Festival Focus, Week 6

GRACE LYDENFestival Focus writer

Nathan Gunn, with his heartthrob looks and resonant baritone voice, has played roles with the Metropolitan Op-era, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and Paris Opera, to name a few, but he has never limited himself to the classical genre.

Gunn will present a cabaret event with his wife, Julie Gunn, for the season benefit of the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) at 6:15 pm Monday, August 6, in Harris Concert Hall. Cocktails are at 5 pm, and dinner is at 8 pm.

“Nathan Gunn does everything from Baroque opera to twentieth-century opera to musical theater and cabaret,” AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher says. “This program is on the American Song-book theme, but he can do anything.”

The program will include familiar standards by Cole Porter and Kurt Weill, such as “Don't Fence Me In” and “This is the Life,” as well as songs by Ives and Barber, in a celebra-tion of America that is fitting for the AMFS 2012 season theme: “Made in America.”

Gunn says Bill Miller, the profes-sor who taught him to sing, emphasized learning to sing one’s own language. Because this is not always possible in the opera idiom, Gunn learned to appreciate a variety of American music. He has commissioned numerous new works throughout his career.

“He’s a very patriotic person, and he’s able to commu-nicate that through great music in his art form,” says Asa-dour Santourian, vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor.

Nathan and Julie Gunn met when they were students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She helped him find Miller, went to all his lessons, and has

been accompanying him for decades.“She knows my voice so well,” Gunn says. “If I’m doing

something that sounds a little weird, she can remind me of that. She has always been really great about helping me learn music and keeping me on track with healthy singing. We really get along so well and know each other so well musically that for us, making music is like having a conversation.”

Gunn will also be accompanied by AMFS Music Director Robert Spano for one song. Gunn has collaborated with Spano numerous times and says the two of them “speak the same language.”

“He’s such an expressive, easily communicative conductor and pia-nist,” Gunn says. “We hit it off at the very beginning because he trusts the people he’s collaborating with to be musicians and he allows them to be musicians. He’s not a dictator; he’s a conductor. It’s very easy to work with someone like that.”

Gunn says he designs his recital programs with an overarching theme, so that the audience can better con-nect with the music. The program on August 6 will be about love and

passion and includes several crooner standards written during the Great Depression, which Gunn chose for their applicability today.

“It has to be relevant, for me,” Gunn says. “I want it to speak to people and where they are at that time.”

When Gunn returns to Aspen, he plans to see many old friends, as well as meet new Festival students when he gives a free and open master class at 1 pm Sunday, August 5, at the Aspen Middle School Commons.

“Aspen is such a beautiful place,” he says. “One of the greatest benefits to my profession is seeing all these dif-ferent parts of the world and the United States.”

GRACE LYDENFestival Focus writer

Cello star Alisa Weilerstein and her younger brother Joshua Weilerstein, assistant conductor at the New York Philharmonic and a violinist, have been coming to the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) all their lives.

Their parents, violinist Donald Weilerstein and pia-nist Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, were on the AMFS artist-faculty from 1976 to 2001, and Alisa first came to Aspen at the age of two months. Both Alisa and Joshua attended the Festival as students, and Joshua served as the AMFS assistant conductor in 2011.

"Aspen is full of childhood memories for me, sort of like a home away from home," Alisa says.

The siblings will return to the mountains this week when Alisa performs Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B minor under her brother’s baton at 4 pm Sunday, August 5, with the Aspen Festival Orchestra (AFO) in the Benedict Music Tent.

“For them, it’s a big homecoming in a very special way, that the two of them can perform together in their chosen fields, one as a cellist, one as a conductor, back

where they studied,” says Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice president for artistic administration and artistic ad-visor.

Alisa and Joshua do not often get to perform together, and the entire family has only performed together once before. But they will unite on stage for a second time at 8:30 pm Wednesday, August 1, when the Weilersteins play a recital of chamber music in Harris Concert Hall.

“We were originally going to do something separately, but it naturally morphed into this family recital, and we were very happy to do that,” Alisa says. “The idea was to bring the family together. It will be very special.”

