONOV COLLABORATE NOVEMBER 8-10 IN TCHAIKOVSKY’S PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1, ON A PROGRAM WITH MUSIC OF PROKOFIEV AND SIERRA
At the heart of the BSO’s November 8-10 program—led by Costa Rican conductor Giancarlo Guerrero, music director of the Nashville Symphony, and featuring Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov in his BSO debut—are two powerhouse Russian works: Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, a fan-favorite and repertoire staple, and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5, described as a “hymn to free and happy Man,” which the composer wrote in 1944 amidst the chaos of World War II. Puerto Rican-born composer Roberto Sierra’s colorful Fandangos for orchestra (2000) opens the program.

COMPOSER/CONDUCTOR THOMAS ADÈS, SOPRANO DAWN UPSHAW, AND PIANIST KIRILL GERSTEIN JOIN BSO NOVEMBER 15-17
English conductor Thomas Adès, who is also renowned as a composer and pianist, takes the podium November 15-17 to lead the BSO in a program including his own composition In Seven Days, for piano and orchestra, featuring soloist Kirill Gerstein. Gerstein also performs Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1, a brief yet brilliant early work dating from the composer’s student years at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Framing the program are two works by Sibelius—his mystical tone poem for soprano and orchestra Luonnotar, a musical take on the Finnish creation story, featuring American soprano Dawn Upshaw, and his poetic, fantasia-like Symphony No. 6.

CHRISTIAN ZACHARIAS LEADS HAYDN, MOZART, AND BEETHOVEN NOVEMBER 23-27
Christian Zacharias displays both his podium and keyboard skills in an all-Classical program November 23-27. Featuring the three great masters of the Austro-German Classical style, the concerts begin with Haydn’s Symphony No. 76, a typically inventive work from 1782. The program continues with Mr. Zacharias at the keyboard for Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 18, from 1784, the year he became friends with Haydn in Vienna. For the second half of the program, the BSO plays its first-ever performances of Beethoven’s complete ballet score to The Creatures of Prometheus, dating from 1801.

STÉPHANE DENÈVE AND JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET JOIN BSO IN A PROGRAM FOR FRANCOPHILES NOVEMBER 29 – DECEMBER 1               
Returning to the BSO podium for the third consecutive season, French conductor Stéphane Denève, chief conductor designate of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, leads the BSO in a trio of works by composers from his native country: Berlioz’s dynamic overture to the unfinished early opera Les Francs-juges, Albert Roussel’s Suite No. 2 from his 1930 ballet Bacchus et Ariane, and Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 5, Egyptian, with fellow Frenchman Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist. Also on the program are the Three Interludes from The Sacrifice, Scottish contemporary composer James MacMillan’s 2006 opera on a story from The Mabinogion, an ancient collection of Welsh folktales.

ALAN GILBERT AND VIOLINIST LISA BATIASHVILI BEGIN THE NEW YEAR JANUARY 10-15
In-demand young violinist Lisa Batiashvili is featured in Tchaikovsky’s ultra-Romantic Violin Concerto at the heart of a January 10-15 program conducted by New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert, who also also leads the BSO in three 20th-century works: Dutilleux’s Métaboles for Orchestra, in which the composer endeavors to “present one or several ideas in a different order and from different angles, until, by successive stages, they are made to change character completely”; Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements, the first major work the composer wrote after moving to the United States in 1939; and Ravel’s remarkable musical deconstruction of dance, La Valse.

DANIELE GATTI MARKS VERDI BICENTENNIAL WITH THE COMPOSER’S REQUIEM JANUARY 17-19
To mark the bicentennial of the composer’s birth in 1813, the Italian conductor Daniele Gatti, music director of the Orchestre National de France, leads the BSO in three performances of Verdi’s Requiem January 17-19 with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and four vocal soloists all making their BSO debuts: soprano Fiorenza Cedolins, mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova, tenor Fabio Sartori, and bass Carlo Colombara. One of the greatest of all works for orchestra, soloists, and chorus, Verdi’s massive, theatrical Requiem was completed in 1874, dedicated to the memory of the great Italian poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni—a personal hero of Verdi’s—and premiered on the first anniversary of Manzoni’s death.

CHARLES DUTOIT RETURNS JANUARY 24-26, JOINED BY PIANIST STEPHEN HOUGH
Conductor Charles Dutoit returns for his third week of concerts of the season January 24-26 leading a program featuring virtuoso English pianist Stephen Hough in Liszt’s pyrotechnic Piano Concerto No. 1. The program begins with Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Weber—which translates material from works by Carl Maria von Weber into a virtuoso showpiece for orchestra—and concludes with music from Prokofiev’s sweeping and colorful ballet score Romeo and Juliet.

