United States Solar Valley Music Pageant [2]: Solar Valley Pavilion, Solar Valley, Idaho, 13 & 14.8.2024. (RP)
Beethoven and Brahms favorites have been on the schedule in two back-to-back live shows on the Solar Valley Music Pageant. Final-minute substitutions – pianist John Wilson in Beethoven’s ‘Triple’ Concerto and violinist James Ehnes within the Brahms Violin Concerto – needed to be discovered. The live shows, nevertheless, went off with no hitch, with Ehnes particularly beguiling the viewers together with his expressive enjoying.
A piece by a residing composer opened every of the live shows. For the primary one, it was Jessie Montgomery’s Strum. Montgomery, who was born in New York Metropolis and attended Juilliard, served because the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s composer-in-residence. She received the 2024 Grammy Award for Rounds, her mini piano concerto.
Montgomery initially conceived Strum as a string quintet in 2006, however she has reworked it a number of instances, together with a model for string orchestra that was carried out right here. Drawing closely on American folks idioms, Montgomery infused the piece with each melody and thrilling rhythmic pulses. Alasdair Neale led a efficiency that was notable for its readability, lyricism and power. Melodies emerged like brightly coloured threads from Montgomery’s carpet of advanced textures and thrilling rhythms. Neale shied away from indulging within the air of nostalgia that pervades the piece, instilling it as a substitute with happiness.
Beethoven’s ‘Triple’ Concerto dates from the identical time as his ‘Eroica’ Symphony, however it’s reduce from completely totally different musical material. The concerto appears to hearken again to an earlier period, which is undoubtedly because of the solo piano half having been composed for the sixteen-year-old Archduke Rudolf. The younger man was the composer’s buddy and one among his most essential patrons.
Beethoven by no means composed a cello concerto, and the ‘Triple’ Concerto is as shut as he acquired, particularly within the second motion. The work poses challenges, largely referring to stability, which this efficiency didn’t fully meet. It wasn’t a difficulty between orchestra and soloists – violinist Jeremy Fixed, cellist Amos Yang and pianist John Wilson – for conductor Stephanie Childress was attentive to that. Quite, it was because of the intimate scale of the enjoying from the soloists.
Yang instilled Beethoven’s melodies with nice emotion and magnificence. His interaction with Fixed was polished to perfection, however the violin sound lacked presence. Wilson anchored the efficiency with enjoying that was equally refined however extra in line with the acoustical house by which the work was carried out. This was merely a case of louder undoubtedly being higher.
The second live performance opened with Quinn Mason’s A Joyous Trilogy. The twenty-eight-year-old hails from Dallas, the place his musical actions ran the gamut in highschool. Mason acquired hooked on classical music on the age of ten and, after profitable a contest for top school-aged composers, realized that he had a shot at reaching his ambition of getting a profession as a composer.
Mason has focus. In his phrases, ‘I grew up across the orchestra, and my mentors have been skilled musicians. The orchestra is the place my coronary heart is’.
Mason composed A Joyous Trilogy in 2019, and it was premiered by the Harmonia Orchestra a 12 months later. He subsequently revised it, and this model has been carried out by orchestras all over the world; Neale carried out it with the New Haven Symphony in 2023. Because the title implies, A Joyous Trilogy is an ebullient musical experience. In pre-concert remarks, Quinn stated the piece is an embodiment of pleasure, happiness and gratitude that he hopes places a smile in your face. Neale led a efficiency notable for its readability and crispness, and principal trombonist Gordon Woolfe’s solos have been each lovely and pensive. The gleaming, triumphant waves of sound within the closing part elicited the response that Quinn had supposed.
Brahms’s Violin Concerto was born out of his friendship with Joseph Joachim, one of many biggest violinists of his time. Brahms was a wonderful pianist, however he relied on Joachim for recommendation when it got here to composing the concerto, to whom it was devoted. Joachim was the soloist within the concerto’s 1879 premiere in Leipzig on New Yr’s Day.
Melody poured out of Ehnes’s violin within the first motion. His sound was all the time refined, nevertheless it additionally encompassed nice heat and richness. The entry of the orchestra as Ehnes performed the ultimate notes of cadenza within the first motion was pure bliss. His enjoying within the third motion was as notable for expressiveness as virtuosity, and the smile that flashed on his face after he performed the ultimate notes of the coda captured the spirit that characterised his enjoying all through.
Principal oboist Erik Behr performed the straightforward melody of the Adagio with the utmost sensitivity, accompanied by the equally refined enjoying of the woodwinds. When Ehnes and Behr alternated phrases of that melody on the finish of the motion, it was a musical second to savor.
All through, Neale drew the identical high quality of enjoying from the orchestra. Steadiness was by no means a difficulty, and his tempi maintained a ahead propulsion that culminated within the boisterous Allegro giacoso that concludes the concerto. Underneath his baton, the sudden softness of the ultimate measures made excellent sense.
Having heard each Beethoven and Brahms over the previous two days, Ehnes supplied an encore from the opposite of ‘The Three Bs’ – the Largo from Bach’s Violin Sonata No.3 in C main. It was enjoying that was pure and profound, and provoking to the viewers in each the pavilion and on the garden.
Rick Perdian
13.8.2024 – Jeremy Fixed (violin), Amos Yang (cello), John Wilson (pianist), Solar Valley Music Pageant Orchestra / Stephanie Childress & Alasdair Neale (conductors).
Jessie Montgomery – Strum
Beethoven – Concerto in C for piano, violin and cello, Op.56, ‘Triple’
14.8.2024 – James Ehnes (violin), Solar Valley Music Pageant Orchestra / Alasdair Neale (conductor).
Quinn Mason – A Joyous Trilogy
Brahms – Concerto in D main for Violin, Op.77
