I got to speak with the incredible violist-composer Jessica Meyer for The Strad. Her “Spirits and Sinew” is part of Hub New Music‘s 10th-anniversary program later this week at the Kaufman Music Center:
The award-winning composer and violist Jessica Meyer is an unclassifiable phenomenon even in today’s genre-defying contemporary music sphere. Meyer has been carving a unique space through her extraordinary blend of creativity, charisma, technical mastery, educational work and innovation, all in service of an urge to share ideas and build musical communities. continue
Kazuki Yamada conducts the Seattle Symphony; image (c) Brandon Patoc
Some thoughts on the Seattle Symphony’s recent program with Kazuki Yamada:
The state of the world this November feels especially conducive to mourning. Before presenting one of the best-loved Requiems in the canon, visiting conductor Kazuki Yamada opened his Seattle Symphony program with a much less frequently encountered work of grieving by his great compatriot Tōru Takemitsu. Requiem for string orchestra signaled the young Japanese composer’s international breakthrough after Stravinsky heard it and pronounced the composition a masterpiece. .. continue
A new interview for The Strad: I spoke with Ayane Kozasa and Paul Wiancko of the Kronos Quartet about the dramatic change in the ensemble’s lineup that began with the current season:
Having celebrated its 50th anniverary last season, the Kronos Quartet has already begun its latest chapter with a dramatic change in the ensemble’s makeup. Longtime members John Sherba (violin) and Hank Dutt (viola) retired at the end of June, leaving violinist David Harrington, who founded Kronos, as the sole remaining member from the early years. Dutt had been part of Kronos since 1977, while Sherba joined them in 1978. Cellist and composer Paul Wiancko began his relationship with the quartet in 2019 and took the place of Sunny Yang in February 2023. Violinist David Harrington, who founded Kronos, is the only member who now remains. ..
André Mehmari, Angel Gil-Ordóñez, and the PostClassical Ensemble
This year marks the 200th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the United States and Brazil. To celebrate the bicentennial, Postclassical Ensemble (PCE) will showcase two centuries of music from South America on 19 and 20 November at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater.
The program ranges from the earliest known works by composers native to Brazil to a world premiere commission by pianist-composer André Mehmari. Curator Flávio Chamis (a composer, conductor, and educator) and guest artists Lucas Ashby (percussion), Tatjana Mead Chamis (viola), and Elin Melgarejo (vocalist) join Mehmari and artistic director and conductor Ángel Gil-Ordóñez for this panoramic view of Brazilian concert music.
“The program includes a tempestuous classical overture by José Maurício Nunes, the modern and US premiere of Francisco Mignone’s Quadros Amazônicos (an orchestral suite based on myths from the Amazon), Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Bachiana Brasileiras no. 4, a set of popular Brazilian songs performed by DC’s Elin Melgarejo, and chamber music featuring Latin GRAMMY-nominated violist Tatjana Mead Chamis.”
Related free events:
Thursday,November 14 at 6pm: PCE Prelude, a free conversation at Georgetown University (and live-streamed) previewing the concerts. (Registration required)
(SOLD OUT) Friday, November 15, at 12:30pm: guest artist André Mehmari gives a free performance as part of Georgetown University’s Friday Music Series. (Registration required)
PROGRAM:
Legends of Brazil: A Musical Celebration for 200 Years of Friendship
Tue. Nov. 19, 2024 7:30p.m
Wed. Nov. 20, 2024 7:30p.m
Terrace Theater | The Kennedy Center | 2700 F St NW, Washington, DC
Presented without intermission
Flávio Chamis, guest curator
Lucas Ashby, percussion
Tatjana Mead Chamis, viola
André Mehmari, piano and composer
Elin Melgarejo, vocalist
PostClassical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez
Zequinha de Abreu arr. Jamberê Cerqueira: Tico-Tico no Fubá Padre José Maurício Nunes Garcia: Zemira André Mehmari: Sonata for Viola
Francisco Mignone: Selection from Tres Valsas Brasileiras Francisco Mignone: Saci and Caapora from Quadros Amazônicos Brazilian popular songs arranged for voice and chamber orchestra: Odeón, One Note Samba, Labrinto, Samba em Preludio
Heitor Villa-Lobos: Preludio from Bachiana Brasileiras no. 4
André Mehmari: Rag Chorado. A Celebratory Humoreske (world premiere work for piano and orchestra)
Lionel Meunier and his vocal and period instrument ensemble Vox Luminis make their Pacific Northwest debut this weel with a program of sacred music by Claudio Monteverdi. Presented by Cappella Romana, there will be performances in Portland on 6 November and in Seattle on 7 November, both at 7.30pm (St. Mary’s Cathedral in Portland and St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in Seattle); tickets here.
