Symphony

More than 30 years ago, guitarist Sharon Isbin and composer John Corigliano found themselves in the same line at the post office. Isbin asked if Corigliano would write a guitar concerto for her, and Corigliano said no — the in-demand composer was too busy at the time.

But Isbin persisted. She checked back with Corigliano every year for eight years, and eventually, Corigliano agreed to write her concerto.

In 1993, Isbin finally premiered Corigliano’s “Troubadours (Variations for Guitar and Orchestra).” Their collaboration would reach many ears. Just two years after the premiere, astronaut Chris Hadfield brought Isbin’s recording of the piece to space, where he presented it to Russian cosmonauts.

At 8:15 p.m. Saturday in the Amphitheater, Isbin will join the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra and Rossen Milanov for a performance of Corigliano’s “Troubadours,” and the orchestra will perform Gioachino Rossini’s Overture to William Tell and Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 in A major, op. 90, “Italian.”

According to Isbin, Corigliano finally capitulated to her request because Isbin suggested the theme of the troubadours, lyric poets of the Middle Ages. That idea, she said, came to her in a dream after Corigliano’s publisher suggested she come to Corigliano with a “historical and dramatic” theme for the proposed concerto.

The troubadours existed in Southern France and surrounding areas from the late 11th century to the late 13th century, and are credited with major advances in European poetry. Their poems were often set as songs, with some 300 troubadour melodies surviving into the modern era.

Corigliano selected a melody from trobairitz (female troubadour) Comtessa de Dia to form the basis for the concerto’s main theme. The comtessa was a fitting pick for a concerto written for Isbin — just as it was unusual for women to be troubadours in the Middle Ages, it was unusual for women to play the classical guitar when Isbin was beginning her career.

“In the past, the role models have been men,” Isbin said. “It takes time to really create the vision for younger people to know that they can follow their passion and their heart even if it’s an instrument or profession not commonly associated with their gender.”

Isbin has certainly done that — she’s won two Grammy Awards (the only female classical guitarist to ever do so), performed around the world as a soloist both in recitals and in front of orchestras, and she founded the guitar program at The Juilliard School in New York.

Isbin has also been a major force in bringing the guitar into the contemporary concert hall. She’s had 10 guitar concertos written for her by some of the most well-known contemporary composers, from Christopher Rouse to Joseph Schwantner and Corigliano.

“Like most artists, I think there’s something to be said for being part of our time, especially when there are some amazing composers like John Corigliano,” Isbin said. “He’s one of the true greats. Fortuitously, meeting him was almost like fate, and while it did take some effort and arm twisting to bring him to an instrument that he wasn’t familiar with, he grew to love it.”

Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus opens 75th season in concert with CSO

Lauren Hutchison | Staff Writer

The Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus will celebrate its 75th anniversary with Chautauqua in its season-opening-concert featuring Bach’s “Magnificat” and Leonard Bernstein’s “MASS.” Doreen Rao will conduct the chorus and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra at 8:15 p.m. Saturday in the Amphitheater.

“Chautauqua is an exquisite intersection between the arts and spirituality,” she said. “It just exudes the kind of an enlightened energy that makes listening to and making beautiful music immediately understood in so many different ways.”

Though Rao and the chorus have visited Chautauqua every year since she became the chorus’ music director in 2008, this is Rao’s first time conducting the CSO.

“There is a vibrancy in the orchestra that I think comes from reuniting every year as a community of musicians,” Rao said. “That combination of orchestra and chorus is, to me, the most exciting place to be. It doesn’t get better than that.”

Tonight’s concert opens with Benjamin Britten’s “Fanfare for St. Edmundsbury,” a work for three trumpets. Rao said she hopes to have the musicians play in different areas of the Amp for the fanfare.

“My goal with this piece is to help the listeners be surrounded by the three trumpets that define the music of Bach’s ‘Magnificat,’” she said. “At the same time, the music of Britten, in a spatial sense, provides the listener an opportunity to prepare themselves to receive the music of the evening.”

Once the invitation to listen is delivered, the concert continues with the air from Bach’s Orchestral Suite in D Major, BW 1068, which will help to create the stillness of a listening space, Rao said.

“This is created by the lyricism and the melodic beauty of that movement,” she said. “It prepares us, then, for the complex counterpoint that we will hear in the ‘Magnificat.’”

Bach composed “Magnificat” after his appointment to the St. Thomas School in Leipzig, Germany. “Magnificat” was originally intended to be a Christmas piece, but Bach revised it so it could be performed throughout the year.

Rao said the piece is full of wonderful, virtuosic counterpoint and rhythmic dance forms. Its florid musical ideas are exchanged between the orchestra and chorus in a concerto-like format. The piece is challenging for vocalists, because Bach wrote the vocal parts instrumentally.

The choral movements are interspersed with arias, duets and a trio. Soloists for this evening’s performance of “Magnificat” include soprano I Leah Schneider, soprano II Tony Arnold, mezzo-soprano Natalia Kojanova, tenor Jeffrey Thompson and bass Brian T. Zunner.

Thompson is a guest soloist with the chorus and will perform the tenor aria “Deposuit potentes” and alto-tenor duet “Et misericordia.” He has performed with the chorus before and said it is a mature-sounding choir that interprets nuances wonderfully and blends beautifully. He described “Magnificat” as “Bach at his best.”

“It’s harmonically and rhythmically perfect,” he said. “The marriage of that music and the text is perfect and uplifting. It flows just beautifully.”

He will perform “Et misericordia” with Kojanova, who said she enjoys the duet for its sad, melodramatic qualities.

“When you’re happy, it’s generally just one feeling,” she said. “When you’re sad, you can be sad in so many different ways.”

Following “Magnificat,” Rao will lead the orchestra and chorus in Bernstein’s “MASS,” which she edited to shorten the piece and to make it more feasible for school, church and community choruses to perform.

Rao said “MASS” and “Magnificat” complement textually and contrast stylistically.

“Bernstein is saying much the same thing as Bach through his great faith, but uses a 20th-century language, representing American diversity in song styles and a broad sweep of compositional elements,” Rao said.

“MASS” premiered in 1971 during a tumultuous period in American history. Rao said these conflicts are juxtaposed with Bernstein’s personal struggles with his faith and reflected within the text of a Catholic mass.

“He used (the mass) as a unification device to explore the tremendous conflicts of doubt and faith that were occurring at that period of American history and continue, in many ways, to define the problems that we face today,” she said.

“MASS” includes an important role for tenor and guest soloist Joseph Mikolaj, who acts as celebrant throughout the piece. Mikolaj was raised Catholic, which he said helps him have a deeper insight for the role. He enjoys the musical style of “MASS,” which he said has roots in classical music as well as popular music.

“It carries an energy that it borrows from the pop music, but it also carries a weight that, I think, creates something quite brilliant,” he said.
Mikolaj said he’s never heard anything quite like “MASS.”