ANDRIS NELSONS AND BAIBA SKRIDE JOIN THE BSO FOR SHOSTAKOVICH AND TCHAIKOVSKY JANUARY 31-FEBRUARY 5
Latvian conductor and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra music director Andris Nelsons, who has conducted the BSO at Carnegie Hall, makes his subscription series debut January 13-February 5, joined by the exciting young Latvian violinist Baiba Skride. Ms. Skride makes her BSO debut as soloist in Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, written in the late 1940s but only premiered in 1955 after Stalin’s death helped relax the constraints on artistic expression in the USSR. The second half of the program is devoted to Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, the second of his well-known last three symphonies, all representing musical takes by the composer on the subject of fate.

CHRISTOPH VON DOHNÁNYI LEADS THREE REPERTOIRE STAPLES FEBRUARY 7-12
The eminent German conductor Christoph von Dohnányi leads three masterpieces from the heart of the orchestral repertoire February 7-12. The program begins with Brahms’s Variations on a Theme by Haydn, a prime example of theme-and-variations form that happens also to be Brahms’s earliest orchestral masterpiece. French violinist Renaud Capuçon, in his BSO subscription series debut, then joins the orchestra for Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, a pinnacle of the concerto repertoire, and uniquely Sibelian in atmosphere. The program concludes with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, a work needing no introduction.

DOHNÁNYI RETURNS WITH PIANIST RADU LUPU FOR MOZART AND BRUCKNER FEBRUARY 14-16
In three concerts February 14-16, revered Romanian pianist Radu Lupu—known for his individual interpretations of the great masterpieces of the piano repertoire—joins Christoph von Dohnányi and the orchestra for Mozart’s elegantly soft-spoken Piano Concerto No. 23, completed in 1786 when Mozart was at the height of his popularity in Vienna. Also on the program—Bruckner’s expansive Symphony No. 4, Romantic, marked by the soaring grandeur and long-breathed melodies so characteristic of that composer.

RAFAEL FRÜHBECK DE BURGOS LEADS MUSIC FOR VOICES AND ORCHESTRA BY STRAVINSKY AND HAYDN FEBRUARY 21-26
Veteran BSO conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos joins the BSO February 21-26 for two very different works for orchestra and voices: the complete music from Stravinsky’s 1919 ballet Pulcinella—an early example, reinterpreting Baroque music, of the composer’s neoclassical style, and named for a character from Italian commedia dell’arte—and Haydn’s Mass in Time of War, composed in 1796 during the series of European wars following the French Revolution. These concerts feature the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, soprano Alexandra Coku, mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill, tenor Matthew Polenzani, and, in his BSO debut, bass Ildebrando D’Arcangelo.

LANG LANG JOINS FRÜHBECK DE BURGOS FOR RACHMANINOFF’S PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 FEBRUARY 28-MARCH 2
Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos again takes the podium February 28-March 2 for a program featuring the sensational Chinese pianist Lang Lang, making his BSO subscription series debut in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, a prime example of the composer’s Russian-tinged Romanticism. Kicking off the program is Hindemith’s Konzertmusik for Strings and Brass, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky and the BSO on the occasion of its 50th anniversary in 1931. Bartók’s ingeniously kaleidoscopic Concerto for Orchestra, a Koussevitzky commission premiered by the BSO in 1944, brings the concert to a close. On April 2, Frühbeck de Burgos and the orchestra repeat the works by Hindemith and Bartók, but this time in a program featuring American pianist Garrick Ohlsson in Rachmaninoff’s ever-popular Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

CHRISTOPH ESCHENBACH, LYNN HARRELL, AND BSO COLLABORATE IN WORLD PREMIERE OF AUGUSTA READ THOMAS’S CELLO CONCERTO NO. 3 MARCH 14-16
A new BSO-commissioned work receives its world premiere performances March 14-16 when Lynn Harrell is the featured soloist in American composer Augusta Read Thomas’s Cello Concerto No. 3. Conducted by National Symphony Orchestra music director Christoph Eschenbach, the program also includes Saint-Saëns’s sonorous Symphony No. 3, his so-called Organ Symphony, featuring French organist Olivier Latry in his BSO debut, as well as Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, Jupiter, the composer’s final work in the genre and a pinnacle of the Classical style.

