The musical season between the academic year and late-summer offerings has begun, and it’s brimming with choices. The first weeks of June will test your planning skills.
The 14th annual Durango Chamber Music Festival starts off with a world and Durango premiere on Sunday, followed by four unusual noon recitals.
“The Platypus Story,” a chamber work for narrators and musical ensemble, was originally scheduled for 2020, shortly after its world premiere in Arkansas. Composed by Stephanie Berg and adapted by Richard Wheeler, the work charmingly unfolds a mystery involving birds, fish, mammals and an odd creature known as a platypus. It was commissioned in 2018 by Rochelle Mann and her musician colleague, Beth Wheeler and her husband, Richard. The Texarkana Symphony Orchestra performed the world premiere. It’s been compared to “Peter and the Wolf” as a family-friendly story-plus-music, the piece has been waiting in the wings for COVID-19 to fly over.
The 23-minute work unspools with two narrators, an adult and a child, who voices the Platypus. It is he who is discovered by birds, fish and mammals, and each group invites the platypus to join them. It’s a serious invitation that requires serious thought, which is unraveled musically.
Berg lightly separates the narration from her musical voices through a flute, oboe, English horn and piano. She also magically conjures the process of thinking through her remarkably inventive score.
Sunday’s Durango ensemble includes five from the world premiere in Arkansas: flute – Rochelle Mann, pianist Tatiana Mann and narrators Philip, Julian and Aleksandr Mann. Oboist Beth Wheeler and her husband, Richard, who adapted the story, have been unable to attend because of a medical emergency. Elaine Heltman, principal oboe with the Santa Fe Symphony, has stepped in.
Berg composed a companion piece titled “Platytudes.” Durango will be its world premiere, and it clearly plays on the idea of “platitudes,” those pesky clichés we hear daily on the news. The 20-minute work has eight short sections, which a narrator signals by reading one or a pair of platitudes that go together.
If you go
WHAT: 14th annual Durango Chamber Music Festival, five concerts, five days, June 5-9.
WHEN: Opening Sunday performance: 4 p.m., all others 12:15 weekdays.
WHERE: St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 910 East Third Ave.
TICKETS: Tickets: $60 adult festival pass, $30 student pass, individual concerts $15 each at the door or online.
MORE INFORMATION: Visit www.durangochambermusic.com or call 903-8854.
Berg’s third vignette, “When Life Gives You Lemons,” is an example, and the composer suggests a jaunty rendition by writing “Quirky” into the score. Mann forwarded the score, so one can see inside the mind of the composer for each vignette. Berg cunningly urges the flute solo for “Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining,” to be played “Mysterioso.”
After Sunday’s performance, noontime recitals have been scheduled for the remainder of the festival: Monday, Classy Brass; Tuesday, cellist Sandy Kiefer, violinist Jolan Friedhoff and pianist Antoinette Perry; Wednesday, The Durango Chamber Singers in works by John Rutter and others. The tenors and basses will reprise “Blue Moon,” sung and oddly choreographed for the occasion.
Thursday’s finale features soprano Gemma Kavanagh, flutist Mann and pianist C. Scott Hagler in works by Handel and Massenet, plus American composers Amy Beach and Harold Arlen.
A more detailed schedule of all recitals is available on the DCMF website.