Alisa has always wanted to be a musician. “One of my favorite pastimes when I was two and three was to listen to my parents practice and rehearse with their colleagues,” she says.

When Alisa was two years old, she got the chicken pox, and her grandmother cheered her up by making her a cello out of a Rice Krispies box, with an old green toothbrush for an endpin and a chopstick for a bow. It

Supplement to The Aspen Times Vol 23, No. 7

Nathan Gunn, known for his lyric baritone voice and magnetic stage presence, will present a cabaret event at the season benefit Monday, August 6, in Harris Concert Hall.

Season Benefit Stars Opera Sensation Nathan Gunn

Buy tickets now! (970) 925-9042 or www.aspenmusicfestival.com

Alisa Weilerstein, the cellist, AMFS alumna, and MacArthur "Ge-nius Grant" recipient, performs this Wednesday and Sunday.

This program is on the American

Songbook theme, but he can do anything.

Alan FletcherAMFS President and CEO

FESTIVAL FOCUS

Weilerstein Family Unites for Two Concerts

YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE

Monday, July 30, 2012

See WEILERSTEIN Festival Focus page 3

M SHARKEY PHOTOGRAPHY

ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

Page 2 | Monday, July 30, 2012 FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide Supplement to The Aspen Times

GRACE LYDENFestival Focus writer

Pianist Jeremy Denk will perform Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto with the Aspen Chamber Symphony at 6 pm this Friday, August 3, in the Benedict Music Tent. Robert Spano, music director for the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS), will conduct.

Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto is not played often, and Denk learned the work for the 2012 Festival. Spano played a role in asking him to learn the piece.

“Jeremy Denk is one of the most intellectually stimulating pianists around,” Spano says. “There’s something about the depth of music making, but also the depth of his intellect, that made me very interested in hearing him play the Schoenberg Piano Concerto.”

AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher agrees.

“Jeremy is someone I would hear play anything, anytime,” he says.

The major orchestras with which Denk has played include the Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, New World, St. Louis, and San Francisco symphonies, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and London Philharmonia. He performed concertos by Beethoven, Copland, Mozart, Schumann, and

Stravinsky last season, in addition to maintaining relationships with living composers whose new works he has premiered.

Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor, refers to Denk as a “thinking pianist.”

“He’s interested in parts of the repertoire that other pianists don’t usually traverse,” Santourian says. The Schoenberg Piano Concerto is part

of “an entire arm of the repertoire that I think people with intellectual pursuits go to.”

Santourian says that while the concerto is a corner of the classical repertoire for some pianists, it is a cornerstone for intellectuals such as Denk.

Published in 1942, the Piano Concerto consists of four interconnected movements, and in the manuscript, each is labeled with an autobiographical

marking: “Life was so easy,” “Suddenly hatred broke out,” “A grave situation was created,” and “But life goes on.” The composer did not approve of programmatic music, though, and merely used the unpublished markings as a guide for his composing. The entire work is founded in twelve-

Buy tickets now: (970) 925-9042 • www.aspenmusicfestival.com

Denk Plays Schoenberg Concerto

See DENK Festival Focus page 3

Percussion Ensemble Concert Tonight!

ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

2011 Percussion Ensemble Concert

The 2012 percussion students at the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) will play the music of Steve Reich, Jolivet, David Ives, Andrew Thomas, Cage, and Antheil at 6 pm Monday, July 30, in Harris Concert Hall. Artist-faculty member Jonathan Haas will conduct, and soloists will include Bonita Boyd flute, and Joshua Vonderheide percussion.

Jeremy Denk is one of the most

intellectually stimulating

pianists around.

Robert SpanoAMFS Music Director

Monday, July 30, 2012 | Page 3Supplement to The Aspen Times FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

Robert Spano (right), the music director for the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS), and Robert McDuffie (left), the internationally renowned violinist, will collaborate at 8 pm Tuesday, July 31, in Harris Concert Hall with Spano at the piano, to play Brahms's three beautiful sonatas for violin and piano.

