Milestone anniversaries are supposed to be predictable events.
And since no figure in the classical music firmament looms as large as Ludwig van Beethoven, the classical music world was counting on the composer’s 250th birthday this year as a major selling point. But coronavirus started wreaking its havoc, and countless Beethoven-related events had to be scuttled — or adapted on the fly to constraints no one could have predicted….
Fire up Seattle Pro Musica’s YouTube page and be treated to some Comfort and Joy on 12 and 13 December at 7:30pm and 4:00pm PST, respectively. Each concert will include an accompanying live chat.
This virtual-concert format is a first for Seattle Pro Musica. Comfort and Joy features over 60 singers who were recorded individually in their homes, the results being blended together by SPM’s expert musicians.
Seattle Pro Musicais one of my very favorite choral organizations, and artistic director, composer, and conductor Karen P. Thomas has put together a characteristically thoughtful, artful program combining traditional carols with some lesser-known pieces and a new work by the American composer Marques L. A. Garrett: My Heart Be Brave, a 2018 composition setting poetry by James Weldon Johnson that is intended as an ode to social justice.
Also on the program: Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Christmas Carols and Fantasia on Greensleeves; Gustav Holst’s In the Bleak Midwinter in an arrangement by Karen Thomas; 16th-century Spanish composer Matheo Flecha’s Ríu, ríu, chíu; Star of Wonder by Terre Roche of the Roche Sisters; Rachmaninoff’s BogoroditseDevo (from All-Night Vigil ); Ding! dong! Merrily on High by Thoinot Arbeau (born Jehan Tabourot; France, 1520–1595); Gloucestershire Wassail; and Franz Xaver Grüber’s Silent Night.
Comfort and Joy will close with a holiday carol sing-along led by conductor Karen P. Thomas and featuring Seattle Pro Musica singers, with Dwight Beckmeyer at the keyboard.
Also note: Seattle Pro Musica is one of the 17 Seattle-based performing arts organizations participating in the virtual This Is Beethoven Festival (16-19 December) and can be heard on the program of Thursday night, 17 December (8-10pm PST). It’s a neat program juxtaposing three composers who, like Beethoven, were overtaken by deafness in their later years: including Ethel Smyth. She is represented by her March of the Women (1911), which became an anthem of the women’s suffrage movement.
–The American Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with Marcus Roberts and the Modern Jazz Generation in United We Play, a short film presenting three world premieres of works for strings, jazz instrumentals, and piano composed by Roberts and commissioned by the ASO: America Has the Blues, Seeking Peace, and United We Play. It streams here for free through 21 February 2021.
United We Play was “inspired by the current turbulent times, and the belief that strength comes through adversity—where there is divide, there is also community. The project [presents] a musical, visual, and narrative digital experience that speaks to the future in a positive and hopeful way.”
As musicians, we have learned to depend on and trust one another in order to create something greater than any one of us could create alone. I believe that every time we listen to someone else’s voice we become stronger and better people. Given the current state of the world, I hope that the great musical collaboration we built with the ASO for United We Play will be used as a vehicle to encourage and demonstrate that strength.—Marcus Roberts
—Benjamin Britten’s other Henry James-inspired opera, Owen Wingrave, is part of Grange Park Opera’s interim season and is now being streamed here.
Filmed over five September days, director Stephen Medcalf explains: “A minimal crew maintained distancing in intimate domestic interiors and COVID restrictions required the cast to costume themselves. I’ve given full rein to the satirical, often blackly comic aspects of the opera. Alongside that there are three serious themes: the pressure from society to conform; the courage it takes to stand up for who we really are; the destructive love of family.”
In the words of Henry James: “A piece of ingenuity pure and simple, of cold artistic calculation, an amusette to catch those not easily caught.”
The opera is presented with the kind collaboration of Faber Music and The Britten Estate.
Britten did not own a TV when the work was broadcast on BBC2 on 16 May 1971. However, Decca presented him with a set two years later.
The work is an expression of Britten’s own pacifism, and was partly a response to the Vietnam War.
—Oregon Bach Festival available here: world premiere of An American Mosaic, composed by Richard Danielpour. The commission commemorates segments of the American population that have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Simone Dinnerstein performs the 15 piano miniatures and an array of accompanying Bach works.
–An all-Rihm concert from the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, streaming here. Stanley Dodds conducts this program:
Wolfgang Rihm Sphäre nach Studie für 6 Instrumentalisten (1993/2002)
Wolfgang Rihm Stabat Mater für Bariton und Viola
Wolfgang Rihm Male über Male 2 für Klarinette und 9 Instrumentalisten (2000/2008)
— 11 December Alexandre Bloch conducting the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker in Stravinsky/”Dumbarton Oaks”; Wagner/Siegfried Idyll; Poulenc/Sinfonietta, available here.
Musik Hans Werner Henze Text Hans-Ulrich Treichel nach Yukio Mishima Musikalische Leitung Simone Young Inszenierung Jossi Wieler & Sergio Morabito Bühne und Kostüme Anna Viebrock Licht Phoenix Mit Boecker, Skovhus, Lovell, Van Heyningen, Kim, Astakhov, Häßler
Here’s my review for Gramophone of Osvaldo Golijov’s remarkable new collaboration with Silkroad Ensemble, Falling Out of Time.
Though conceived and created well before the pandemic, Osvaldo Golijov’s latest collaboration with Silkroad Ensemble seems uncannily well suited to the era of corona.