French conductor and baritone Lionel Meunier counts among the most influential figures in today’s historical performance and choral scenes. He founded Vox Luminis (“Voice of light”) in Belgium in 2004, having studied at the Institut Supérieur de Musique et Pédagogie in Namur.
Vox Luminis comprises a core ensemble of vocal soloists specializing in English, Italian, and German repertoire from the 17th and early-18th centuries; depending on the repertoire, they are supplemented with solo instruments, an extensive continuo, or a complete orchestra.
Artist in residence at Concertgebouw Brugge, Vox Luminis has earned international acclaim for its signature sound, with each voice emerging in a solo light while being able to fuse with the others “into one luminous fabric of sound.” The ensemble performs some 70 concerts a year and boasts an award-winning discography.
Meunier has put together a program of sacred music by Monteverdi, mostly from his later collection Selva morale e spirituale (“The Virtuous and Spiritual Forest”), which was published in 1640-41 in Venice. They will also present a couple of motets and the instrumental and vocal versions of the echo motet O bone Jesu o piissime Jesu (“O good Jesus, have mercy on us”).
PROGRAM:
Gloria (SV 258) from Selva morale e spirituale
Dixit Dominus II (SV 264) from Selva morale e spirituale
Beatus vir I (SV 268) from Selva morale e spirituale
O bone Jesu o piissime Jesu (SV 313) (instrumental version)
Adoramus te Christe (SV 289) from Libro primo de motetti, Giulio Bianchi
Cruxifixus (SV 259) from Selva morale e spirituale
Laetaniae della Beata Vergine (SV 204) from Libro secondo de motetti, Giulio Bianchi
O bone Jesu o piissime Jesu (SV 313) (vocal version)
Magnificat I (SV 281) from Selva morale e spirituale
Claudio Monteverdi was born in Cremona, the son of a surgeon and apothecary. Although there is no record of him being a member of the city’s cathedral choir, the young Monteverdi received his first composition lessons from its maestro di cappella Marc’Antonio Ingegneri, whose teachings he acknowledged in his first publications.
Monteverdi was clearly a precocious talent. His first publication, the three-voiced Sacrae cantiunculae (1582), was printed when he was just 15 years old. After attempts to find employment in Verona and Milan, he was eventually appointed as a viol player at the court of Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. It was in Mantua that he first began to experiment with the contemporary forms of liturgical music and develop a novel approach that united elements of the musical past and present, while offering glimpses of the future. This balance between tradition and innovation was epitomised in his much-loved Vespro della BeataVergine of 1610. His compositional achievements undoubtedly helped him in 1613, when he advanced to the prestigious post of maestro di cappella at Venice’s Basilica di San Marco, where he would remain until the end of his career.
The majority of the repertoire contained within this programme is drawn from three publications: the Selva morale e spirituale(‘Moral and Spiritual Forest’), published in 1640, and Giulio Bianchi’s two books of motets, both of which were published in 1620. The Selva morale e spirituale was a retrospective anthology that drew together some of his most innovative and successful music from his time in Mantua alongside his more recent Venetian work. It includes a mass, several psalm and Marian hymn settings, as well as two separate Magnificats. Bianchi was a cornettist and composer, who was also born in Cremona and led the wind band at Mantua alongside Monteverdi.
The seven-voiced setting of the Gloria is thought to have originally been part of a large-scale mass written by Monteverdi in 1631 to commemorate the end of the Italian Plague of 1629-31 (also known as the Great Plague of Milan). The plague brought great devastation to northern Italy and is thought to have killed up to 50,000 people in Venice alone. Monteverdi divides the Gloria into five distinct sections, closely following the sense of the text. Over the course of the piece, individual voices and pairs of voices emerge from the main texture with flashes of rapid coloratura, to participate in a compelling musical dialogue with the violins.
Dixit Dominus is the first psalm of the evening office of Vespers on Sundays and feast days. As part of the San Marco liturgy, Vespers services on special occasions saw the uncovering of the Pala d’Oro, the exquisite gold high altar at the far east end of the church. To accompany this, sixteenth-century Venetian composers normally produced lavish eight-voice, double-choir settings of the Dixit Dominus. While this second setting by Monteverdi is scored for eight voices, he does not stick to a rigid division between two ensembles. Instead, he uses the forces in a series of different combinations to depict the psalm’s lucid imagery — for example, using the full ensemble to terrifying effect in the stile concitato (‘agitated style’) section at the words Confregit in die irae suae reges (‘The Lord shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath’), but then suddenly paring back, in complete contrast, to a pair of soprano voices for the beginning of the following verse.
