For the opening concert of the 11th edition of Musicus Society Hong Kong’s Musicus Fest, the talented young musicians of the Musicus Soloists Hong Kong joined with pianist Louis Lortie to perform a thoughtfully curated program of Nordic composers. My review:
With the inauguration of Musicus Fest in 2013, Hong Kong’s Musicus Society began translating its ideals of cross-cultural and intergenerational collaboration into the reality of performance in a festival atmosphere….
The Festival Finale to this year’s edition of Musicus Fest brings together musicians from Hong Kong and Austria as the Camerata Salzburg is joined by the emerging star violinists Fan Hiu-sing and Jeremy Hao as duo soloists in Mozart’s Concertone in C major, K. 190. Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony is also on the program, which begins with Joachim Raff’s Sinfonietta in F major. To close the program and festival, students from Musicus Society’s Ensemble Training take the spotlight to play Leó Weiner’s Divertimento No. 1 in D major.
The performance takes place at 3pm on Sunday, 26 November, at Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall.
Guest conductor Dalia Stasevska leads the Seattle Symphony and electric bass soloist Lauri Porra; photo (c) Brandon Patoc
My review of this weekend’s program with guest conductor Dalia Stasevska:
Having missed Stasevska’s SSO debut in March 2022 — a week after Putin invaded Ukraine, the country in which she was born — I was particularly interested in experiencing what all the fuss is about firsthand. Her ability to transmit a sense of focused, joyful discovery while shaping a performance impressed me. The charisma is real. …
The last of the festivals presented by Lucerne Festival in the calendar year, Forward is a fall weekend devoted exclusively to contemporary music and begins today.
Designed and performed by the young musicians of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO), this year’s edition of Forward features the work of such composers as Julius Eastman, Fausto Romitelli, Rebecca Saunders, Liza Lim, Ragnheiður Erla Björnsdóttir, and Charles Uzor (who discusses his new composition commemorating George Floyd, Katharsis Kalkül, in the video above.
PostClassical Ensemble (PCE) begins its 20th-anniversary season on 16 November at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater with a concert titledBouncing off the Walls: Music and Architecture. Exploring the complex relation between these two art forms, the program will juxtapose music written for particular buildings with early-20th-century Modernist efforts to reduce both forms to their elemental materials. Tickets here.
Beginning with Beethoven’s Consecration of the House Overture, written to celebrate a newly remodeled theater and opera house in Vienna, the concert includes music by Gabrieli composed for the Basilica of San Marco in Venice; the “palindrome” minuet from Haydn’s Symphony No. 47 in G from 1772, Anton Webern’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, and Rossini’s William Tell Overture “reassembled to maximize the acoustic possibilities of The Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.”
Projections of hand-drawn architectural sketches by Centennial Medal winner Hany Hassan FAIA will accompany the music, which PCE music director Angel Gil-Ordóñez will conduct. Guest curator and cultural critic Philip Kennicott will offer commentary on the relationship between music and architecture.
Here’s an excerpt from an interview between Gil-Ordóñez and Kennicott:
Philip, you’ve written about both music and architecture; can you talk about how you see the two as interrelated?
PK: I started with the vocabulary they share. Words like harmony and dissonance, form, structure and ornamentation, make sense to both musicians and architects. There’s been a long history of assuming that because music and architecture are both dependent on mathematics and ideas of proportion, and because they also share a language, that they must be fundamentally connected. Think of that famous line by Goethe everyone loves to quote: Architecture is frozen music. I love the poetry of that thought and it will be our starting point for the concert. But then we’re going to move on and try to look a little more deeply about both the similarities and the differences between these two realms of creativity. Consider this obvious difference: A badly constructed piece of music may be boring, or annoying or forgettable, but a badly built building can fall down and kill people. So, clearly, there are some distinctions to be made.
Aaron Zigman’s Émigré is a 90-minute oratorio that tells the story of refugees finding a home and community in Shanghai; the libretto is by Mark Campbell. On Friday 17 November, Long Yu and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, along with musicians from the New York Philharmonic, will give the world premiere at the Jaguar Shanghai Symphony Hall.
In the late 1930s, Jewish refugees escaping Nazi Germany found a home and a community in Shanghai, China — one of only two countries in the world that would accept them. While Shanghai had previously served as a haven for Jews escaping persecution, the many refugees who fled to the city directly after Kristallnacht arrived on the shores of a country affected by the occupation of Japan and the atrocities of the Nanjing Massacre committed less than a year before.
