The Biggest Classical Music Event of the Summer is Approaching
The timbre of this week in music, from sfcv.org
By Michael Zwiebach, senior editor
The biggest event of the summer is approaching: Jake Heggie’s opera The Judgment of Paris premieres at Festival Napa Valley this Saturday. Emily Wilson spoke with the opera’s creators to find out what it’s really about. Also at Napa, the Festival’s opening night concert hit the mark with the vaunted Young People’s Chorus of New York City.
There was also a lot of high-level action last week. Merola Opera Program set its young singers to Peter Brook’s adaptation of Carmen. Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Grete Pedersen led the Carmel Bach Festival forces in a stirring performance of Haydn’s oratorio, The Seasons. And SFCV’s Caroline Chen profiled Pedersen, who opened up about her musical interests and Carmel’s program.
In L.A. the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, led by Music Director Thomas Wilkins, began its season with the premiere of an adaptation of songs from the musical Suffs, with its creator, Shaina Taub, taking part. There was also music from the Harlem Renaissance by William Grant Still and Duke Ellington. Further south, San Diego Opera presented its production of Gregory Spears’s hit opera Fellow Travelers.
If that’s not enough, the Del Sol Quartet honored Hawaiian history on Angel Island, and New Century Chamber Orchestra announced its next season along with the extension of Daniel Hope’s contract as music director. We interviewed Chelsea Wang, one of the great musicians from Music@Menlo, and Andrew Gilbert reviewed jazz pianist Charles Chen at Piedmont Piano.
And for your listening pleasure, we reviewed star pianist Simone Dinnerstein’s newest recording of music by Philip Glass.
The Excerpt
An article to spark this week’s conversation
Old and New Collide at Carmel Bach Festival with “The Nature of Sound”
By Caroline Chen
“Come with open ears!” says Grete Pedersen, extending an invitation to the annual Carmel Bach Festival.
Pedersen, artistic director and principal conductor of the Festival, which runs from July 11-25 in Carmel-by-the-Sea, created an intriguing program on the theme “the nature of sound” by placing historical masterpieces in conversation with contemporary works.
Pedersen picked the theme because she professes “a love for sound itself, not just for music.” She revels in the universe of textures and speeds that can be found in the sounds “all around us and in us.”
The word “nature,” of course, has a double meaning. Composers from antiquity to today have been inspired by the earth’s noises. The Festival’s featured composer this year, Angélica Negrón, brings a piece that includes field recordings from birds and waves in Puerto Rico.
The Carmel Bach Festival, now in its 89th Season, is one of the oldest music festivals in the United States. While Bach features heavily in each season’s repertoire, this year’s program is by no means restrained to the Baroque era.
Pedersen, in her fourth year as the program’s artistic director, says she is proud to carry forward the legacy of the two women who founded the Festival, Dene Denny and Hazel Watrous. “They were really in love with the history and at the same time they were also in love with the contemporary music,” Pedersen said.
Music doesn’t split neatly into “old” and “new” for Pedersen. She approaches even the best-known masterpieces as if she were conducting a premiere performance. On July 17 and 24, she will conduct Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, one of the best known pieces of classical orchestra music in existence. “If this was the first time the piece was played, how would it be?” she asks herself. “How does it resonate with us now, on the day of the concert?”
On opening night, the program starts with selections from Franz Joseph Haydn’s The Seasons, from Spring and Summer. Then the orchestra will play Muohta — Language of Snow, a piece by Norwegian composer Nils Henrik Asheim that Pedersen commissioned. Then the program will conclude with Autumn, because Fall is the season of thanksgiving. Pedersen said the Festival wants to send the audience into a post-concert party in the mood to celebrate the Festival’s opening.
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