“I’d like for an audience member to sit down and try to find one thing to hold onto, one thing to take from the piece, because it’s so powerful and can be so moving,” he said. “Be ready. Be forewarned.”

Schneider performs the soprano part in “MASS,” in addition to her aria, duet and trio in “Magnificat.” She said the soprano in “MASS” performs without paying attention to the chorus, creating chaos.

“The soprano represents all that is secular,” she said. “She’s not exactly a character as much as she is representing a feeling.”

Schneider, a soloist and music educator, joined the chorus in 2006 and has enjoyed both performing in the chorus and learning new teaching methods from Rao’s example.

“(Rao is) such a vibrant conductor with lots of energy,” Schneider said. “She really knows exactly how to produce results from singers in the most effective way.”

Kojanova first started singing as a soloist with large ensembles when she joined the chorus three years ago. She said it is incredible to work with the chorus and with Rao.

“She brings so much — everybody says so,” Kojanova said. “Even in concerts, the music changes every time, growing better and better.”

In addition to her work with the chorus, Rao is an associate professor of conducting at the University of Toronto. She is also the founding artistic director of the CME Institute for Choral Teacher Education.

In the near future, Rao looks forward to a new focus in her career, with conducting in the forefront and a continued dedication to music education.

“My career is the bridge between performance and education,” she said. “That is where I live. That is what I love.”

“The Personal and Political in Bernstein’s MASS”
Scott Slocum Interviews Doreen Rao

John Chacona | Guest Reviewer

Weird night last night.

I should have known that something was amiss at Chautauqua when I found a parking space at the bottom of the lot close to the exit. Paradoxically, the failure of a transformer earlier in the day and the resultant loss of electrical power increased the noise level on the grounds as gasoline-powered generators chugged away.

The Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra chugged away, too, in a truncated concert in a semi-darkened Amphitheater last night, but the lack of power wasn’t a consequence of the transformer as much as it was of the heat.

Musicians are mortal like the rest of us, and nobody likes to work outside when temperatures are in the mid-90s. Moreover, in hot weather, instruments are hard to keep in tune. Humidity is an enemy, too. So the climatic deck was stacked against the CSO yesterday.

After President Tom Becker made an announcement about the power outage (in a polo shirt and shorts!), Marty Merkley told the slightly thin crowd (many had left to seek food as well as air conditioning) that the program would be shortened so that symphony patrons might find their way home before dark.

The initial movement of the Prokofiev G minor Violin Concerto and the first three movements of the Dvořák Symphony No. 8 were sacrificed, a decision that was both vexatious and merciful.

Under the circumstances, it seems unfair to offer a review in the normal sense of the term. Does a restaurant critic judge a restaurant solely on the amuse bouche and the dessert?

So I’ll report on what I heard, namely that the CSO players, under conductor Christopher Seaman’s direction, delivered a tidy and sonorous account of the “Meistersinger” overture, with the strings sounding surprisingly rich and well-tuned.

The Prokofiev began with the slow movement, and though it’s not unusual to play individual movements of works in certain settings, starting a work in the middle is rather like reading a book beginning with chapter four. One can get a sense of the author’s style, but not the message. I think the orchestra was a little unnerved, too, as some of the ensemble work was a bit tentative.

Was violinist Joan Kwuon’s small tone a function of the heat, the change in program or was it anomalous? It’s impossible to know, but my heart went out to her in what had to be a thankless assignment, and certainly not the one for which she prepared. The closing pages of the brilliant finale arrived with more relief than triumph.

It was a pity that the Dvořák G major Symphony had to take the hit, because this is supremely outdoor music, and summer music, too. Full of juicy Bohemian folk melodies and the composer’s amiability of utterance, it would have been nice to hear all of it.

Conductor Seaman gave the downbeat before both his feet hit the podium surface, and it was off to the races. The finale was played very fast, with principal flutist Richard Sherman puffing hard to keep up. Not that it didn’t work — sort of. Standing alone, the movement was an undiscovered Slavonic Dance, an encore piece to the half-hour or so concert that preceded it. Like I said, it was a strange night.

By the time you read this — not by candlelight, as Becker warned of the tragic potential of candles and open windows — power should have been restored, but the heat is a more intractable problem than is electricity, and the CSO has a hugely ambitious program on Saturday, with two sets of soloists and a chorus. It may be the highlight of the season. Let’s hope that it may be heard under ideal conditions.

John Chacona is a freelance writer for the Erie Times-News.

Violinist Kwuon, guest conductor Seaman join CSO for a concert of Wagner, Prokofiev and Dvořák

Lauren Hutchison | Staff Writer

Violinist Joan Kwuon loves the thrill of performing for a live audience and having an active dialogue with an orchestra.

“It never gets old,” she said. “That moment, being surrounded by the sound from the orchestra and contributing the solo line is really quite mesmerizing.”

Kwuon will join guest conductor Christopher Seaman and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra at 8:15 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater for a concert featuring works by Richard Wagner, Sergei Prokofiev and Antonín Dvořák.

Kwuon made her CSO debut in 2009 with the Jean Sibelius Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47, in a performance guest reviewer Anthony Bannon said “(found) tempest inside tenderness.”

She originally was scheduled to perform the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 63, in 2008, but was unable to appear due to a family emergency. Tonight’s concert features the same concerto, chosen simply because it was a good fit for the musicians and the program, Kwuon said.

She said she enjoys the concerto for its wide range of harmonies and textures.

“The concerto has a lot of flavor,” Kwuon said. “(Prokofiev) is very generous with expression.”

The first movement begins with the solo violin, which sets the mood. Kwuon described the movement as light, reflective and a bit sad. The second movement becomes arching, lyrical and romantic, with fireworks and long, spun phrases above the orchestra’s part. The concerto concludes with a vibrant dance featuring castanets, conjuring images of Spain, where the concerto premiered.

Seaman described Prokofiev as a composer with a very strong personal flavor.

“Prokofiev has this marvelous mixture of elegance, charm and an incredibly dry wit,” he said. “By adding Prokofiev in the middle of the Wagner and the Dvořák, we’ve stirred a little bit of a different spice into the mix, which gives us a very good balance as a program.”

The concert opens with Richard Wagner’s Prelude to Act I of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The piece is among Wagner’s most popular overtures and preludes. It features marvelous melodies and a big finish, Seaman said.

“It’s a wonderful starter,” Seaman said. “The opera has a huge amount of humanity, which comes out in the prelude.”

Tonight’s program concludes with Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in G Major, Op. 88, which Seaman described as a masterpiece. Dvořák had an inexhaustible supply of melodies, as evidenced by the six themes in the first movement — most symphonies feature only two.

“It’s an absolute delight to play — sunshine from beginning to end, with a couple of clouds passing in the second movement,” he said.

