The 2014-15 Season of the Huntsville Symphony is ending on a high note, well actually on many high notes. The amazing Elina Vahala
http://elinavahala.com
is back to play the powerful and extremely difficult Violin Concerto #2 by Bela Bartok. Our last classical concert opens with Les preludes by Franz Liszt and closes with Brahms’ Symphony No.1.
Just this week HSO has announced its 2015-16 season. Please click on this link to find out about all the details
http://hso.org
My busy 15-16 season continues. Next week I am off to San Jose, CA to conduct a choral program with Symphony Silicon Valley. Right after that I jump into the production of Doctor Faust by Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni at the Budapest Opera, then back to the US to conduct the Rochester Philharmonic. Stay tuned! Also do not forget to Tune In on WLRH tomorrow morning 9AM EST to listen to Ginny Kennedy and myself talking about the Saturday concert and about the next season of HSO.
http://wlrh.org
In the meantime here is the review of my concert with the Omaha Symphony from last week for your reading pleasure.
http://omaha.com
Tag Archives: chorus
What’s Up With Sussmayr?
“He was born in Schwanenstadt, Upper Austria, the son of a sacristan and teacher (who spelled the name Seissmayr, reflecting the Austrian pronunciation). His mother died when he was 6, and he left home at 13. He was a student and cantor in a Benedictine monastery (from 1779 to 1787) in Kremsmünster. When his voice changed, he became a member of the orchestra as a violinist.
The abbey performed operas and Singspiele, so he had the opportunity to study the operas of Christoph Willibald Gluck and Antonio Salieri. He composed a number of stage works and a good deal of church music for the abbey.
He became (after 1787) a student of Salieri in Vienna. In 1791 he assisted Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as a copyist with La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte and is presumed to have written the secco recitatives in the first. Their relationship was close and playful, to judge by surviving letters to Constanze, whom Süssmayr accompanied to Baden.
For many years he was also thought to have been a student of Mozart, but there is reason to think that the notion of such a relationship was concocted by Mozart’s wife Constanze in order to legitimize his completion of Mozart’s Requiem. During Mozart’s last days, it is possible that they discussed his Requiem, and Süssmayr took on the task of completing the piece upon his death and did so, turning it over to Constanze within 100 days of Mozart’s death. Süssmayr’s version of the score is still the most often played, although several alternative versions have been written.”
[from Wikipedia]
Yeah, what’s up with this whole Sussmayr thing? According to Harnoncourt in no circumstances could he complete Mozart’s work. (Who did it then?) As far as I am concerned there are more “Mozart Requiems” and the one under the name of Sussmayr has its own life and has been proven to engage musicians and audiences despite its flaws. This is the version I have played many times as a young clarinet player (Oh, those cold churches in Hungary around Christmas time!) and this is the version we performed yesterday with the Huntsville Symphony in front of a full house at the Von Braun Center. The concert started with Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music (another gorgeous piece using Basset horns) and we performed Haydn Symphony #93 before intermission. Our trumpet and horn players –as adventurous as they are– decided to use natural horns for the entire show. It sounded great and added an extra layer of artistry to the show.
Fun fact: I am traveling to Hungary today where I am doing a new music show next week. One of the pieces is going to be “Into The Little Hill”, a mesmerizing chamber opera by British composer George Benjamin. Guess what, he uses not one but two Basset horns (and Contrabass Clarinet among other “unusual” instruments) just like Mozart in his Masonic Funeral Music and Requiem. I love the sound of the Basset horns!
Radio Christmas
Two more concerts left for this year. Tonight I am conducting part of the now traditional year end Christmas Concert of the musical groups of the Hungarian Radio. Here is the program with some links:
Miklos Kocsar: Hungarian Christmas
http://info.bmc.hu
I studied with Mr. Kocsar for a year as a composer student back in the 90s. He is 80yo this year and his Birthday is just two days after the concert. This piece is a wonderful arrangement of traditional Hungarian Christmas songs.