One of Monteverdi’s best-known later sacred works, Beatus vir (his first of two settings of Psalm 111) was actually based on a secular canzonetta Chiome d’oro, which was included in his Seventh Book of Madrigals (1619). In Beatus vir, Monteverdi borrows the charm and naïveté of his earlier work, originally addressed to the beauty of a lover’s physical features, to convey the blissful assurance of the faithful man that fears God and obeys his commandments.
Adoramus te, Christe was included in Bianchi’s first book and is a simple but heartrending setting of a text from the Hours of the Cross in devotional Books of Hours. Its opening statement, ‘We adore you, O Christ’, is tinged with bittersweetness, effected by Monteverdi’s unconventional use of dissonances, but the closing statements of Miserere nobis (‘Have mercy on us’) bring comfort and solace in the ending.
In addition to the simple four-part mass setting published in the Selva morale, Monteverdi also includedsome more modern alternative settings that could be substituted for sections of the mass. This short Crucifixus setting is one such alternative. It is cast in a much more modern style, with its descending chromatic line giving it a distinctly different character to the ordinary of the mass, which remained very consciously within the parameters of the stile antico.
There was a conspicuous increase in expressions of Marian devotion in Venice from 1571, after the city’s victory over the Turkish navy at the Battle of Lepanto, with Pope Pius V attributing the victory to the intervention of the Virgin Mary. As part of this, musical settings of the Litany became popular. Monteverdi’s setting of the Litany of Loreto, the Litaniae della Beata Vergine, was printed in Bianchi’s second book. Between the opening Kyrie eleison and the closing Agnus Dei, the Litany consists of a sequence of invocations addressed to the Trinity and then to Mary, as mother, virgin, saint and queen. The music is relatively simple and it is likely the piece was intended to be sung in procession.
O bone Jesu was actually first printed outside Italy, in a collection entitled Promptuarii musici issued by the German composer Johannes Donfrid in Strasbourg in 1622. A simple setting for two sopranos and continuo of a devotional hymn text, it is an example of the so-called ‘echo motet’, whereby the first voice sings a phrase that is immediately repeated by the second voice, before the pair join together to elaborate and extend the melodic materials. Growing out of a fairly sparse opening, the piece builds cumulatively in intensity, culminating in the final invocation, Salva me (‘save me’).
Following the five psalms at Vespers, the Magnificat featured as the centrepiece of the liturgy, being sung as the altar was censed. This eight-voice setting is the first of two contained within the Selva morale e spirituale.Breaking the text down into a series of standalone sections, Monteverdi explores its vivid imagery in a number of fresh ways. The stile concitato is introduced once again with the words Fecit potentiam in brachio suo (‘He hath showed strength with his arm’). In juxtaposing these modern forms of expression with elements of the musical past, in the shape of short fragments of plainsong and imitative polyphony, Monteverdi demonstrates his unique ability to make the unfamiliar seem somehow familiar. These truly immersive soundworlds must have been utterly entrancing to seventeenth-century ears — but they remain no less captivating to contemporary audiences.
Pierre Boulez NY Phil Shelby White & Leon Levy Digital Archives
My Playbillfeature on the NY Philharmonic’s homage to its former music director as the music world marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pierre Boulez in 2025:
In March 1969 Pierre Boulez — then 43 — made his New York Philharmonic debut conducting a month of concerts. The engagement, which included a much-discussed performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, quickly resolved the question of who would succeed Leonard Bernstein as Music Director. A mere three months later came the announcement officially appointing Boulez to the post… continue
Yulianna Avdeeva‘s Sunday afternoon recital at Benaroya Hall seemed to be timed especially well: The New York Times published a story that day about the unexpected find of a waltz by Chopin. Her refined interpretations of that composer suggested how much remains open to discovery, even in the case of long-familiar pieces.
Avdeeva burst on the scene when, at the age of 25, she took the gold medal in the 2010 Chopin Competition (the first woman since Martha Argerich to have garnered the award). She recently released Chopin: Voyage, an album focused on late works that he composed while surrounded by nature, which the Moscow-born pianist recorded in the idyllic setting of Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana. She performs widely across Europe but still seems to be something of a well-kept secret in the US. On the basis of Sunday’s performance, I certainly hope that changes.
Though for years they lived just a few minutes away from each other by foot in Paris, Chopin and Liszt inhabit such strikingly different worlds that it was fascinating to find them juxtaposed on Avdeeva’s program, with one half devoted to each composer.