After Chautauqua, Seaman will guest conduct in the first of two Australian tours this year. He recently recorded Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “London Symphony” and “Serenade to Music” with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, where he just concluded his 13-year tenure as music director.

Kwuon recently had her South American debut in Caracas with the Venezuela Symphony Orchestra. She will appear at the Great Mountains Music Festival in South Korea later this summer and in chamber music concerts at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she is the artistic director of the violin conservatory’s preparatory division. Kwuon also is recording Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas No. 9, Op. 47, and No. 10, Op. 96.

Lauren Hutchison | Staff Writer

Christopher Seaman was music director of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra for 13 years but has never been to Chautauqua — until tonight.

Seaman will conduct the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra at 8:15 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater.

“I know that (Chautauquans) are a wonderfully appreciative audience, a cultured audience and an audience with a lot of musical background,” he said. “I’m delighted to visit. I do think that it’s going to be marvelous.”

Seaman just concluded his tenure as the RPO’s longest-serving music director and was honored with the lifetime title of Conductor Laureate. More than 40 of his fans will ride a bus from Rochester to Chautauqua to see their favorite conductor.

Tonight’s program was devised to contain a variety of different styles and atmospheres, Seaman said.

The concert opens with Hector Berlioz’s “Roman Carnival Overture.” Seaman said he has an affinity for the piece because Berlioz was a redhead, and so is he.

“He always did the unexpected,” Seaman said. “He broke all the rules, and yet, was incredibly, musically effective. He had a wonderful sense of drama and color.”

That rebellious originality, as Seaman dubbed it, comes through in the first few seconds of the piece, which starts out as a wild carnival and stops abruptly. With a few trills in the wind section, the piece continues with a solo for the English horn.

Following Berlioz’s overture is another piece by a French composer, Gabriel Fauré’s Pavane, Op. 50. Seaman described Fauré as a man with true grit — a military hero who sparked the resignations of several professors when he was appointed as director of the Paris Conservatoire.

A pavane is an ancient dance, typically composed in memoriam. Fauré’s “Pavane” was written with parts for a chorus, too, but is seldom performed with one, because of its “stupid” lyrics, Seaman said.

“Fauré was obviously sending it up, but like a lot of great composers, what actually comes out exceeded his intentions,” he said. “What we actually have is not just a little send-up, a little parody, a little bit of satire, but the most beautiful, simple, touching dance in 4-time, in the style of a pavane.”

After the pavane, the CSO will perform “The Moldau” by Czech composer Bedřich Smetana. The piece is part of six symphonic poems titled “My Fatherland” and is named for a river in the Czech Republic.

“The Moldau” traces the career of the river, beginning as a small stream and broadening as it goes through different scenes, including a village wedding and a moonlit landscape, and past the ghosts of an ancient army.

The piece builds as the river goes through Prague, where Seaman conducts regularly.

“When I am in Prague, I always go over the Charles Bridge and look at the river,” he said. “The melody of the piece comes into my mind, and I get a big lump in my throat.”

Once the river runs its course, the program continues with British composer Edward Elgar’s “Chanson de matin,” or “Morning Song,” which Seaman called a “delicious little piece,” full of genuine, if dated, sentiment that gives it a nostalgic air. Elgar is famous for his large, important works, but his smaller salon pieces are charming, Seaman said.

The song is followed by another British composition, “Fantasia on Greensleeves” by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

The piece is based on the well-known tune “Green-sleeves,” which is sometimes rumored as being written by King Henry VIII, but because of its modal scale, its origin is probably a folk song, Seaman said.

He said the piece is beautifully set, simple and touching.

Tonight’s program concludes with the “Firebird” suite by Igor Stravinsky. Seaman called the suite a brilliant orchestral showpiece. The suite is part of Stravinsky’s larger ballet of the same name and is based on a classic Russian tale of good and evil.

Though Stravinsky’s music was experimental, he never stopped sounding Russian, Seaman said, because of his link with traditional Russian folk songs and the modes and rhythms they use.

“Firebird” is popular because of its fantastic colors and great story, Seaman said, but it’s also very organic in the way its sections are linked together and is filled with intellectual unity.

“It hits to the brain as well as the heart,” Seaman said.

The British-born conductor reflected on his career in the United States, where he has held positions as music director of the Naples Philharmonic Orchestra in Naples, Fla., and conductor-in-residence of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in addition to his long tenure at the RPO.

“America has been very good to me, and I really am very grateful,” he said. “And it’s still being very good to me, I might add!”

In addition to his regular appearances as guest conductor at orchestras around the world, Seaman also is working on a book about conducting.

“The book is for people who go to concerts, do not have college training and would love to know more about what a conductor does,” he said.

Seaman will conduct with the CSO again on Thursday with guest violinist Joan Kwuon.

Josh Cooper | Staff Writer

The works of John Adams, Leonard Bernstein, Jonathan Dove, Benjamin Britten and Lee Hoiby, among many others, will be featured in the Opera Highlights concert, held at 8:15 p.m. Saturday in the Amphitheater.

The performance will feature eight Apprentice Artists from the opera company’s Young Artists program and members of the CSO, under the baton of Steven Osgood.

The theme of the performance is opera of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Osgood is familiar with opera music of this stripe. He has conducted many modern works, like those of Hoiby, John Corigliano and Philip Glass with renowned companies like the New York City Opera, The Juilliard Opera and the Dutch Opera, to name but a few.

He said this program, while unmistakably modern, will be enjoyable to a wide audience.

“It is intensely theatrical, it is unabashedly lyrical and it’s a very accessible program for the listeners,” Osgood said.

Tenor Caleb Stokes, one of the artists to perform this evening, agreed.

“I think the music itself is beautiful and people will love it,” Stokes said. “It’s really exciting and really magical.”

Bass William Roberts, another performer, said the selections for the evening were made with this audience in mind.

“The music staff here chose music that is accessible to this audience,” Roberts said. “The whole point of this evening is to show how wonderful modern opera can be.”

The singers said they have appreciated working with Osgood.

“Steven (Osgood) is excellent,” Stokes said. “He really knows this repertoire inside and out, and he knows how to get the best out of us and make the important parts of the music very clear.”

Roberts said an aspect of Osgood’s direction he admires is the respect he has for the singers.

“When we collaborate with Steven, he treats you like a true professional and respects your individual musicianship,” Roberts said.

Osgood was in Chautauqua before. He conducted Tosca here in the 2009 Season. He said Chautauqua’s Young Artists program continues to impress him.

“There are some incredible young singers here,” Osgood said. “I’m really happy to work with them.”

This program features many works by American opera composers. Osgood said American opera has begun to gain the recognition it deserves.

John Chacona | Guest Reviewer

The buzz around the young conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya is that he’s in the running to succeed the departed Stefan Sanderling as the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra’s music director.