DANIELE GATTI, MICHELLE DEYOUNG, AND THE BSO MARK WAGNER BICENTENNIAL MARCH 21-26
Daniele Gatti, mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung, and the BSO celebrate the bicentennial of Wagner’s birth with music from four of the composer’s operas—the ethereal Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin; the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, a twenty-minute distillation of Wagner’s four-hour paean to love; orchestral excerpts from Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), the final opera of Wagner’s gargantuan Ring cycle; and vocal and orchestral excerpts from his great final opera, Parsifal, whose title character attains spiritual transcendence as a Knight of the Holy Grail. Also on the program is Wagner’s chamber-musical Siegfried Idyll, composed as an intimate birthday present for his wife Cosima in 1869.

GATTI LEADS MAHLER’S SYMPHONY NO. 3 MARCH 28-30
For his third program of the season, March 28-30, Daniele Gatti conducts Mahler’s multi-faceted and emotionally wide-ranging Symphony No. 3, a work notable for its length, difficulty, and overwhelming cumulative impact. For this performance, the expanded ranks of the BSO are joined by the eminent Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and the boys of the PALS Children’s Chorus. Across its nearly 100-minute length, the broad musical canvas of Mahler’s Third Symphony incorporates a full range musical and emotional expression, moving through rousing fanfares, tender lyricism, and melancholy to the height of exaltation.

COMPOSER/CONDUCTOR OLIVER KNUSSEN LEADS PROGRAM FEATURING HIS OWN WORKS
APRIL 12-13
The distinguished British composer/conductor Oliver Knussen leads music of his own in two concerts April 12 and 13. For his Violin Concerto (2002)—of which Knussen writes that “At times the violinist resembles a tightrope walker progressing along a (decidedly unstable) high wire strung across the span that separates the opening and closing sounds of the piece”—he and the BSO are joined by veteran virtuoso Pinchas Zukerman as soloist, for whom the piece was written. Then, English soprano Claire Booth takes center stage for Knussen’s 1992 Whitman Settings, for soprano and orchestra. The program opens with the Symphony No. 10 by the little-known Russian composer Nikolai Miaskovsky (who wrote twenty-six symphonies in all), and closes with Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in a rarely heard orchestration by Leopold Stokowski.

WORKS FOR INDIVIDUAL SECTIONS OF THE ORCHESTRA ALLOW BSO MUSICIANS TO SHINE
APRIL 18-23
Following the great success of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s “members-only” concerts in January 2012, the individual sections of the orchestra again take the stage conductor-less, April 18-23, to play Britten’s Fanfare for St. Edmundsbury, Mozart’s Serenade No. 11 in E-flat for winds, K.375, Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings, and Tippett’s Praeludium for brass, bells, and percussion. The full ensemble then joins forces for Britten’s well-known Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, which—in keeping with the program’s overall spirit—shines a spotlight on each section of the orchestra in turn.

BSO CONDUCTOR EMERITUS BERNARD HAITINK LEADS SCHUBERT AND MAHLER APRIL 25-30
BSO Conductor Emeritus Bernard Haitink—who was the Boston Symphony’s principal guest conductor from 1995 to 2004—takes the helm for the last two weeks of the season, beginning April 25-30 with symphonies of Schubert and Mahler. First comes the teenaged Schubert’s Symphony No. 5, a bracingly youthful work suggestive of Haydn and Mozart, composed in just a few weeks in the summer of 1816. After intermission, Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling joins Haitink and the orchestra for Mahler’s mellifluous Symphony No. 4, a musical journey from earth to heaven that’s also the last of Mahler’s symphonies to use words from the folk poetry collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (Youth’s Magic Horn).

BSO BRINGS SEASON TO A CLOSE WITH BRAHMS AND SCHUBERT MAY 2-4
Bernard Haitink returns to the podium May 2-4 to lead the BSO’s final concerts of its 2012-13 subscription season. To start the program, the compelling Danish violinist Nikolaj Znaider is featured in Brahms’s soaring Violin Concerto. Mr. Haitink and the orchestra then end the season in grand fashion with Schubert’s Symphony in C, The Great—the composer’s ultimate symphony (in both senses of the word: it is his biggest and last word in the genre)—famously praised for its “heavenly length” by Robert Schumann, who observed also that it “transports us into a world we cannot recall ever having been before.”

Click here for the BSO 2012-13 Season Listing.