She began with Chopin, lingering on the first note as she launched into the Op. 30 Mazurkas, as if preparing to whisk us away from ordinary life. In his 1851 biography of Chopin (likely co-written with his Polish mistress, Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein), Liszt ascribes to Chopin’s mazurkas “the most delicate, tender, and evanescent shades,” evoking impressions that are “purely personal, always individualized and divided.”
Each of the four mazurkas in the Op. 30 set, which Avdeeva played without breaks, indeed seemed to be a separate microcosm rather than another elaboration on a type. Her management of micro-transitions, of the slightest fluctuation of mood, was especially impressive. Even in the more assertive No. 3 in D-flat, an inner melancholy shaded the echoing phrases.
Avdeeva maintained a spirit of improvisation while executing compelling and clearly thought-out ideas about each piece with breathtaking precision.
The Op. 60 Barcarolle in F-sharp major suggested an idealized singer in a state of ecstasy – a melody beyond human reach yet fallible with emotion, as far as could be from mechanical virtuosity.
Avdeeva spun out the sense of mystery and enigmatic wandering that makes the Op. 45 Prelude in C-sharp minor so beguiling, while the Scherzo No. 3 (in the same key) abounded in well-judged contrasts and textural control.
It was above all in the Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise brillante, Op. 22, that Avdeeva revealed new facets. Her Chopin involves such complex, meticulously articulated gradations of weight and light that you realize how much variety lives within a single miniature – not just Schumann’s “cannons buried in flowers” in the case of Op. 22, but an entire epic encompassing heroic adventures and bravely intimate confessions. Rhythmic and dynamic nuances are a special forte with this pianist, who is equally subtle in she staging of rubato and crescendo.
Avdeeva then turned from Chopin’s lyric poetry to the mystical, tormented Romanticism of his far longer-lived peer, Franz Liszt – and showed that she had a great deal to say on that score as well. Her combination of two late-period, avant-garde works from 1885 with the B minor Sonata – all played seamlessly, as if transcribing a single brooding meditation by the robed, solitary Abbé – proved intriguing.
On the one hand, with the Bagatelle sans tonalité and Unstern! – Sinistre, the difference and distance from Chopin could not have been more pronounced. Avdeeva seemed to depict a stark search for threads of meaning amid Liszt’s harmonic vagaries, stalled by abysses of silence. The effect was utterly mesmerizing.
When she arrived at the B minor Sonata, Avdeeva drew on the full arsenal of her stupendous technique to portray an intense psychic drama. The Benaroya Steinway resounded with the most thunderous playing of the afternoon, but Avdeeva also relished Liszt’s celestial harmonies and gossamer ornaments, articulating with a scintillating transparency that recalled Chopin – and what Liszt admired in Chopin’s playing. Her two encores once again confronted the two personalities, offering prismatic accounts of Chopin’s Op. 42 Waltz in A-flat major and the Concert Paraphrase Liszt made from Rigoletto.
Anja Kampe as Isolde and Simon O’Neill as Tristan in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde; Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera
I reviewed San Francisco Opera’s new production of Wagner’s endlessly fascinating masterpiece for Opera Now:
An extraordinary thing is underway at San Francisco Opera: by taking on one of the major works of the wizard of Bayreuth each season, music director Eun Sun Kim has set about establishing herself as a formidable young Wagnerian….
The world premiere of Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate‘s opera Loksi’ Shaali’ (Shell Shaker), will be presented on Sunday, 27 October, by Canterbury Voices and the Oklahoma City Philharmonic at the Civic Center Music Hall in Oklahoma City. TianHui Ng conducts this groundbreaking work – the first opera composed entirely in an American Indian language (Chickasaw).
Tate channels the rich cultural heritage of the Chickasaw people in this choral and orchestral composition narrating the journey of the Chickasaw-Choctaw migration.
The opera tells the story of a Chickasaw girl named Loksi’ (Turtle) as she transforms from a troubled girl into a confident young woman. Tate underscores the significance of embracing identity and honoring sacred traditions, and he illustrates how simple acts of kindness can transform the world.
For The Strad, I interviewed San Francisco Symphony principal cellist Rainer Eudeikis about his upcoming performances of the Cello Concerto by his orchestra’s music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen:
Now in his third full season as the San Francisco Symphony’s principal cello, Rainer Eudeikis makes his solo debut with the orchestra on 18-20 October in a work by the orchestra’s music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen: the Cello Concerto written by the Finnish composer-conductor for Yo-Yo Ma, who gave the world premiere in 2017. …
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 