On paper, he’s a compelling candidate: young, full of energy and with a growing list of high-profile gigs (a protégé of Esa-Pekka Salonen, he was at Tanglewood last weekend). Harth-Bedoya looks great in a cowboy hat (check out his website), has a million-dollar smile and a crisp podium manner that projects confidence and energy. Like his mentor, he gets an admirably clear, focused sound from the orchestra — a necessity in the French music that made up two-thirds of his concert on Thursday evening, Bastille Day.

Clarity is the prize in the music of Maurice Ravel, perhaps the most French of composers. But it’s only won by not falling headlong into the voluptuousness of his dazzling orchestration. The “Rapsodie Espagnole” further seduces with local color (authentic, too: Ravel’s mother was Basque). It’s easy to overdo this, and one might expect the Peruvian-born Harth-Bedoya to assert his authority in music with a Spanish accent. To his credit, he did not, leading a performance of understatement and orderliness (also authentic; the composer’s father was a Swiss engineer) — perhaps a bit too meticulous, though the closing Feria, marked assez anime, danced.

The Camille Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33 is a young man’s piece, written when the composer was a comparative boy of 37 (he would live just short of half a century longer), and in the young German-born New Yorker Alban Gerhardt, it found a persuasive advocate. Gerhardt, who has a wide-eyed and expressive face, played the music with the proper measure of respect and fire, digging into the chewy opening theme with ardor. He could be graceful, too. Gerhardt made the little mock minuet of a slow movement, lovingly shaped by Harth-Bedoya, into a lyric arioso.

And he took some chances, interpolating octaves into one of the flashier moments in the closing Allegro. Why not? The Saint-Saëns is not exactly a monument of probity. Showing off is the point, and Gerhardt managed to do so without sounding vulgar or flippant. He made a strong case for the work and seemed to enjoy himself doing so.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1888 “Scheherazade” is by now so familiar as to be inconsequential, but listen closer and you hear strange snippets of Russian folk tunes and advanced, sometimes startling, turns of harmony. Stravinsky learned more from Rimsky-Korsakov than he would admit.  Harth-Bedoya’s admirable clarity of orchestral texture brought all of this out. Like Ravel’s “Rapsodie,” Rimsky-Korsakov’s four-movement symphonic suite can seduce with color, but the trick is for the conductor to be an Impressionist, not a Fauvist. This Harth-Bedoya largely did, though even he succumbed to the IMAX sensory density of Rimsky-Korsakov’s climaxes, which made an appropriately grand noise. And in the opening movement, he did something I’ve never heard: make the piece sound almost German. His tightly argued and impressively controlled approach transformed Rimsky-Korsakov into a Slavic Richard Wagner.

Harth-Bedoya’s tempo was quite plastic, and he gave his players wide interpretive latitude in the numerous instrumentals that adorn “Scheherazade’s” glittering, Fabergé-egg surface. This is a good way to win the hearts of your musicians — and perhaps ultimately, a job. The audience seemed to like it, too.

It would be nice for whoever is named the new CSO music director to have section players as distinguished as Emmanuelle Boisvert. For 23 years, Boisvert had been concertmaster with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra before she fled the turmoil there less than two months ago to join the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Her presence at the back of the first violins was as notable an example of luxury casting as the venerable shed ever may have seen.

John Chacona is a freelance writer for the Erie Times-News.

Lauren Hutchison | Staff Writer

Members and friends of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra will perform at an hour-long, open recital at 4 p.m. today in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall.

The third annual recital is sponsored by the Symphony Partners — the CSO’s volunteer and support organization. Donations to the Symphony Partners will support future events, including Meet the CSO, Musicians Brown Bag lunch and post-symphony Meet the Sections events.

“The CSO brings us happiness and the gift of music,” said Judith Claire, president of the Symphony Partners. “The Symphony Partners is our way of saying ‘thank you’ for year after year of music.”

Today’s recital is a unique opportunity to interact with members of the CSO on a more personal level. It also allows more of the CSO’s 74 musicians to feature their talents in solos and small ensembles, said CSO French horn player Mark Robbins.

“I think the Symphony Partners is a very valuable thing — anything that can draw us closer to the audience and the audience closer to us,” he said.

Robbins and fellow CSO French horn player Donna Dolson will perform three horn duets from Mozart’s “Twelve Original Duets,” K. 487. Robbins described the pieces as light and frothy, but said that at the same time, they contain plenty of musical depth.

Robbins and Dolson have performed together for 27 years after joining the CSO in the same year. They consider themselves good friends and have appeared in every CSO open recital together.

“The recitals are wonderful, because we get to know the audience on a more intimate basis,” Dolson said.

Dolson will also be playing with CSO principal tuba player Fred Boyd, performing an unusual tuba and French horn duo by John Stevens, a one-time student of former CSO tuba player Toby Hanks. “Dialogues III for Horn and Tuba,” composed in 1987, features back-and-forth calling between the tuba and French horn, followed by an almost jazzy section, Dolson said.

Some of today’s seven ensembles comprise couples as well as friends. Nancy and Jason Weintraub have been playing together since the two met more than 45 years ago. Nancy is a pianist and a Symphony Partners director-at-large. Jason is the CSO English horn player and business and personnel manager.

“As a duo, we understand each other very well,” Nancy Weintraub said. “We always know what the other is doing.”

They will be performing “Opus in F,” a piece specifically composed for the duo by Turkish composer Naki Ataman. Ataman heard the Weintraub Duo when they were performing on a cruise ship and wrote the piece for them. Nancy Weintraub described the opus as romantic and almost ballad-like in its simplicity. It showcases the beauty of the English horn, she said.

Other couples featured in today’s recital include CSO violinist Karen Lord-Powell and her husband, bassist Brian Powell, performing Reinhold Glière’s Suite for Violin and Double Bass, as transcribed and edited by Frank Proto.

CSO cellist Batia Lieberman and her husband, CSO bassist Bernard Lieberman, are two of four members in today’s string quartet, which also features CSO violinists Lara Sipols and Lenelle Morse. They will play Gioachino Rossini’s Sonata for Strings No. 1 in G. The string quartet formed and performed this piece for Paul Mischakoff’s memorial service earlier this year.

“Paul was a happy and fun guy, so we wanted to play happy, fun music,” Morse said.

She likened the piece to many of Rossini’s overtures, with its buoyancy and upbeat character.

Morse enjoys playing with the quartet because of its laid-back atmosphere and trust, she said.

She has performed with other groups in past CSO open recitals, including last year’s “Walking Girls,” formed by CSO members who also walked together every morning for exercise.

Other ensembles in the recitals have worn costumes, played pop music on cellos or performed hunting calls on French horns, Claire said.

Though the music program at Chautauqua may be similar to music festivals like Aspen and Tanglewood, Chautauqua differs in one important respect, Claire said.

“In all disciplines at Chautauqua, you can have personal interactions,” she said. “All of the members of the CSO are Chautauquans. The community here is unique.”

