Archive for February, 2012

« Older Entries
No Comments

Masters of the Podium—JoAnn Falletta


2012
02.29

Posted in Masters of the Podium | No Comments »

JoAnn Falletta [b.1954] has continued to be one of the most prominent female conductors, ever since attaining the position of music director in 1991 with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra.  She continues in that post, having recently signed a contract that carries through 2016.  Born in Queens, New York, and a graduate of the Mannes College of Music as well as The Juilliard School, Falletta began her professional career as a classical guitarist.  As a teenager the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera called upon her often, whenever either ensemble required a solo guitar in its program, but her early interest in conducting led her to study with the likes of Jorge Mester and Leonard Bernstein.  Both her master’s and doctoral degrees in conducting are from Juilliard.

As is true with most of her colleagues these days, Falletta fulfills multiple conductorships simultaneously.  Aside from her Virginia Symphony gig, she is also music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the principal conductor of the Ulster Orchestra [Belfast, Northern Ireland], and the principal guest conductor at the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina.  Falletta also enjoys a busy guest-conducting schedule.  For example, 2012 includes her appearance with Santiago’s Orquestra Sinfonica de Chile—this is her South American debut—the London Symphony, the Korean Broadcast Symphony, and the Beijing Symphony.  She is also scheduled to tour Italy and Germany with the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie.

Falletta’s discography is broad and extensive.  She has taken a particular interest in performing music by female composers.  While leading the Women’s Philharmonic, Falletta recorded works by Fanny Mendelssohn, Lili Boulanger, and Clara Schumann.  Her schedule for 2012 is chock-full of recording sessions.  Her aforementioned appearance with the London Symphony involves a world premiere recording of music by Kenneth Fuchs [Naxos], plus there is a continuation of her series of recordings of works by Arvo Pärt as played by the Netherlands Radio Orchestra.

Falletta conducts a rehearsal of “Winter Idyll” by Gustav Holst [Ulster Orchestra; October 2011]:

 

No Comments

Modern American Composers—Alan Hovhaness


2012
02.27

Posted in Modern American Composers | No Comments »

Alan Hovhaness [1911–2000; birth name, Alan Vaness Chakmakjian], from Somerville, Massachusetts, was one of the most productive American composers of the 20th century.  The son of an Armenian father (born in Turkey) and an American mother, Hovhaness adopted a version of his middle name as a surname while in his 30s in order to appear more Americanized.  He reportedly composed his earliest music at the remarkable age of four and began formal piano and violin lessons when he was seven.

His first formal compositional training was as a student at the New England Conservatory of Music, where he was enrolled in the early 1930s.  Hovhaness looked to Jean Sibelius as his most prominent influence, and he even traveled to Finland in 1935 to meet the composer.  His Armenian heritage motivated him to incorporate Eastern influences in his music.  Hovhaness wrote mostly chamber pieces throughout the decade prior to WWII, including a piano piece. Mystic Flute [1937], which Sergei Rachmaninoff performed occasionally on several of his concert tours.

In 1940, after accepting the position of organist for an Armenian church in Watertown, Massachusetts—a post he held for ten years—Hovhaness began to infuse many of his compositions with a number of Armenian modes.  During this period he won a scholarship to study with Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů and later qualified for Guggenheim funding.  He went through several periods of despondence during his compositional career, on one occasion destroying hundreds of manuscripts due to widespread criticism by his fellow composers and a lack of confidence in his abilities.

Hovhaness wrote 67 symphonies over the course of 56 years [1936–1992], with many of them receiving astronomical titles due to his lifelong interest in the stars and planets.  In addition to scores for full orchestra, some of his symphonies are more specialized, including several that incorporate mixed-voice choirs or feature solo instruments.  These include bass trombone (Symphony No. 34, 1977), guitar (Symphony No. 39 “Lament,” 1978), and soprano soloist plus clarinet (Symphony No. 57 “Cold Mountain,” 1983).  His more prominent non-symphonic works include Fantasy on Japanese Woodprints, Op. 211 [1965], a xylophone concerto with orchestra, plus a ballet score written especially for Martha Graham titled Myth of a Voyage [1973].  His most iconic piece, though, is generally considered to be And God Created Great Whales [1970], which includes the recorded calls of whales played on tape over a live orchestra.  The documentary film Whalesong [1986], directed by Barbara Willis Sweete, commemorates this composition by combining scenes at the Vancouver [B.C.] Aquarium with music performed by the Vancouver Symphony, two operatic soloists, and the vocalizations of three killer whales.

Pianists Martin Berkofsky and Atakan Sari perform the third movement of the 1954 composition Concerto for Two Pianos, Op. 123, No. 3, with the Armenian Philharmonic in Yerevan, Armenia [2006]:

No Comments

Opera Stars of Today—Angela Gheorghiu


2012
02.24

Posted in Opera Stars of Today | No Comments »

Angela Gheorghiu [b. 1965; birth name, Angela Burlacu] is from the town of Adjud, situated in the Moldavian region of Romania.  Despite its tiny size—population 17,500 in 2002—it is the birthplace of two world-renown operatic sopranos, Gheorghiu and Nelly Miricioiu [b. 1952].