This moment in history is the backdrop of Émigré, an oratorio in two acts that dramatizes the experiences of two Jewish brothers who arrive in Shanghai as refugees in 1938. As the young men navigate their new life, bonds are formed between the Jewish and Shanghainese communities that test the social boundaries and traditional ideas of both. Émigré reaches its tragic conclusion in a love story that mirrors the larger world, its message emerges: that our survival as a race depends on diverse communities learning to embrace our shared humanity. See detailed synopsis below.)
Commissioned by Long Yu, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic, Émigré calls for nearly 150 musicians, including members of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic Chorus, and Lanzhou Concert Hall Choir, as well as seven soloists. The solo parts will be sung by Matthew White, Arnold Livingston Geis, Huiling Zhu, Meigui Zhang, Shenyang, Diana Newman, and Andrew Dwan. The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and Long Yu will also record the oratorio for Deutsche Grammophon, with a release date scheduled in 2024. The New York Philharmonic will give the US premiere of Émigréon 29 February 2024.
Long Yu, Music Director of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, said: “Émigré will shed light on humanity and provide a valuable lesson to us through the immense kindness and tolerance this city once released in history. From working on the draft idea to finally premiering the work this week, this new production has been carefully crafted over four years. We have musicians of different races and beliefs gathered in Shanghai to collaborate on the stage, and the piece will be performed by other orchestras in years to come, further conveying this message of love and hope to the world. This is the power of art.”
Aaron Zigman is a classically-trained American composer who has written scores for films and TV shows including The Notebook, Wakefield, Bridge to Terabithia, and the Sex & The City franchise whilst also writing, arranging and producing songs for top recording artists such as Ray Charles, Sting, Tina Turner, Seal, and more. Zigman has also composed a number of chamber, orchestral, and vocal works. His -award-winning Tango Manos has been touring the world with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet.
Mark Campbell is a Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist who has created 40 opera librettos alongside lyrics for 7 musicals and the text for 9 song cycles and 4 oratorios. The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, an opera featuring libretto by Campbell, received a 2018 GRAMMY Award for Best Opera Recording.
Synopsis of Émigré
Act One
Two brothers—Josef and Otto Bader—have escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 and arrive at Shanghai harbour on a ship with other Jewish refugees. They express their sorrow at having to suddenly leave their parents and their homeland but find hope as they approach the city that has welcomed them. Josef, a medical doctor, urges Otto, a rabbinical student, to look ahead to their new life in Shanghai.
Several weeks later, Josef seeks to expand his knowledge of Eastern medicine and visits Wei Song’s herbal medicine shop where he meets two sisters, Lina and Li Song. Josef and Lina immediately feel an attraction to each other, but their flirtation is interrupted by the sudden entrance of Wei, the sisters’ father, who has been attacked by soldiers. Wei rails against the devastating effects of the Japanese occupation of his beloved Shanghai.
Yaakov, a rabbi and Josef and Otto’s uncle, leads a class, including Otto, in a lesson at the yeshiva. After the lesson is done, Tovah, a woman who volunteers at the yeshiva, engages in a conversation with Otto. Otto reveals his anguish at the disappearance of his parents in Germany. Tovah invites him to the Jewish Relief Fund dance and attempts to cheer him by musing on what the world might be like if women were allowed to be in power.
A few months later, while lighting candles at Longhua Temple, Lina and Josef discover parallels between their lives and cultures, deepening their relationship. Otto and Tovah attend the Jewish Relief Dance when Josef and Lina enter as a couple. Wei enters looking for his daughter and both he and Otto assail them for crossing cultural lines. Tovah, Lina and Josef counter their attack by asking for tolerance. As the argument escalates, Japanese soldiers enter the dance hall and announce that members of the Jewish community are to move to the Hongkew District in Shanghai.
Act Two
As Tovah, Otto and Yaakov move from the yeshiva and Lina and Josef look for a place to take them in, all affirm their need to hold on to hope. Josef and Lina visit the Song household and Josef asks Wei for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Wei angrily refuses and Josef leaves. Lina ardently expresses her love for Josef, then defies her father and runs after her fiancé.
Josef and Line are married and attempt to return to the Song home, but Wei shuts them out. Li implores her father to reconsider and both she and Wei go outside to search for Lina. Not long after, Josef and Lina appeal to Otto and Yaakov to shelter them at the yeshiva, but they refuse. After they leave, Tovah argues with Otto and runs into the street. A bomb explodes.