Members of the Symphony Partners can attend closed CSO events, including the upcoming rehearsal and picnic on Wednesday, July 20. Membership to the Symphony Partners costs $20 for a family or $10 for an individual membership.

Harth-Bedoya, Gerhardt share musical friendship with CSO

Lauren Hutchison | Staff Writer

“The beauty of music is that it brings people together,” guest conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya said. “You have to become friends to make music together.”

Harth-Bedoya was speaking about his friendship with cellist Alban Gerhardt. The two appear with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra at 8:15 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater.

Gerhardt and Harth-Bedoya have performed together frequently, from the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York City to the Bach Festival in Eugene, Ore. The two were at the festival earlier this summer, where their young children met for the first time.

Gerhardt’s last performance in Chautauqua was in 2005, when he performed Antonin Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104. Gerhardt said he has fond memories of Chautauqua.

“When they asked me again to appear with Miguel Harth-Bedoya, whom I adore very much, I couldn’t say anything but yes,” he said.

He will be performing Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 33. The piece is given to cello students and is thought of as easy, but is difficult to master, Gerhardt said.

“It’s very short, but in its shortness, there is so much emotion and so many different characters in it that it’s not very easy to bring them all out,” he said. “They are passionate, tender, loving and angry, and they somehow happen all in quick succession. In a very short time, you have to say a lot.”

Gerhardt said it took about 25 concerts until he was happy with his performance of the concerto. He adds octaves in one section, reasoning that Saint-Saëns meant to add them, since the section ends with written octaves. He said this addition makes the concerto much more difficult.

“It’s like a tightrope act — you have to shake a little,” he said. “This is not done on purpose, of course. But whenever I struggled during a performance, people loved it more than when everything went easy.”

Harth-Bedoya said the variety of repertoire Gerhardt can handle is quite impressive.

“The versatility of his playing is amazing,” he said. “Everything he takes on, he’s 200 percent in the work.”

Harth-Bedoya described all of the pieces in tonight’s program as lively, dynamic and far from shy. He likened the program to a meal, in which the cello concerto is a palette-cleanser of abstract music that is served in the middle of two very flavorful courses.

That meal starts with Maurice Ravel’s “Rapsodie Espagnole,” which he described as the spicy appetizer. The piece was influenced by Ravel’s Basque heritage, Harth-Bedoya said.

“(Ravel) is a composer that would hold emotions for a long time and then let them go with great care,” he said.

The program ends with the main course, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, op. 35. Inspired by Middle-Eastern folk takes from One Thousand and One Nights, the piece has an eastern flair. It requires special attention to timing, Harth-Bedoya said.

He said both “Scheherazade” and “Rapsodie Espagnole” are challenging because the pieces are associated with concrete ideas.

“When there are words attached to a piece, then the music is no longer abstract,” he said. “With storytelling, it’s a lot more specific, which makes it harder in one sense because we’ve all read the same book.”

Harth-Bedoya said the conductor’s primary role is to serve the music.

“When you really get to learn about great works of art in composition, you realize what a small part we are in,” he said. “The conductor is just the middle person. It is not about us, and I like that very much, because we are here to serve.”

Harth-Bedoya is visiting Chautauqua as his last engagement of the season, after conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood and before he goes on a summer vacation with his family. He has never been to Chautauqua and said he is looking forward to exploring the grounds and surrounding areas.

Harth-Bedoya is the music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. After his vacation, he will conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl on Aug. 12 and 13. He recently completed a recording of “Nazareno,” by Osvaldo Golijov, featuring Katia and Marielle Labèque, to be released this fall.

In addition to his career as an internationally acclaimed soloist, Gerhardt frequently plays outside of the concert hall. He is active in Germany’s Rhapsody in School program and also is considering appearances at supermarkets, train stations and soccer games. He said he’s not doing this to be famous but to bring classical music to new audiences and inspire a new generation of musicians.

“I think it’s important that humans express themselves, artistically and creatively,” he said. “Now we are all kind of being seduced by everything that’s out there to just sit on our couch and not do anything. As an artist, it’s my responsibility to work against that.”

Jane Vranish | Guest Reviewer

It’s always a welcome event to have the North Carolina Dance Theatre and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra collaborate, but the first such program of the season appeared to have a third party involved — the audience.

There was no doubt that these ballets had a built-in audience appeal — dare I say accessible? — with the likes of John Philip Sousa and Johann Strauss. However, the notion of accessible can sometimes mean the kiss of death, implying that a performance was pleasant but lacked a certain substance.

That was not the case here. It was a program designed to play on the considerable personalities of the NCDT dancers, one of the company’s main strengths, and to extend a comfortable familiarity with the music, played with a robust sweep by conductor Grant Cooper and the orchestra.

It worked — the audience was almost immediately hooked and helped to escalate the sense of excitement throughout the evening, much like Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero” does so succinctly in itself.

This was obviously one of Mark Diamond’s most popular ballets, judging by the audience’s applause at the Amphitheater Tuesday night. But he used the music, ripe with that iconic repeated rhythm, merely as a jumping-off point. Instead, his “Bolero” seemed to focus on its overall exotic, undulating nature, sometimes with humorous touches, rather than the usual erotic interpretation.

While the bolero is a Spanish dance, there were only a few hints of that in the choreography. It began as if in a sleepy Mexican town, the men lounging about with sombreros on their heads. Anna Gerberich entered to the soft opening strains, clad in a white midriff top and harem skirt, wafting among the men like a hot summer breeze.

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The other women joined in, playing with the sombreros, then undulating their torsos occasionally with a Middle Eastern flavor as if to encourage the men to join them. As the music escalated, Diamond inserted more technical elements for the dancers, giving the dance a classical balletic overlay in the various solos and lifts. Although the choreography itself appeared to change emphasis, the dancers’ commitment did not, bolstering the undeniable appeal of this “Bolero.”

Diamond also contributed one of the two opening pas de deux, choosing to rework a duet from “La Fille Mal Gardée,” a production already made famous by Sir Frederick Ashton. It is wickedly difficult to do ballet comedy, but Ashton’s classic does it with style, where one of the highlights is a cleverly brilliant grand pas that incorporates satin ribbons into the choreography. (Imagine a ballerina poised en pointe in attitude, holding the ribbons like a human maypole while the other dancers rotate around her.)

Diamond’s version was cast in the classical idiom, more like the peasant setting of “Coppélia,” although the musical selections and tempi seemed a little lackadaisical even for that. While it was performed with a fresh-faced flair by Sarah Hayes Watson and Daniel Rodriguez, there was straightforward partnering built on the arabesque and, as expected, a series of whipping fouettes for her and clear-cut beats for him.

If the choreography in “La Fille” was direct, George Balanchine’s “Stars and Stripes Pas de Deux” was not, showcasing a chain of twizzling off-center balances right out of the starting gate. This virtuoso piece has all the razzle dazzle of a parade condensed into a duet. As such, it needs larger-than-life dancers, which it had in Gerberich and Pete Walker.