Lumberjacks rehearse (NEC photo)

Composed in 1940-1941 when the English composer and expatriate librettist were living together in a Brooklyn Heights house they shared with Southern author Carson McCullers, Paul Bunyan is very unlike Britten’s other output, as it presents the folkloric saga of the mythical American lumberjack in a setting replete with American music of popular, jazz, folk and hymn idioms. Intended for Broadway, it premiered at Columbia University in May of 1941. That it was not well received by public or press prompted Britten to revise it 35 years later.

Executive Director of NEC’s Opera Studies Program Luretta Bybee noted that “Paul Bunyan will be our first production in the restored Paramount Theater and after visiting it, we found it charming, with an intimacy that was particularly appealing, and we are discovering that the acoustic is working well. Also, the venue is very hospitable to the extensive staging designed by James Robinson. Jim is seeing to it that the story is being well told while giving our students a theatrical experience that is enhancing their training and helping them tap their own personal artistic resources. The story is clear cut and is being told that way.  Interesting choices are being made with singers who are playing animals — just one of the many reasons to come and see the production.

“Paul Bunyan has an immediacy about it that is powerful and moving. The orchestration (41 NEC students will be playing) and strophic approach to many of the pieces give it an American folk flavor.  The piece has a particular timeliness about it today.  It asks us to reflect on what America stands for, upon what principles this country was founded, and ultimately what responsibility we have in upholding those principles. The large chorus is clearly an integral part of the piece, contributing, among other things, the beautiful theme of the birth and ‘voice’ of a nation.”

International opera star James Maddalena (NEC ’76) returns as the voice of Bunyan (who is never seen). The production is conducted by Stephen Lord and directed by James Robinson, artistic director at The Opera Theater of St. Louis. The cast (two, on alternate nights) and orchestra are composed of NEC students. A link to the program which contains a reprint of Auden’s 1941 essay for The New York Times as well as details about the performers and the performance is here.

April 14 – 17, 8:00pm at The Paramount Theater 559 Washington St. Tickets: $20, $16 for students/seniors are available here.

Members of the chorus masked as trees (NEC photo)

The concert program includes La Oracion del Toreo by Joaquín Turina, String Quartet No. 3 in D Major, Op. 18 by Beethoven, several compositions by Wynton Marsalis, including Rampart Street Row House Rag, and Billy “Sweet Pea” Strayhorn’s Take the “A” Train.

Harlem Quartet (file photo)

Only a little more than a month ago, an Intelligencer review noted, “Harlem Quartet evinced a larger-than-life silhouette of Mozart as it played its final concert as the resident ensemble in NEC’s Professional String Quartet Training Program.” (See the complete review here.) The group has been praised for its “panache” by the New York Times, and for “bringing a new attitude to classical music, one that is fresh, bracing and intelligent,” by the Cincinnati Enquirer. It is comprised of the most accomplished young musicians of this generation, all winners of the prestigious Sphinx Competition, and has established its mission to advance diversity in classical music by engaging young and new audiences with a varied repertoire. As the 2010 resident ensemble of the New England Conservatory’s String Quartet Training Program, the Harlem Quartet brings boundless energy and enthusiasm to chamber classics and contemporary works alike, having collaborated with jazz greats such as Chick Corea, Gary Burton and Wynton Marsalis. In June the quartet will perform, with the Chicago Sinfonietta, the world premiere of West Side Story for string quartet and orchestra, arranged by Randall Craig Fleischer.

The Emerson Umbrella Center for the Arts is located at 40 Stow Street in Concord, near the town center. The Concord stop on the MBTA commuter rail line from North Station and Porter Square is two blocks away. Free parking is available adjacent to the facility and on the street, with municipal lots nearby behind the Middlesex Savings Bank and Concord Post Office. The facility is handicapped accessible. Open seating tickets are $15 for general adult admission and $5 students age over 12.

Ticketing information, directions and a program description can be found online here or by calling the Concord Chamber Music Society at (978)371-9667. Seating is limited.

Vadim Repin (file photo)

The first US recital tour of famed Russian violinist Vadim Repin and noted Israeli pianist Itamar Golan will include a stop at Jordan Hall on March 18^th.  Their program, surprisingly without a Russian work, lists Janácek’s Violin Sonata, Ravel’s Violin Sonata in G Major, Grieg’s Violin Sonata No.2 in G Major, Chausson’s Poeme and Ravel’s Tsigane. Tickets are available in advance through Maestro Artist Management.                       

Repin’s instrument is the 1743 “Bonjour” Guarneri. His laurels include a Gold Medal in the Wienawski Competition, and he has performed on the world’s great stages as recitalist and orchestral soloist. Pianist Itamar Golan leads a distinguished career as a chamber music performer and appears with outstanding soloists and ensembles throughout the world. After reading their bios here and here, BMInt had a few questions for them.