Gheorghiu began her vocal training at 14, when she enrolled at Bucharest’s National University of Music.  She received the top prize at the Belvedere International Competition in 1990 and made her professional debut that same year, appearing as Mimi in Puccini’s La bohème with the Romanian National Opera in Cluj-Napoca.  That role was to serve her well in her early career, as Gheorghiu sang Mimi for her international debut [Royal Opera Covent Garden, London; 1992] and her first appearance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

It was the lead role of Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata that launched her into international stardom.  Her 1994 performance with the Royal Opera was broadcast by the BBC and later released on CD and DVD (on Decca).  The skill of her portrayal caught the imagination of opera fans throughout the world.  The 2000s brought about a subtle change in her repertoire, as she began to take on heavier roles.  She appeared as Floria Tosca in the film version of Tosca [2001] opposite husband Roberto Alagna, a highly acclaimed production directed by Benoit Jacquot.  The following year, the pair duplicated their success with a film version of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette.

While Gheorghiu has continued to perform regularly in all the major opera houses—Milan, Paris, Vienna, London, San Francisco—and even some lesser but still important houses, such as Marseilles, Rome, and Lyons, her premier achievements have seemed to come on the stage at the Met.  Her roles there have included Liù (Turandot), Amelia (Simon Boccanegra), Magda (La rondine), and Marguerite (Faust), in addition to the ones mentioned above.

As to awards, Gheorghiu’s version on EMI Classics of Massenet’s Manon received the 2001 Gramophone Award for Best Opera Recording.  She has twice been named Female Artist of the Year [2001 and 2010] by the Classic Brit Awards, and the French Ministry of Culture has twice honored her—first as an “Officier” and later as a “Chevalier”—of the Order of Arts & Letters.  Her 2012 schedule shows appearances as Puccini’s Mimi in Barcelona (March), Hamburg (April), London (June), Munich (July), and Milan (September).  She is also scheduled to appear with Alagna for an operatic concert in April 2012 at Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.

Gheorghiu sings “Pace, pace mio dio” from Verdi’s La forza del destino (Conductor: Zubin Mehta):

No Comments

Famous Soloists—Anne-Sophie Mutter


2012
02.22

Posted in Famous Soloists | No Comments »

Anne-Sophie Mutter [b. 1963] has built a strong solo violin career around the performance of modern music—including a number of pieces composed especially for her—although she also plays many of the classical standards with orchestras worldwide.  Mutter is from Rheinfelden, Germany, where she began her piano studies at the age of five.  She soon abandoned the keyboard for the violin and traveled to Zurich to study at the Winterthur Conservatory.  Her playing attracted the attention of conductor Herbert von Karajan, and she made her debut at 13 at the Lucerne [Switzerland] Festival with the conductor’s Vienna Philharmonic.  For her first public appearance she selected Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 in D major.  Her first recordings—for Deutsche Grammophon—were also with that ensemble, when at age 15 she played Mozart violin concertos Nos. 3 and 5.

Debuts with important orchestras continued throughout the early 1980s, including her first performance with the New York Philharmonic [1980] and conductor Zubin Mehta.  At the age of 22, Mutter became one of the youngest-ever members of the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Mutter has received three Grammy Awards in the category “Best Instrumental Soloist Performance, with Orchestra,” including her 1999 recording with the London Philharmonic of Krzysztof Penderecki’s Violin Concerto No. 2, which the Polish composer wrote for her.  Her 2005 Grammy was awarded for her recording of Andre Previn’s Violin Concerto, also composed for her.  The two were married for a few years.  Her discography is immense, with recordings on DG but also EMI Classics and Erato.  Highlights include Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole [EMI, 1985], the Brahms Violin Concerto [DG, 1997], the Korngold Violin Concerto [DG, 2004], and two separate recordings of the complete violin sonatas of Brahms [EMI, 1983; DG, 2010].

Some of the more recent accolades to have come Mutter’s way are the 2008 International Ernst von Siemens Music prize and the 2011 Brahms prize.  In 2010 she received an honorary doctorate from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.  She created the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation in 1997, whose role is to provide scholarships to young musicians, who are personally selected for the honor by the violinist herself.

Owner of two Stradivarius violins—a 1703 model known as The Emiliani and a 1710 model known as The Lord Dunn-Raven—Mutter also plays a modern instrument crafted by Roberto Regazzi of Bologna, Italy.

Anne-Sophie Mutter (with Lambert Orkis, piano) performs the Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 2 at a benefit concert in Paris [25 Jan 2010]:

No Comments

Composer’s Corner—Erich Wolfgang Korngold


2012
02.20

Posted in Composer's Corner | No Comments »

Erich Wolfgang Korngold [1897–1957] is one of the few composers of the 20th century to have enjoyed two distinctly separate careers in the creation of music—first as a classical composer of orchestral and chamber works, plus operas, and later as one of the pioneers of music written for movies.  As to the latter, Korngold is often given credit as the creator of the symphonic film score, and his name remains popular today more for his work in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s than for his earlier pieces, composed in Europe a decade or more earlier.