They came on with a flourish and never let up. Gerberich (a true “Liberty Belle” here) displayed a razor-sharp passe that seemed to ricochet into place then deliberately unfold into a high extension. In her solo, she balanced while piquantly tilting her head in different directions and later did a blinding series of turns that changed feet and suddenly transformed into fouettes.

Walker emerged as a star in his own right, strutting his stuff in high, floating jumps and dashing off turns with considerable aplomb, the kind that galvanizes an audience.

It remained for artistic director Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux to keep the momentum going in his premiere, the aptly titled “July’s Delight,” although Cooper apparently nicknamed his arrangeament “Strautauqua.”

Balanchine delved into some Strauss for his full-length “Vienna Waltzes” in 1977. Although the two works share the music from “Voices of Spring,” Bonnefoux took his ballet in another direction.

“July’s Delight” was a collection of works from “The Waltz King,” ranging from the popular “Radetzky March” and “Blue Danube” to the lesser-known “Eljen a Magyar” and “Jokey Polka.” It contained a slight subtext where Walker gave Gerberich an engagement ring, which she elatedly showed off to her friends while embarking on some celebratory chasing maneuvers. Later in the finale, she appeared in a white gown, perhaps a wedding dress.

While that might be stretching things a bit, the ballet still had an overall youthful exuberance about it, beginning as the dancers precisely marked time in the opening march. Then it moved into a waltz where the lush Melissa Anduiza swirled among a trio of possible suitors.

Although a few details still needed to be worked out — there were some long pauses to accommodate the men’s costume changes — the varying moods kept things interesting, particularly with a lively character dance, something that is rarely inserted into contemporary choreography nowadays, and an almost giddy polka for Hayes Watson, her feet flickering as she bounced between Greg DeArmond and Jordan Leeper.

With all this delicious variety, Bonnefoux still understood the basic nature of each selection — the character steps were spot-on, and the polka selections had a sprightly accent. But it all came down to the basics — a strong connection of the steps to the music, allowing the dance to emanate from the score.

Perhaps that was best seen in “Blue Danube,” a winsome finale where the billowing patterns created the atmosphere of a lovely moonlit night. Bonnefoux was able to fill the stage with his dancers, who fully understood the glide, the weight and the elegance of the waltz.

And when the lights went down, they were still dancing … delightfully.

Jane Vranish is a former dance critic for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and continues there as a contibuting writer. Her stories can be read on the dance blog “Cross Currents” at pittsburghcrosscurrents.com.

Lauren Hutchison | Staff Writer

Ballet returns to the Amphitheater at 8:15 p.m. tonight with the music of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Grant Cooper.

Cooper likened the process of building music for the ballet to the skills a surgical team uses.

“If an emergency happens in an operation, the fact that it would be no problem if I had three hours to take care of this doesn’t change the fact that the patient will die in three minutes,” he said.

To make musical adjustments to fit the dancers’ needs takes trust, collaboration and the ability to work quickly and efficiently, Cooper said.

“That’s the secret of the CSO — it’s an orchestra that is extremely skilled individually, and they bring these skills together as a collective unit in a very special way, like a surgical team does,” he said.

Cooper has been working with the North Carolina Dance Theatre, Chautauqua’s resident ballet company, since 1997. At Chautauqua, he gets a lot of creative energy by witnessing how the dancers learn the ballet from the first steps. It’s a whole new way of looking at how music informs the other arts, he said.

To create tonight’s program, music was selected not just to fit the needs of the dancers but also to satisfy the audience. Like much of the programming at Chautauqua, the music is deliberately programmed to be a smorgasbord of styles, Cooper said.

The evening opens with a pas de deux from Ferdinand Hérold’s La Fille mal gardée.

The piece had an interesting journey to the Amp, Cooper said. The idea for the music came from a recording that choreographer Mark Diamond, associate artistic director of Chautauqua Dance, heard, which is titled La Fille mal gardée. Unfortunately, the documentation for this recording was not complete, and there are several pieces called La Fille mal gardée. After an extensive musical search, no one could track down the music from Diamond’s preferred recording.

Instead, the team decided to use Ferdinand Hérold’s La Fille mal gardée, a piece that has a certain cachet in the ballet world, Cooper said. He said the piece is pretty, graceful and grateful, and is music that does not get in the way of the dance.

Cooper complimented Diamond for adapting to the Hérold piece.

“It’s like the surgical team now, suddenly, has a different nurse on it,” he said. “You make it work, because this is what it is.”

Following the piece by Hérold is a second pas de deux, from John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” as arranged by Hershy Kay.

Cooper stressed the ballet does not contain the “Stars and Stripes Forever” march that audiences know as a patriotic tune. In addition to being a composer of famous band music, Sousa was a trained violinist and had a successful career writing operettas, he said.

“We’re hearing materials from Sousa, but it’s really filtered through Kay’s imagination and then put on a template for the ballet,” he said.

Kay’s arrangement of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” still sounds like it has Sousa’s DNA all over it, Cooper said.

“They’re not twins; they’re not identical … but it’s unmistakably Sousa because it has that optimistic, upbeat feel to it,” he said.

Following the pas de deux is Maurice Ravel’s “Boléro.” Famous for its recurrent motifs and steady build of dynamics, Cooper said the piece is far from repetitive.

“When you really look at it, Ravel is constantly making alterations and changes in the most subtle way,” he said.

Music lovers may have seen Boléro in the concert hall, but few have seen it in its intended format — as a ballet.

“When you add the balletic dimension to it, you get a whole new appreciation for the possibility that exists in the music,” Cooper said. “To me, that is the secret of any piece of music. We want to sense that the music has new things to tell us every time that we experience it.”

Cooper and Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, artistic director of Chautauqua Dance, collaborated to create the program’s next piece, an arrangement of waltzes and marches by Johann Strauss Jr.

Cooper called the arranging process very Chautauquan because of the collaboration involved. Bonnefoux gave Cooper a list of Strauss recordings he liked, and from this, Cooper created a 21-minute ballet with seven works represented in six movements.

Strauss marches and waltzes are still catchy to audiences more than 100 years after their creation because of the illusion of a simplistic construction. In reality, the “road map” of how repeated phrases fit together is rather complicated, Cooper said. To make the roadmap easier to read, Cooper photocopied, cut and taped together phrases to give musicians a more linear, 30-page score.

Cooper said the ballet is one of the more challenging assignments for a conductor.

“There are certain musical elements that may be your choice to bring to the fore in a purely symphonic performance, but which cannot be at the fore in a balletic performance,” he said. “The priority is to give them the right tempo but then still create an expressive performance.”

The North Carolina Dance Theatre in residence, the CSO and Cooper will perform dance in the Amp again on Aug. 13. Cooper and the CSO will return on Aug. 20 for an evening of symphonic works.