BMInt to Vadim Repin: Your name is very familiar to Boston cognoscenti. When did you play with Boston Symphony Orchestra and in what concerti?

Vadim Repin: I’ve played many times with them; they are without question one of my absolute favorite orchestras. Perhaps the most memorable concert I had was in 2005 when I performed the Shostakovich first violin concerto under Maestro Kurt Masur.

Do you work with a variety of pianists, and why Mr. Golan for this tour?

I enjoy playing chamber music — I particularly love the aspect of the dialogue — with many great players —and one of them is Itamar. We haven’t played together in Boston yet, so this is the moment!

Why is there no Russian music on this program?
There might be encores!

Thanks for not playing the Prokofiev Violin Sonata. Though it is a great piece, we hear it too much.

Really? Both sonatas by Prokofiev are treasures of the 20th century.

Do you ever play any Anton Rubinstein?

I might for the next tour.

Longer term, are you planning more US recitals?

Absolutely! There is great audience, considerable interest, and I’m looking forward to new programs.

What recording projects are you undertaking?

It is always a secret till it’s done. I’d love to do another recital recording!

Do you play new music? Do you commission?

Very much so…  James MacMillan’s violin concerto which he wrote for me, went down very well in Philadelphia, New York, and London, and I have four performances of it coming up in April: two in Spain and one each in Paris and Amsterdam. I premiered a concerto by the American composer Daniel Brewbaker with the Baltimore Symphony and James Judd back in 2005; Benjamin Yusupov is currently writing a very special violin concerto for me, and I hope it’ll be ready soon.

***

Itamar Golan (file photo)

BMInt to Itamar Golan: You’re no stranger to Boston, according to your bio, having spent four years at NEC. Tell us a bit about how you spent your time here. 

Itamar Golan: I did indeed spend some time in Boston and NEC (though much less than four years). They were very turbulent years for me — I was a very restless teenager. At the same time I had very strong and meaningful encounters with the late Patricia Zander, Leonard Shure, Mary Lou Speaker, and Mark Churchill.

Do you have a regular chamber group and recurring associations with certain soloists?

I have no regular group and never had much interest in having one. But I do have regular collaborations and associations with artists with whom I developed a strong affinity over many years.

You’re now apparently Paris-based, but are you planning more tours in the US?
I live in Paris and love it very much, and feel very European at heart, but at the same time I have always been fascinated by America. I’m a kind of distant admirer, especially of different aspects and values that sometimes seem lost. But then one can say the same about Europe, I suppose!

Your bio says you have an interest in poetry — reading or writing?
I do write poetry, and there was a time when I existed alongside — or was engulfed by! —  American poetry, including some very prominent New England poets.

See related review here.

Previously the self-governed BOC has offered  attractive, budget mountings of great operas such as Verdi’s Falstaff; Adamo’s Little Women; Janácek’s Cunning Little Vixen; Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, and Don Giovanni; Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi; Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites Handel’s Alcina; and Bizet’s Carmen.

Foreground: Marcello (Seth Grondin), Colline (Colman Reaboi), Schaunard (Andy Papas), Rodolfo (Jeffery Hartman), and Mimi (Leah Hungerford). Background: Alcindoro (Richard Scott) and Musetta (Natalie Polito) from rehearsal (Justin Bates photo)

According to the publicist, the Bohème staging is “period,” and the set is actually quite interesting — most of it is made up of a number of large moveable canvases with paintings representing the settings of the four acts being moved around the space between acts. It also seems to be based on the interesting notion that it could have been the work of the artists in the story. BMInt asked BOC Artistic Director and Stage Director David Gram to tell us what we might see and hear. (We also asked him why wine-swilling Frenchmen in the Café Momus scene were imbibing from English pewter tankards in the dress-rehearsal pictures.) He responded:

 Although the opera has been kept in its 1830s setting, my designers and I have filtered the period look through a contemporary lens. Many of the costumes are drawn from today’s fashion but have been designed to create lines and silhouettes that echo the mid-19th century. The goal has been to capture the essence of the period as opposed to being ‘period precise.’ It brings the present to the past and reminds us that who these characters are and what they struggle with are universal challenges that transcend time and location. They just happen to live, laugh, love, and fight with epic passion… while doing it all to beautiful music.