They performed the first of the sonatas last year at Mercer University in Georgia, where McDuffie is a professor of music, and Spano says that was when he decided to program this recital. “I’ve always loved making music with him, and we were having such a good time playing, and I said, ‘You have to play all the Brahms sonatas with me next summer, because we will just have the best time.’” Spano says playing with McDuffie is effortless, even organic. “Things just fall into place with him,” Spano says. “It’s so easy and natural. It’s just a pleasure.”

Spano and McDuffie Play Brahms Sonatas

tone technique and uses one tone row.The atonality of Schoenberg’s writing is part of what makes

the concerto both stimulating and difficult. Santourian says it demands as much as Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto, but with serial language. He continues, “And just because it is serial music, it doesn’t preclude that it can be beautiful.”

“The whole idea with the atonality was not to separate themselves from the rest of the world but to extend the compositional language by this new technique,” Santourian says.

Fletcher says the Piano Concerto is one of Schoenberg’s more expressive works.

“It represents a sweetening of Schoenberg’s musical vocabulary toward the end of his life, and it’s a very lyrical piece,” Fletcher says.

Also on the program is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, nicknamed “Eroica,” the Italian word for “heroic.” The symphony was written at the start of Beethoven’s middle-period and is regarded as an expression of the composer’s bridge from mature Classical writing into Romantic, with an emotional range that was revolutionary for its time. The second movement alone includes both a funeral march and happier sections.

Twice as long as the Classical symphonies of Mozart and Haydn, the work received mixed reviews at its first public performance in 1805. More recently, in 1953, Leonard Bernstein called the first two movements, “perhaps the greatest two movements in all symphonic music.”

Denk: Thinking PianistContinued from Festival Focus page 2

50% Off A Recital by the

American String Quartet

8 pm Thursday, August 2in Harris Concert Hall

Present for one-time use. No cash value.

Faculty SpotlightCongratulations to Per Brevig!

The trombonist and longtime member of the AMFS artist-faculty has just returned from Paris, where he was presented with the International Trombone Association's 2012 Award, "in acknowledgement of his impact on the world of trombone performance."

Weilerstein: Family ConcertsContinued from Festival Focus page 1

was love at first sight, and the instrument be-came her most cherished possession. When Alisa was four, though, she realized it made no sound and demanded a real cello and lessons.

Alisa has been playing Dvořák’s Cello Con-certo since she was twelve and first performed it professionally at four-teen. She estimates that she has played it more than any other piece but never tires of it.

“It’s probably his greatest work, and for that reason, I always find new things in it, no matter how many times I’m doing it,” Alisa says. “Even during periods when I’m playing it ev-ery weekend, there’s so much to discover. The orchestra is so interesting, the colors are so in-teresting, it’s so emotionally satisfying.”

Alisa jokes that though Joshua is conduct-ing, she has lived with the piece longer than her brother and he will therefore be following her lead. Luckily, their musical sensibilities are very similar, she says.

Joshua did not decide he wanted to pursue music until the age of sixteen, when he went on a life-changing trip to Venezuela with his youth orchestra. He studied conducting with Ludovic Morlot in college, and AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher says that when Joshua was

in the American Acad-emy of Conducting at Aspen (AACA) in 2009 and 2010, “he was one of those blazing talents, we knew immediately.”

The AFO program will include Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, which Joshua says is one of his favorite pieces for its “raw emotion.” The piece saved Shostakov-ich's career and is full of mock patriotism to

please Stalin, who did not pick up on the satire.The family recital program will include a piece

arranged by Stephen Coxe for the Weilerstein Trio, an ensemble of Alisa and her parents, and Brahms’s String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat major, op. 18, which Joshua says is "a gorgeous master-piece of Brahms."

It's a big homecoming in a very special way, that

the two of them can perform together... back

where they studied.

Asadour SantourianAMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration and Artistic Advisor

ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

Joshua Weilerstein

ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

ALEX IRVIN / AMFS