Lauren Hutchison | Staff Writer

For one night only, opera fans have the chance to see the Chautauqua debut of Giuseppe Verdi’s rarely-performed work, Luisa Miller. The Chautauqua Opera will perform the work in Italian with English subtitles. Maestro Joseph Colaneri will conduct members of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra at 8:15 p.m. Saturday in the Amphitheater.

A self-professed Verdi lover, Colaneri last conducted Luisa Miller in 2001 with the Metropolitan Opera. At Chautauqua, he’s conducted several operas, including last year’s production of Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma and Verdi’s Macbeth in 2002.

“I’m happiest when I’m immersed in (Verdi’s) works, because they’re so dramatic; they’re so human, and the characters are so real,” Colaneri said. “He can do, with musical notes, things that would evoke just about any human emotion. … We hear the music and know just what the character’s feeling, without words.”

Luisa Miller’s orchestra serves a dual function as accompaniment and as a character who comments on the plot, Colaneri said. The orchestra includes parts for organ, one reason why the Amp, and its Massey Memorial Organ, is a perfect venue for Luisa Miller.

Each Verdi opera features an “instrumental color,” Colaneri said. In Luisa Miller, this color is provided by CSO principal clarinetist Eli Eban in a part that Colaneri called “a real tour de force.”

The opera also features two bass vocalists in title roles and includes a duet between them, which is uncommon in opera. The bass voices create a dark and somber tone in the music, Colaneri said.

Because the opera is based on a German play and set in 17th century Tyrol, which is now part of Austria, Verdi scored the opera with Beethoven and the German symphonic school in mind, omitting bass drum and cymbals, Colaneri said.

Though Luisa Miller is one of Verdi’s earlier works, audiences can hear stylistic choices that are echoed again in later works.

“There are things about it that will remind you (of Rigoletto),” Colaneri said. “Verdi was always influencing himself, as all great artists do. You will hear things in Luisa Miller that you will hear ‘Aha, when you get to Otello, there’s that same idea.’”

Colaneri said he expects Chautauqua audiences to fall in love with Luisa Miller.

“I think they will be taken by the drama and the pathos and the wonderful music, and the way that music merges with the drama,” he said. “And the cast is wonderful.”

Moody, CSO prepare Russian program, featuring Gavrylyuk

Lauren Hutchison | Staff Writer

Guest conductor Robert Moody and pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk have never met, but they have a common goal: They want everyone in the Amphitheater to experience a shared musical journey. Moody, Gavrylyuk and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra perform at 8:15 p.m. tonight.

“We’re in on it together,” Moody said. “We are not performing for you; we are joining in on a journey with you in the audience.”

Gavrylyuk said his musical goal is to connect everyone, including himself, through the music for a spiritual and emotional experience.

“This will prove that actually, deep inside, we are all quite similar, because we are all being moved in the same manner and in the same way, no matter what language we speak or what beliefs we have,” Gavrylyuk said.

Gavrylyuk is returning for his sixth consecutive Chautauqua season. A Steinway artist, Gavrylyuk performs around the world, from the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow to the Sydney Opera House. The Ukrainian pianist first came to Chautauqua after winning the First Prize, the Gold Medal and the award for Best Performance of a Classical Concerto at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Masters Competition in 2005, at the age of 20.

When he was called a Chautauqua favorite, Gavrylyuk laughed and said that Chautauqua is his favorite, too.

“It shows that it’s quite possible to bring people from different backgrounds, beliefs and talents together in a harmonious way and to create a spectacular bouquet of wonderful human expression and interaction,” he said.

Although he’s never been to Chautauqua, Moody knows many of the members of the orchestra from other ensembles.

“I’m not just walking into a group of complete strangers but fellow colleagues and musicians that I already know and love working with,” he said.

Moody is is no stranger to western New York, either. He earned a master’s degree of music in conducting at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y.

Moody initially studied cello and voice. He struggled with choosing between the two until he saw conductor Donald Neuen interacting with a choir and orchestra at a South Carolina honors choir festival. Moody went on to study with Neuen at Eastman.

Moody is the music director of the Portland Symphony Orchestra in Maine and the Winston-Salem Symphony in North Carolina. He is also the artistic director of the Arizona Musicfest. He has been conducting for more than 20 years but is still thought of as a “young” conductor. Moody attributes this to the way his career has developed over the years.

“Everyone has their own path, but that was mine,” he said. “I feel very satisfied with the way I’ve been fortunate to have a certain musical growth trajectory that’s been slow and steady.”

Moody’s program for tonight features a theme of Russian composers. The concert opens with Dmitri Kabalevsky’s overture to the opera Colas Breugnon. With powerful whirlwind tones and tempos, Kabalevsky’s compositions are frequently confused with the work of another Soviet composer, Aram Khachaturian, Moody said.

After the fast and furious overture, Gavrylyuk will perform Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major, Op. 26. Gavrylyuk said the concerto reflects the political turmoil in Russia during the time the piece was composed in the early 20th century. Though the piece is turbulent and filled with the uncertainty and brutality of the period, it also contains plenty of Prokofiev’s “spiky” humor, he said.

“At the same time, it is not a dark concerto,” Gavrylyuk said. “In my eyes, it’s still full of a positive outlook despite all of the reflections on negative events.”

Although the focus is often on the pianist in a concerto, Moody said the audience should pay attention to the dialogue between piano and orchestra. The concerto is also good example of Prokofiev’s haunting melodies, he said.

“If you listen to the five- or six-note motif all by itself, he doesn’t take you in a place that you would expect, but nonetheless, it remains completely lyrical and beautiful,” he said.

The concert concludes with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 27, a piece Moody has conducted more than any other symphony. This is in part due to Moody’s magnetic attraction to Rachmaninoff’s works. The symphony will be performed with edits the composer made, which trims the work to 48 minutes and removes many repeated phrases.

For Moody, one challenge for tonight’s performance is getting to know the orchestra very quickly, so that together, they can interpret the unwritten qualities of the symphony.

“Capturing the things that are not on the page becomes extremely important with a work like the Rachmaninoff,” he said. “There’s a lot of rubato — what it means is robbing the tempo, pulling and pushing the tempo. It’s not marked by the composer, but it needs to happen for the piece to have an ocean wave-like lunge, ebb and flow.”

The piece also has a surprise in the third movement for anyone familiar with 1970s pop ballads.

“You sense it on the podium; you sense a lot of wry smiles, and you’re trying to decide if people in the audience want to admit they know where it comes from or not,” Moody said. “I say embrace it. It’s great that pop music embraced a great theme from the world of orchestral music.”

After he leaves Chautauqua, Moody will remain in New York to conduct at the Skaneateles Festival. He has upcoming guest conducting appearances with the Louisville Orchestra, California Symphony, Stamford Symphony and his international debut with the Slovenian Philharmonic.