The conceit behind the use of the painted canvases as our primary scenic element is purposely more abstract. We wanted Rodolfo and Marcello’s artistic world to be present in every act. We often say artists eat, sleep, and breathe their art. In this case it both literally and metaphorically defines their world. The canvases are not only paintings of Paris and the surrounding area but contain snippets of writing as well, so Rodolfo and Marcello’s work is intertwined in the design. The image I always had was that this is a world ‘conjured’ by the two of them. And as the opera progresses, we see what happens when their carefree bohemian life is juxtaposed with the harsh realities of poverty, hunger, illness, and death.

The ‘tollgate’ is a large empty frame that will have remnants of a canvas falling from it. It’s almost as if a canvas was once stretched across it — but had been torn away from its mount. The gate has an ‘arm’ that opens up to let in our sweepers/scavengers/work women.

I appreciated your tankard observation! We are still finalizing prop decisions. Some are stand-ins. Initially we made the choice of tankards because they were not going to accidentally break on us (a problem with glass!), while also providing a solid sound when clanked (a problem with plastic!). But the observation was astute, and we have definitely clocked it in our notes.

The majority of the principal roles are double-cast, so each cast performs three of the six performances. Performers are comprised of both Boston Opera Collaborative members and outside professionals. BOC members are given casting priority, though we audition for principal and comprimario male roles and for female chorus outside of the membership. Directors, conductors, musicians, designers and production staff are hired on a project-to-project basis, though many have established an on-going working relationship with the company over the course of many productions. The orchestra will consist of 30 players.

Boston Opera Collaborative’s La Bohème, will be conducted by Adam Boyles, directed by David Gram and performed in Italian with English supertitles on March 2-4 and 9-11 at the Tower Auditorium, MassArt, 621 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA. Friday and Saturday performances begin at 8:00 pm, Sunday performances begin at 3:00 pm. A pre-performance lecture, “Consuming Music: Parisian café culture and Puccini’s La Bohème,” with Dr. Laura Prichard is scheduled for  2 pm on Sunday, March 4. Tickets are $25 for general admission, $20 for seniors (65+), and $15 for students. Children 10 and under are free. Tickets are available online here or by phone at (617) 518-5883.

The casts include:

Mimi: Leah Hungerford (March 2, 4, 10) and Rebecca Teeeters (March 3, 9, 11);
Rodolfo: Giovanni Formisano (March 2, 3, 10) and  Jeffery Hartman (March 4, 9, 11);
Musetta: Natalie Polito (March 2, 4, 10)  and Katrina Holden  (March 3, 9, 11); and
Marcello Seth Grondin (March 2, 4, 10)  and Brandon Milardo (March 3, 9, 11).

The Children’s ensemble includes Cecilia Cipullo, Kayla Silverman, Anika Sridhar, and Alexandra Upton.

See related review here.

John Oliver last led members of the BSO in concert on July 29, 2010, in Bach’s “Jesu, Meine Freude,” BWV 227. Since he stepped in for Seiji Ozawa during the second half of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion on August 16, 1985, Mr. Oliver has led the BSO in a number of performances, including Bach’s Mass in B minor on December 12-14, 1985; Martino’s The White Island on April 8 and October 2, 3, and 6, 1987; Mozart’s Kyrie in D minor, K.341 and Ave verum corpus, K.618, during the Tanglewood Festival Chorus 25th anniversary celebration at Tanglewood on July 9, 1995; and Beethoven’s Mass in C at Tanglewood on July 5, 1998.

Oliver founded the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in 1970 and has since prepared the TFC for more than 900 performances, including appearances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall, Tanglewood, Carnegie Hall, and on tour in Europe and the Far East, as well as with visiting orchestras and as a solo ensemble. He has had a major impact on musical life in Boston and beyond through his work with countless TFC members, former students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (where he taught for thirty-two years), and Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center who now perform with distinguished musical institutions throughout the world. Mr. Oliver’s affiliation with the Boston Symphony began in 1964 when, at twenty-four, he prepared the Sacred Heart Boychoir of Roslindale for the BSO’s perform­ances and recording of excerpts from Berg’s Wozzeck led by Erich Leinsdorf. In 1966 he pre­pared the choir for the BSO’s performances and recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, also with Leinsdorf, soon after which Leinsdorf asked him to assist with the choral and vocal music program at the Tanglewood Music Center. In 1970, Mr. Oliver was named Director of Vocal and Choral Activities at the Tanglewood Music Center and founded the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. He has since prepared the chorus in more than 200 works for chorus and orchestra, as well as dozens more a cappella pieces, and for more than forty commercial releases with James Levine, Seiji Ozawa, Bernard Haitink, Sir Colin Davis, Leonard Bernstein, Keith Lockhart, and John Williams. He made his Boston Symphony conducting debut at Tanglewood in August 1985, led subscription concerts for the first time in December 1985, conducted the orchestra most recently in July 1998, and returned to the BSO podium to open the BSO’s final Tanglewood concert of 2010 with a TFC performance of Bach’s motet, Jesu, meine Freude.

