by Rachel Herrington | Mar 5, 2024
Door time: 6:00 PM
Show time: 6:30 PM
“Look, how brightly the universe shines! Splendour falls on everything around…” Schoenberg’s chromatic and stunningly beautiful Transfigured Night draws inspiration from a poem about a woman harboring a dark secret and the man who loves her enough to forgive her. 2024 marks Schoenberg’s 150th birthday, as well as Bruckner’s 200th; this program continues the anniversary celebrations with some of the best-loved of Bruckner’s music, his Fourth Symphony. The hunt is on in this “Romantic” Symphony, which begins with daybreak and puts the horn section to work during its lively “Hunting of the Hare.” Music Director Peter Oundjian calls this inspired concert “the most beautiful program of the summer.”
Artists:
Peter Oundjian, conductor
Program:
Arnold Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured Night”), Op. 4
Anton Bruckner, Symphony No. 4, Romantic
200th Anniversary
by Rachel Herrington | Mar 5, 2024
Door time: 6:00 PM
Show time: 6:30 PM
Famous for inciting a riot at its 1913 premiere due to its cutting-edge compositional techniques, Stravinsky’s Rite represents “the mystery and great surge of creative power of Spring.” BBC Music Magazine has praised violinist Vadim Gluzman’s performance of Prokofiev’s acerbic Second Violin Concerto as “a thing of great beauty.” This exuberant program opens with a spirited Short Ride in a Fast Machine, of which composer John Adams asks, “You know how it is when someone asks you to ride in a terrific sports car, and then you wish you hadn’t?”
Artists:
Peter Oundjian, conductor
Vadim Gluzman, violin
Program:
John Adams, Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986)
Sergei Prokofiev, Violin Concerto No. 2
Igor Stravinsky, Rite of Spring
by Rachel Herrington | Mar 5, 2024
Door time: 7:00 PM
Show time: 7:30 PM
Famous for inciting a riot at its 1913 premiere due to its cutting-edge compositional techniques, Stravinsky’s Rite represents “the mystery and great surge of creative power of Spring.” BBC Music Magazine has praised violinist Vadim Gluzman’s performance of Prokofiev’s acerbic Second Violin Concerto as “a thing of great beauty.” This exuberant program opens with a spirited Short Ride in a Fast Machine, of which composer John Adams asks, “You know how it is when someone asks you to ride in a terrific sports car, and then you wish you hadn’t?”
Artists:
Peter Oundjian, conductor
Vadim Gluzman, violin
Program:
John Adams, Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986)
Sergei Prokofiev, Violin Concerto No. 2
Igor Stravinsky, Rite of Spring
by Rachel Herrington | Mar 5, 2024
Door time: 7:00 PM
Show time: 7:30 PM
The 2024 Robert Mann Chamber Music Series begins with a spotlight on the Festival’s own musicians. Dohnányi’s sextet brings together piano, string trio, clarinet, and horn, an uncommon combination which the composer uses to mischievous effect. Beethoven’s brief “Eyeglasses Duo” is so called for a friendly note between colleagues — both Beethoven and his cellist friend Nikolaus Zmeskall required spectacles — and its music is similarly conversational and good-humored. Schumann embedded some of his most aching and romantic music into his Piano Quartet, a chamber gem of contrast and delight.
Artists:
Colorado Music Festival musicians
Program:
Ernst von Dohnányi, Sextet in C Major
Ludwig van Beethoven, Duet with two Obligato Eyeglasses for viola and cello in E-flat Major WoO 32
Robert Schumann, Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 47
by Rachel Herrington | Mar 5, 2024
Door time: 6:00 PM
Show time: 6:30 PM
The 2024 Festival season opens with the much-anticipated return of Alisa Weilerstein, whose music “emerges with sunlit clarity” (The Guardian); here Weilerstein performs one of the most breathtaking works for cello. Later: Mendelssohn could not shake the “festive air” of Italy while composing his Fourth Symphony, which he called “ the happiest piece I have ever done.” The program begins with a brief and evocative Masquerade; composer Anna Clyne drew inspiration from promenade concerts held in London’s pleasure gardens and their “exotic street entertainers, dancers, fireworks,” and of course, masquerades.
Artists:
Peter Oundjian, conductor
Alisa Weilerstein, cello
Program:
Anna Clyne, Masquerade (2013)
Antonin Dvořák, Cello Concerto
Felix Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 4, Italian