Korngold was born to a Jewish family in Brünn, in the Moravian sector of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Today the city is known as Brno, Czech Republic.  At the age of four he moved to Vienna, where his father had accepted the position of music critic at a major daily newspaper.  By nine he was writing piano music, and in 1909 composed a two-act ballet scored for two pianos—Der Schneemann (“The Snowman”)—that premiered a year later with the 13-year-old Korngold as one of the pianists.  Several of his other teen-year piano works received significant accolades as far away as New York, but it was his two one-act operas that launched him as one of the top young composers of his time.

Der Ring des Polykrates and Violanta debuted in Munich in 1916.  When the latter was first performed in Vienna later that year, renowned soprano Maria Jeritza sang the title role.  By far his most triumphant work, however, was the full-length opera, Die Tote Stadt (“The Dead City”), which enjoyed its first performance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1921.  Throughout the 1920s, Korngold wrote primarily chamber music pieces, including a suite for two violins, several piano sonatas, and a string quartet.

In 1934, Korngold traveled to Hollywood to arrange Mendelssohn’s incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream for a Max Reinhardt film of the same title.  Due to its overwhelming success, Korngold signed an exclusive contract with Warner Bros. to create additional film scores.  His first original work for the screen was for Captain Blood [1935], the movie that made actor Errol Flynn famous.  The following year, Korngold’s score for the movie, Anthony Adverse, won an Academy award for best film music.

Throughout this period, Korngold attempted to remain active in two separate worlds, writing movie music in Hollywood and composing classical music in Vienna.  The rise of Nazism put an end to that, although Korngold managed to safely extract his family from Austria before emigration became impossible.  The composer vowed to write no more classical music until Hitler was gone from power.  During his self-imposed exile in the United States, Korngold contributed musical scores to such movies as The Prince and the Pauper [1937], Juarez [1939], The Sea Wolf and King’s Row [1941], and Deception [1946].  He originally planned to return to Austria in 1947 but was stricken with a heart attack in September of that year.  He finally made it to Vienna in 1949, where he was present early the following year for the premiere of his Symphonic Serenade in B major.  However, the classical world had seemingly passed him by, and few of his pieces received much exposure.  He had a stroke in 1956 that resulted in partial paralysis, and Korngold died the following year from a cerebral hemorrhage.  Aside from his opera, Die Tote Stadt, the most-often performed Korngold work is his violin concerto, written in 1945 and the first piece he composed after WWII had ended.

Baritone Thomas Hampson sings “Pierrot’s Tanzlied” from Die Tote Stadt [2006]:

No Comments

Opera Stars of Today—Roberto Alagna


2012
02.17

Posted in Opera Stars of Today | No Comments »

Roberto Alagna [b. 1963], the son of Italian immigrants from Sicily, is a French-born operatic tenor who has crafted a substantial career on both sides of the Atlantic and has also been equally at home in roles of both the French and Italian repertoires.  He rose to professional prominence as the winner of the 1988 Luciano Pavarotti Voice Competition, which took place in Philadelphia.  Later that same year, he made his debut at the Glyndebourne Festival in the U.K., where he performed as Alfredo Germont in Verdi’s La traviata.  It has since become his most popular role, one he has sung more than 150 times.

Before turning to opera, Alagna was a cabaret singer in Paris—he was NOT a singing waiter, as some tabloids have reported over the years.  Admittedly self-taught by listening to recordings of the great tenors from earlier generations, Alagna studied extensively with voice coach Rafael Ruiz, as well as conductor Antonio Pappano.

Much of Alagna’s early career was centered on lighter, lyric roles.  These included Rodolfo in Puccini’s La bohème, Romeo in Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette, Nemorino in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, and Rinuccio in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi.  As he entered his 30s, the beginning of a tenor’s prime, he took on heavier, more challenging roles.  These included Canio in Leoncavallo’s I pagliacci, Manrico in Verdi’s It trovatore, the title role in Verdi’s Don Carlo, and Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca.  It was in this latter opera that Alagna appeared alongside his wife, soprano Angela Gheorghiu (Floria Tosca), in a highly acclaimed film version—directed by Benoit Jacquot and conducted by Pappano—shot at all three Rome locations that serve as the scenes in the libretto.

As Don Jose, the love-struck soldier in Bizet’s Carmen, Alagna has enjoyed some of his greatest accolades.  A clear highlight for him was appearing at the Metropolitan Opera in early 2010 opposite mezzo-soprano Elina Garanča, a performance as part of the “Met in HD” series that broke all ticket sales records and still stands as the series’ top draw.

In 1994, the National Press Association of France named Alagna its Musical Person of the Year; two years later the Ministry of Culture elected him as a Chevalier to the Order of Arts and Letters.

Alagna sings the Flower Song from Carmen in a 2004 performance:

« Older Entries