In addition to his work with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and Tanglewood Music Center, Mr. Oliver has held posts as conductor of the Framingham Choral Society, as a member of the faculty and director of the chorus at Boston University, and for many years on the faculty of MIT, where he was lecturer and then senior lecturer in music. While at MIT, he conducted the MIT Glee Club, Choral Society, Chamber Chorus, and Concert Choir. In 1977 he founded the John Oliver Chorale, which performed a wide-ranging repertoire encompassing masterpieces by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Stravinsky, as well as seldom heard works by Carissimi, Bruckner, Ives, Martin, and Dallapiccola. With the Chorale he recorded two albums for Koch International: the first of works by Martin Amlin, Elliott Carter, William Thomas McKinley, and Bright Sheng, the second of works by Amlin, Carter, and Vincent Persichetti. He and the Chorale also recorded Charles Ives’s The Celestial Country and Charles Loeffler’s Psalm 137 for Northeastern Records, and Donald Martino’s Seven Pious Pieces for New World Records. Mr. Oliver’s appearances as a guest conductor have included Mozart’s Requiem with the New Japan Philharmonic and Shinsei Chorus, and Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony with the Berkshire Choral Institute. In May 1999 he prepared the chorus and children’s choir for André Previn’s performances of Benjamin Britten’s Spring Symphony with the NHK Symphony in Japan; in 2001-02 he conducted the Carnegie Hall Choral Workshop in preparation for Previn’s Carnegie performance of Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem. John Oliver made his Montreal Symphony Orchestra debut in December 2011 conducting performances of Handel’s Messiah. This past October he received the 2011 Alfred Nash Patterson Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by Choral Arts New England in recognition of his outstanding contributions to choral music.

A Far Cry bassist Karl Doty

In their next program, “Heartbeats,” the self-directed, cooperatively-run chamber orchestra, A Far Cry, “investigates emotional extremes – from the oppression, fear, and desolation of Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony op. 110a to the prayerful ecstatic minimalism of John Adams’s Shaker Loops.” The concert will include the premiere of a new double concerto by violinist/composer Kip Jones to be performed with Jones and A Far Cry bassist, Karl Doty. The program on February 24th at 8 pm in Jordan Hall will be unusual for A Far Cry in that it will include nothing written before 1960.

BMInt asked Crier violist Sarah Darling to explain why this program included none of the signature baroque, classical or romantic works the Criers usually offer.

Sarah Darling: Programs are submitted in their entirety by individual group members during an intensive 2-month process where they get voted into a “vault” containing a whole bunch of possibilities, and then voted again into a specific season. There is some tweakage, of course, but we like to stick to the person’s idea wherever possible. I think when next season’s programming comes out, you’ll see an even greater variety of experimental programs — we have eight concerts next year to play with, courtesy of the Gardner, so we’ll be mixing things up even more.
This specific program entitled “Heartbeats” was designed by Karl Doty, the bassist who’ll be playing in the Jones, and was voted in, of course, by all of us! I’ll let him describe it.

Karl Doty: The heart is not only an indispensable lifeline for our physical body, but also for our emotional and spiritual being. This program shows the different faces of our hearts.

John Adams renamed his piece Shaker Loops from Wavemaker because it gave him the vision of Shakers dancing. This shows the heart in a devotional sense: giving ourselves up to something greater. The Jones concerto will show the mechanically functioning side of the heart; the motor that gives life. The Shostakovich shows the heart’s ability for empathy; the deep love for our worldly brothers and sisters.

The piece receiving its premiere is Three Views of a Mountain – Concerto for Violin, Double Bass, and String Orchestra, a commission to Kip Jones, a close friend of Crier bassist Karl Doty. Kip’s standard biography reads:

A violinist’s son, Kip grew up in Duluth, Minnesota, and received his degree in violin performance from Boston’s Berklee College of Music, where he studied jazz with Matt Glaser.  After a nine-month motorcycle trip that spanned the North American continent, he continued his study of improvisation with renowned Hindustani violinist Kala Ramnath in Mumbai, India.  He met his wife, Noelle, in Minnesota and the two soon moved to rural South Korea, where Kip’s songs began to take shape. Then, together, the pair embarked on a year-long odyssey through South America, where he captured the sound he had long been seeking. He looks forward to embracing his future in Minnesota, where he is proud to have grown up, and happy to have returned.