Several months later, Otto mourns the death of Tovah and Wei laments that of Li, both of whom died in the bombing. With Josef, Lina and Yaakov, they vow to preserve the memory of the two women and live in hope again.
The European premiere of John Adams’s most recent opera at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona marked the debut of soprano Julia Bullock in the role specifically written for her. I reviewed this remarkable production for Classical Voice North America:
BARCELONA — Though this is a city known for its proud celebration of culture, it still came as a delightful surprise to be greeted at the Barcelona-El Prat Airport by posters announcing the Gran Teatre del Liceu production of John Adams’Antony and Cleopatra.…
Cal Performances presents the Takács Quartet in a program Sunday afternoon 12 November at 3pm including the world premiere of Flow by the California-based violist and composer Nokuthula Ngwenyama (shown above discussing her music), along with Haydn’s Sunrise Quartet and the second of Beethoven’s Op. 59 Razumovsky quartets.
My program notes include an introduction to Flow :
The string quartet, according to composer Nokuthula Ngwenyama, “is considered a ‘perfect’ ensemble. It inspires delicacy, sensitivity and adventure. The core range is smaller than that of the piano, yet its timbre allows for beauteous interplay.” For the first of its two Cal Performances appearances this season, the Takács Quartet presents the world premiere of Ngwenyama’s debut in the genre, which the ensemble commissioned “because of our admiration for her as a virtuosic violist and performer who understands the dramatic and sonorous possibilities of a string quartet.”
Cappella Romana has created an extraordinary and rare program on the theme of the endurance of Byzantine chant traditions near the end of the Ottoman Empire that were preserved by the diaspora of Greek-speaking refugees from the city once known as Smyrna (now İzmir). Performances will be in Seattle (10 November at 7.30pm at St. Demetrios Greek Cathedral) and Portland (11 November at 8pm at St. Mary’s Cathedral and 12 November at 3pm at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral). You can also access the performance online a week after the premiere.
In 1922, one of the worst episodes of “ethnic cleansing” reached its climax with the Burning of Smyrna and the massacre of Greeks and Armenians in this multicultural center. Cappella Romana’s John Michael Boyer writes in his program essay of the violence, all too familiar from current events, which overtook this “most important commercial port in the Eastern Mediterranean … the image of an international cosmopolitan city with the Greek element paramount in a modernized economy and an urbane society”:
According to American eye-witnesses, on the 13th of September at noon, the Kemalists set fires in the Greek and Armenian districts of the city, forcing its 400,000 Greeks to run toward the wharf. At night, on the narrow strip of the Quai, the inhospitable night sea ahead and flames approaching behind, the Greeks were in a living Hell. Ships of the allied fleet in the open sea, following orders which they had received from their countries, observed “systematic political neutrality.”
The program presents chants from psalmody and hymnography from the Smyrnean tradition, including chants associated with the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman (St. Photeiní) and from the Divine Liturgy from Smyrna, Asia Minor, and the diaspora. Among the composers are Kosmás Evmorphópoulos of Madytos (1869-1901), Nikólaos Georgíou, Protopsáltis of Smyrna (ca. 1790-1887), Pétros Philanthídis (1840-1915), Christóoulos Georgiádis of Kessáni (19th c.), Triandáphyllos Georgiádis (1865-1934), Michael Perpiniás (1903-1975), and Pétros Manéas (1870-1950), and Panyiótis Gerogiádis Kiltzanídis of Prousa (1815-1896).
Seattle Baroque Orchestra offers a program this weekend of J.S. Bach cantatas. Titled Jubilation and Redemption, the concert features the Portland-based soprano Arwen Myers as the soloist in Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, BWV 51, and Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut, BWV 199, with SBO’s Baroque trumpet expert Kris Kwapis directing the ensemble. Part of the Early Music Seattle season, the concert takes place Saturday 4 November at 7.30pm at Bastyr University Chapel and Sunday 5 November at 2pm at Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall.
Kris Kwapis on Bach’s cantatas as a “treasure trove for trumpet”:
While a fair number of monumental works written by J. S. Bach are among the typical Baroque canon, at least among the reach of the enthusiastic readers of this blog, specific works among the catalog of cantatas tend to be lesser known and subsequently not as frequently programmed. Most attentive audience members are at least familiar with the larger pieces such as the Mass in B Minor, Magnificat, and Christmas Oratorio, which, of course, are outstanding works of art that also happen to have wonderful (and delightfully challenging!) trumpet parts. But the cantatas, perhaps because Bach wrote around 300 during his lifetime, are sometimes overlooked….
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 