Songs at the Confluence: Indigenous Poets on Place is a digital poetry event presented by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation and Tippet Rise Art Center, in partnership with In-Na-Po (Indigenous Nations’ Poets). It is presented in conjunction with the recently published Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, with curation by Kimberly Blaeser and Jake Skeets.
This video contains seven short films by emerging and celebrated Indigenous poets reading their own work, as well as other works from the anthology; a discussion between two of the anthology’s editors, LeAnne Howe and Jennifer Foerster; and video recordings of the inspiring landscape and music produced at Tippet Rise.
Poets included: Kimberly Blaeser (Anishinaabe), Sy Hoahwah (Yapaituka Comanche and Southern Arapaho), Brandy Nalani McDougall (Kanaka Maoli), and Jake Skeets (Diné) reading their own work, and anthology editors LeAnne Howe (Choctaw) and Jennifer Foerster (Mvskoke) in discussion. Also included: Jake Skeets reading a poem by Adrian Louis (Lovelock Paiute), Kimberly Blaeser reading a poem by b: william bearheart (Anishinaabe-St. Croix), and Jennifer Foerster reading a poem by Louis Little Coon Oliver (Mvskoke).
While preparing to write program notes for the upcoming stream from Cal Performances — a concert by the Dover Quartet that premieres on 10 December — I got to submerge myself in some glorious string quartets. Along with Haydn’s Op. 76, No. 2 (“Die Quinten”) and Dvořák’s magnificent Op. 106, the Dovers will perform an early work from the years while György Ligeti was still in Budapest (Métamorphoses nocturnes).
The best-of lists for a worst-of year are being finalized all around. One sure contender is this remarkable collection of choral music by Arvo Pärt from Gloriæ Dei Cantores.
The Cape Cod-based choir, which is led by Richard K. Pugsley, has a deep affinity for the Estonian composer. Each member of the choir has participated in study projects on Arvo Pärt’s style and his approach to text setting.
Gloriæ Dei Cantores’ repertoire includes larger Pärt works such as Passio and the Stabat Mater as well as the less frequently heard L’abbé Agathon and Berliner Mass. The recording is rooted in their experience singing his music in worship, on tour, and as part of an extensive concert series at their home, the Church of the Transfiguration in Orleans, Massachusetts.
The recording offers a powerful sampling of the range of Pärt’s choral writing, including his settings of SalveRegina and Nunc dimittis. L’abbé Agathon “sets the scene of an ancient 4th century story of the chance (or was it?) meeting of the hermit Agathon and a leper. After several testings of the hermit’s patience and his generosity, the leper reveals himself to be an angel, and blesses the hermit Agathon, and goes on his way. “
The exuberant Peace Upon You, Jerusalem and the Magnificat are juxtaposed with Pärt’s unforgettable setting of the sorrowful Stabat Mater, the culminating work on this collection. Originally commissioned to mark the centenary of Alban Berg’s birth in 1985, the piece was expanded in a new version that premiered in 2008.
“Music is my friend, ever-understanding. Compassionate. Forgiving, it’s a comforter, the handkerchief for drying my tears of sadness, the source of my tears of joy,” says the composer. These six selections span a large part of Pärt’s career and encourage a state of deep listening, far past the poisonous noise of the year now coming to a close.
Cellist Seth Parker Woods and the Seattle Symphony with David Robertson conducting; image (c) James Holt
I reviewed the world premiere of Tyshawn Sorey’s extraordinary new Seattle Symphony commission for Musical America. Here’s a longer version of the opening paragraphs (including some details that had to be cut for length):
Like an artfully spliced film sequence, the highlight of Seattle Symphony’s concert on November 19 seemed to bridge the painful months separating us from the pre-COVID-19 era. Tyshawn Sorey’s For Roscoe Mitchell for cello and orchestra transmitted all the excitement that comes with a “normal” world premiere of an important composition.
The account featuring Seth Parker Woods as the soloist and guest conductor David Robertson on the podium cast such a powerful and lasting spell that I occasionally forgot this was an online stream. Performing live in real time from the Benaroya concert hall, the musicians felt more present than is usually the case in the virtual medium.
The initial round of shutdowns in the spring had cheated us of hearing the piece as originally intended: in the context of a Beethoven festival juxtaposing several new commissions with a complete symphony cycle, which had been planned as last season’s culmination. Sorey’s new work is his first SSO commission and the final project envisioned by former vice president of artistic planning Elena Dubinets before her lamented departure from the organization.
In September, SSO began a new online season, using its own streaming service, Seattle Symphony Live, as a platform to disseminate live performances from its home concert hall (sans audience). For Roscoe Mitchell barely escaped a second postponement. This concert was the last event allowed to proceed before new statewide mandates for Washington caused all remaining 2020 concerts to be canceled.
On Tuesday, 17 November, New York City’s American Classical Orchestra opens its 2020-21 season with the first part of Chaconne, a virtual program of chamber music in two parts.
Part One becomes available online starting at 7:30 PM EST on aconyc.org; the second part will be available on Friday, 20 November. It was filmed at Harlem Parish, a neo-Gothic church celebrated for its fan vaulting and fine acoustics. Along with the award-winning Mexican mezzo-soprano Guadalupe Peraza, the performers include the violinists Karen Dekker and Chloe Fedor, gambist Arnie Tanimoto, theorbo player Charles Weaver, and Thomas Crawford on harpsichord. Suggested donation for virtual event: $25. Additional information here.
