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Curtain falls on Music in the Mountains

The Music in the Mountains classical music festival always feels a bit like a runaway train. The first concert delights, and then it’s one event after another, some private, some free, some fundraisers, some around the region, with attendees walking out marveling day after day.

And then, just when a bit of festival fatigue is setting in, the final weekend arrives, along with the sadness that three weeks of wonderful music are coming to an end for another year, not to mention that it’s 49 weeks until the next one begins.

Artistic Director Greg Hustis said even he thought the season had been outstanding, and to say he has high standards is putting it mildly.

The season ended with a bang over the weekend. Saturday featured Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks and the allegro moderato movement of the Sibelius Violin Concerto in D minor played by the winner of the Conservatory Music in the Mountains Competition, Keanu Mitanga, who grew up in the Atlanta area and now studies violin performance at Rice University.

The concert ended on one of the great pieces of the classical music oeuvre, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat, Opus 55, also known as the “Eroica Symphony.”

Music Director Guillermo Figueroa said it could arguably be the most important piece ever composed, and he put his own stamp on the masterpiece.

Sunday brought us the brilliant violinist Philippe Quint on Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto in D minor. Over the years, we have watched him grow and mature in his talent, and Quint was at the top of his game Sunday. He received the kind of standing ovation where the entire audience leaps to its feet en masse the instant the last note is played.

Figueroa always programs a grand finale, and this year the audience was transported first to Spain with de Falla’s Suite No. 2 from “The Three-Cornered Hat” and then, thanks to Gershwin, to the City of Light with “An American in Paris.” I don’t know how the Festival Orchestra and Figueroa make that last performance so memorable every year, and I can’t imagine what will happen next year for the 30th anniversary.

July 22 marked another one of Music in the Mountains’ great traditions. A festival chamber ensemble playing baroque music in the ambience of St. Columba Catholic Church cannot be beaten. Actually billed as Baroque and Beyond, Dawn Spaeder, executive director of the Durango Choral Society, suggested that perhaps it should have been called Baroque ‘n’ Glass – you might have to say it out loud to get it – as the evening also featured Philip Glass’s “Company for strings.”

I’m one of those people who’s not always too sure about Glass. It’s not a love-him-or-hate-him situation for me, as it is for many music lovers, but rather I like some pieces and others not so much. Figueroa had the lights dimmed for the piece, and the meditative movements were compelling and just right for the setting, the musicians and the audience.

The chamber concerts are always intimate, and this was no exception. They’re also an opportunity for us to hear members of the orchestra as soloists, and that’s what I like best of all.

At this concert, Figueroa put down his baton and picked up his Stradivarius on Vivaldi’s Concerto in E, Opus 3, No. 12 for violin and strings. Violins made by the Stradivari family in the 17th and 18th century are often named after the most famous person associated with them. You know the maestro comes from a prominent musical family when his Strad is called the Figueroa.

One thing we learned about concertmaster Leslie Shank that night when festival President Jill Ward pulled her out of the orchestra was that when she was a student at The Juilliard School, Figueroa was a legend to her as one of the founders of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and concertmaster of the New York City Ballet. Shank shone on her solo with Oleg Sulyga on another Vivaldi, Concerto for Two Violins in A minor. It was a musical conversation between two talented violinists.

The concert ended on a “Wow!” factor, with Britten’s Simple Symphony, Opus 4, for string orchestra. The second movement, Playful Pizzicato (or plucking) looked extremely complex for the musicians but brought a round of laughter from the audience because it was just plain fun.

HHH

Enjoying birthdays with actual summer weather this week are Debbe Speck, Summer Lynch, Rosine Stout, Ron Ollier, Don Ollier, Julie Schultz, Tawlys Tonso, Basia Daney, Jeff Davis, Pat Wainwright, Lynda Berger, Lillian Ciluffo, Jacob Hoffman, Bob Sieger, Raymond Walker, Koltin Bass, Stephanie Bowles, Renny Young, Maren Stransky, Dianne Milarch, Susan Johnson, Sonya Fleming, Susan Plvan, Michael Rohren, Van Butler, Scott McClellan, Karen Anderson, Kent Herath and Jennifer Rudolph.

HHH

On Saturday, Music in the Mountains concertgoers heard Keanu Mitanga, the 2015 winner of the Conservatory’s Concerto Competition, performing with the Festival Orchestra.

But I always start thinking about previous winners. Just by chance I happen to know about one, Randall Goosby, who won in 2009 at the tender age of 13.

His father, Ralph, sent me an email after running across a piece I wrote about his son at the time. Goosby continued studying with Philippe Quint – who just happens to have been the soloist at Music in the Mountains on Sunday – until 2011, when he attended the Perlman Summer Music Program - yes, as in virtuoso Itzhak – on Shelter Island, New York. It’s seven intense weeks with only the most gifted string students, 40 chosen from around the world.

Not only did Goosby find the camp inspiring, it led to his being accepted into The Juilliard School’s Pre-College Program that fall, when he began studies with Perlman. For three years, he commuted to New York City from Tennessee every weekend.

After graduating from high school, Goosby matriculated at Juilliard as a full-time college student with the Class of 2018, where he has continued studying with Perlman and violinist Catherine Cho. He was one of just 19 undergraduate/graduate students to receive a prestigious Kovner Fellowship at the school last fall.

The young violinist has also been honored by the Stradivari Society as a Rising Star along with scads of other honors. The society loaned him his Giovanni Paolo Maggini violin “Maggie,” (made circa 1600) late in 2009. To a 13-year-old. (And they don’t loan those precious violins to just anyone.)

Anyway, six years later, it looks like my headline of that article in 2009 was prescient: “Violinist’s future will be bright one.”

Wouldn’t it be fun to have Goosby back as a guest artist with the Music in the Mountains Festival Orchestra?

HHH

A few weeks ago, I asked a question that has perplexed me for decades: How do the string instruments always have their bowing synchronized?

It turns out I am not alone in my bewilderment. Many people have stopped me at concerts saying, “I’ve always wondered about that, too.”

Thanks to festival librarian Diann Wylie, I now know. Once the pieces are selected, she starts gathering up the music and sending it to Concertmaster Leslie Shank. In Music in the Mountain’s case, the process starts in November.

Shank will mark a master score for the first violin section for Wylie, and then Wylie will copy it by hand on all the other first violin scores. (I have attached a marked score she sent me online if you want to follow along.) The principals of the other string-instrument sections will adapt that score to their instruments and parts.

The flat mark at the beginning indicates a down bow, meaning that the player will pull it to the right. A down bow is stronger than an up bow, which is pushing to the left and marked by a “V,” because that’s just the difference between pushing and pulling.

Sometimes there are long curved lines on the score. That means the fingers on the left hand are changing to new notes, but the bow is continuing in the same direction.

Not all notes are marked, because sometimes “it just comes naturally,” Wylie said, so if there’s a down bow for one note or group of notes, the next bowing will automatically be up. And just in case you’re wondering as you look at the page, Pizz, meaning pizzicato, or plucking, and arco means with bow.

“The concertmaster is a mystery to me,” Wylie said. “They have such great insights as to what is appropriate and accepted for a certain piece.” HHH

It’s perfect weather for dancing under the stars for the anniversaries of Bruce and Jane Carman, Scott and Robin Southworth, Dick and Betty Perry, Craig and Charlotte “Charlie” Wright, David and Susan Kolb and Greg and Kelly Winter.

abutler@durangoherald.com



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