He tells BMInt readers a bit more about himself and his music:

Kip Jones: I was attracted to Boston and Berklee College of Music by the romance of a career in music! What kept me there, however, was the enormous wealth of resources available to any student desirous of developing a broad yet functional musical worldview.

I’ve also traveled extensively in search of my compositional voice — India, Korea, South America —  because quite honestly, long-term travel blows a person wide open, and keeps her there. There’s no more surefire way to feel the universality of human experience, the relativity of culture, or the isolation of individuality. Ultimately, though, modern travel is unsustainable, predicated on a foreign economy remaining weaker than one’s own (or vast individual wealth).  At home, I’m extremely lucky to have a close, supportive family, clean drinking water, and the ability to play the violin as a profession. Having just returned from four months in Indochina, it’s tough for me to envision a permanent home outside of Minnesota.

Musically speaking, the most important aspect of travel is the time to consider and be changed by what one hears. The syntax of Hindustani classical music, for example, is beautiful but elusive, requiring vast amounts of listening time to digest. If, moreover, one can spend this time guided by a skilled practitioner, surrounded by the very landscape and culture that the music is designed to evoke, then one is quite lucky indeed! A more reasonable expectation might be a long, quiet bus ride, a full battery in the IPod, and time to practice new material in between local explorations of a new region. And perhaps even the quiet bus ride is a stretch; there’s usually some grating, heavily synthesized hybrid of regional folk music and sloppy rock, which, unfortunately, at this point is probably an influence on my music as well.

BMInt: Your music has many sounds and colors, from a country hoedown to a religious incantation, to world music and to jazz. I hear Steve Reichian minimalism and repetition, yet you talk about Bach; where do we hear his influence?

Bach’s perspective has been subsumed into human musical experience for almost all modern cultures; it’s rare NOT to hear his influence.  Specifically, however, I hold many aspects of his work as ideals.  There’s no extraneous content; it never bogs down; it’s often self-similar, or fractal, in both predictable and unexpected ways; it doesn’t prescribe an emotional response (even though its organization certainly engenders an emotional dimension); fundamentally, it always feels good, never divorced from a pulse; ideologically, it describes the best within us and offers it to God.  What can YOUR favorite composer do?

And while there are plenty of cyclical structures present, they serve to expose, maintain, or buoy the melodic content of the piece.  Perhaps that’s a reason why Steve Reich resists the minimalist label: his music always has a strong if not central narrative element.  If a listener has prepared for ‘minimalism’ there’s a danger that she’s prejudged the piece as purely a soundscape.

Composer Kip Jones (file photo)

Kip Jones: Why not read my program notes now rather than during the performance?

Three Views of a Mountain is a concerto in three movements, arranged fast-slow-fast, that highlights the common ground between the two most disparate members of the string instrument family. It opens with the soloists, together as a speeding train, dodging large blocks of harmony from the orchestra. The entire first movement is a study of permutations, twisting and manipulating its stark themes in an overt and simple way. For me, it is childlike anticipation.

The second movement is based on a twenty-two beat clave, ticking away silently in the musicians’ minds underneath a folk song, played against its own skeleton; the effect is a many-layered, untrustworthy environment: fearing no evil but still, after all, walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Whereas the first movement is anxiety and expectation, this is the experience itself, skipping a beat every so often to remind the consciousness: This Is Really Happening.

The third movement, to be symmetrical, is the hike down from the summit. Retrospect, not necessarily accurate, creates an emotional framework through which we understand and redefine past experience. It opens with the soloists, both pizzicato, commenting on a new theme played pianissimo by the violas. Back at the tempo of the opening, multiple metric puzzle-pieces are fit together to foreshadow the final hocketing relationship between the soloists and orchestra. Ultimately, our present self is hurled forward out of the past, against our will, contrary to the famous last sentence of “The Great Gatsby.” [“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”] It’s a real joy to present this work with A Far Cry, whose integrity, dedication, and sound are a great inspiration to me.

BMInt: If readers want to get a flavor of Three Views of a Mountain, which of your pieces should they listen to on your website?

For a hint of the sound and musical space, I’d recommend LDMT.  For an impression of the grooves, energy and interplay, try “For the Ohio Klyns”.

The review of this performance is here.