Gavrylyuk will perform in the Amp again at 8:15 p.m. July 13. Pianists in the School of Music can attend his master classes on July 8, 9 and 11. After Chautauqua, Gavrylyuk will perform Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 on July 26 at the Hollywood Bowl.

Gomyo pairs with Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra to delight audience with season opener

John Chacona | Guest Reviewer

When guest conductor Jorge Mester mounted the stage of the Amphitheater for Saturday’s season-opening concert, he immediately turned away from the orchestra to conduct the audience in a sing-along of “The Star Spangled Banner.” Smiling broadly and snapping his stick, Mester radiated purposeful delight.

Enterprise and enjoyment were the themes of a program that seemed designed to please and delivered on the promise, from the feather-light woodwind chatter of Ernst von Dohnányi’s “Symphonic Minutes” that opened the concert to the crashing stretto of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 at its end.

The Dohnányi suite was a charmer: five short character pieces draped in glittering late-Romantic orchestration — think of Hindemith’s “Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber,” but without the last measure of juiciness in that work’s melodies (thank you, CM!).

This music must have been as new to the players as it was to the audience, but the CSO played it very credibly. Mester’s Louisville Orchestra has recorded 72 world premieres; he clearly knows how to prepare.

The Tchaikovsky Fourth Symphony poses a different challenge, finding something fresh to say in such familiar music. That may be beyond the power of any conductor at this point, but Mester led a snappy performance that emphasized the organization of sound. There was a real snap and bite to the unison exclamation point at the end of the opening movement’s “fate” motto, and there was a physical force to the sound, too.

Mester built the sonority from the bottom up, as one must do in Russian music. Low brass and strings had a solid, monumental quality and timpanist Stuart Chafetz hammered out his implacable rhythms with verve. He looked as though he were having the time of his life. The MVP Section Award of the evening goes to the CSO winds. The nicely wheezy Russian bayan accordion sound in the trio of the brilliant pizzicato Scherzo was surely what Tchaikovsky intended.

But the evening was not all froth. Violinist Karen Gomyo brought great concentration and seriousness of purpose to Samuel Barber’s “Violin Concerto.” This is music filled with the outsized yearnings and dreams of youth, and Gomyo was very free with her rubato. She formed the arcing, longing melodies of the opening movement into discrete paragraphs, pausing at the end as if to reflect on what was just said. Mester and the CSO were sympathetic to the point of deference.

If the first movement was rhapsodic, the Andante was restrained, nine minutes of very affecting peace before the whirlwind finale. It was a hot night in the Amp, and Gomyo was clearly contending with the humidity, but by the time she came to the end of the punishing sixteenth-note triplets that conclude the piece, she had the crowd on their feet. It was that kind of night.

John Chacona is a freelance writer for the Erie Times-News.

Lauren Hutchison | Staff Writer

Get your paper bags ready and watch for the cue — tonight is your chance to perform with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra as one of 5,000 cannons in the “1812 Overture.” The Independence Day pops concert takes place at 8 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater.

The fun doesn’t stop when the bags are popped. Stuart Chafetz, guest conductor and CSO principal timpanist, promises a program full of music the whole family will enjoy. From patriotic tunes and festive symphonic pieces to music from the stage and screen, tonight’s concert will be a mix of new music and Chautauquan traditions.

This is Chafetz’s ninth year conducting the CSO’s Independence Day concert. He said he can think of no better place to be during the July 4 holiday.

“The family can come out and have a good time and celebrate our independence in a way that pulls out all of the stops,” he said.

Chafetz said he wants to create a relaxed, loose atmosphere, which helps both the audience and the musicians have fun at the concert. Interaction is not always welcome at classical music performances, but the pops concert gives people the opportunity to enjoy themselves in a spontaneous way.

“I like to have the audience feel comfortable that they can sing along, they can dance, they can do whatever they need to do to enjoy themselves and celebrate this Independence Day,” Chafetz said.

The concert opens with “The Star-Spangled Banner,” followed by the Festive Overture, Op. 96 by Dmitri Shostakovich. Though not specifically an American piece, Chafetz said the overture is a “barn burner” for the orchestra and builds the evening’s excitement.

After the overture, the CSO will perform John Philip Sousa’s “Invincible Eagle March,” which is new to Chafetz’s Independence Day program at Chautauqua. Then, the orchestra will perform selections from “The Music Man,” concluding with “Seventy-Six Trombones.”

“I always like to do an old-school, Broadway medley where the audience can sing along,” Chafetz said.

For muggles young and old, the CSO presents its first performance of “Harry’s Wondrous World” by John Williams. Chafetz chose the piece to commemorate the final installment in the “Harry Potter” movie series, which opens July 15.

“It’s also a tribute to the army of readers ‘Harry Potter’ has established during its wonderful run of movies and books,” Chafetz said.

Also new this season is “The Great American TV Westerns,” the first piece Chafetz has ever commissioned. The six-song medley was arranged by Larry Moore, who will be attending tonight’s performance.

Chafetz said he hopes the piece will inspire nostalgia for audience members of all ages, from those who remember the original TV series to those who’ve seen them on TV Land.

The patriotic portion of the evening starts with “Liberty for All,” a piece for orchestra and narrator by James A. Beckel Jr. Chafetz chose Vice President and Director of Programming Marty Merkley to narrate the piece.

“Mr. Chautauqua,” as Chafetz dubbed him, will read quotes from the Declaration of Independence and excerpts of speeches by the Founding Fathers.

The “Armed Forces on Parade,” arranged by Robert Lowden, salutes each branch of the U.S. armed forces with their official songs and hymns.

This year, Chafetz announced “a special twist” to the tribute but issued no further comment.

CSO’s pops concert closes with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, Op. 49. The audience will pop more than 15,000 paper bags in lieu of cannon fire. In the semi-enclosed space of the Amp, the rustling of bags sounds like rain and the bursts are deafening, on par with real gunpowder, Chafetz said.

When the cannons settle, the CSO will perform an encore of John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever” before audiences shuffle off to Chautauqua Lake to view the fireworks displays.

Chafetz said he loves to see the smiles on peoples’ faces when they hear music that brings back good memories.

“I’m just so anxious to share it with everybody,” he said. “I’m really excited about this particular summer.”

Chafetz has been in the CSO as principal timpanist since 1997. He has been a guest conductor for several ensembles around the country and is currently the resident conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

“I start out with two sticks as a timpanist, and I end up with one stick as a conductor,” he said.

Chafetz said that when he guest-conducts with other orchestras, they return to their families and he returns to his hotel room. Conducting the CSO is like returning to his family, Chafetz said.

“It’s just a great experience to play with them but also have the opportunity to conduct them because they’re so responsive, they’re wonderful and I’m one of them; I’m part of the family,” he said. “For me, when I conduct them, I feel like I’m truly at home.”

Further reading:

1. Chafetz bio 
2. Liberty for All