Respighi: Lauda per la Natività del Signore
http://www.osscs.org/notes
Britten: A Ceremony of Carols
Bruckner: Scherzo from Symphony #1
Bruckner: Te Deum
http://en.wikipedia.org
The first and the third pieces are sung by the MR Children’s Choir and conducted by its two choral masters. I get to conduct the charming Respighi and the celebratory, joyous Bruckner compositions. The entire concert is part of the EBU (European Broadcasting Union) Christmas broadcast. As always you can listen to the concert at
http://www.mr3-bartok.hu/
live [19:30 local time] or stream it on your computer for two more weeks.
On December 23 I will conduct my first concert at the newly remodeled Franz Liszt Academy of Music. On the program three brand new Christmas Cantatas by young Hungarian composers. Just like earlier this season I am the member of the jury for a composers’ competition and the conductor of the final round. Two Christmas themed texts by Hungarian writer Geza Gardonyi was selected for the competitors to put into music. Three finalists were selected by the pre-screening committee and my orchestra and the MR Symphonic Choir will perform their compositions in front of a live audience. This concert can also be heard on the radio.
Let me wish Merry Christmas, a Wonderful Holiday Season and a Very Happy New Year to all my blog readers and music lovers out there! Come back and visit my site in 2014, too!
“Z” recordings
In the last couple of days I have been doing two so called “Z” recordings with the MR Symphony (Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra) and Chorus. Letter “Z” stands for “Zene” which in English simply means Music. In the good old days they used to mark the tapes with a letter Z (versus radio talk shows and other non-musical recordings) for easier cataloging. In Studio 6 at the historic Hungarian Radio building, downtown Budapest we recorded two compositions. Ernst von Dohnanyi’s lively Symphonic Minutes and a contemporary composition called Requiem, Symphony #3 by young Hungarian composer Peter Zombola. Check out his website here:
http://zombolapeter.uw.hu
Zombola’s Requiem (Symphony #3) was named Classical Contemporary Composition of the Year in 2012 by the Hungarian Copyright Office, Artisjus. As for the Dohnanyi piece we recorded it for a very interesting project. Since my orchestra is celebrating its 70th anniversary season the Hungarian Radio is preparing a series of radio programs to celebrate our work. One of them is a show about how radio recording technology developed since the beginnings. They are using different recordings of Symphonic Minutes made throughout decades to demonstrate the progress. We also made a video spot for the European Broadcasting Union (including an archival news footage of Dohnanyi himself conducting the last movement of Symphonic minutes in the same Studio 6 where we did it!) that will be available on our website soon. Stay tuned!
Opera-Symphony, Anti-Anti Opera and the missing link
Busy 6 weeks ahead in Budapest, Hungary. I am starting with the final classical subscription concert of the MR Symphony Orchestra (Hungarian Radio Symphony) at Palace of the Arts. The program includes two symphonies numbered 9, one by Shostakovich and one by Beethoven. Two very different “Number Nines” juxtaposed. Now that I am doing Beethoven’s Choral Symphony three times in three months (April: Huntsville, May: Budapest, June: Music in the Mountains, California) I rediscovered the operatic, theatrical side of the final movement of this titanic piece for myself. (BTW I always thought that the Funeral March of Eroica was “music for a play”, just like Egmont) The famous opening lines by the bass-baritone
“O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!”(“Oh friends, not these tones!”)
written in recitativo style set the tone for this very special Rescue Opera called “The Last Movement of Beethoven Nine”.
As part of a now decade old tradition the Palace of the Arts remembers the great composer Gyorgy Ligeti on (or around) his Birthday. He would be 90 years old this year. The time has come for Ligeti’s only opera, well his Anti-Anti-Opera as he called it to be performed as part of the Hommage To Ligeti series. I’ll be the conductor of the concert performance of the 1997 Salzburg Version of The Macabre at the helm of the Pannon Philharmonic in cooperation with
Neue Oper Wien
http://www.neueoperwien.at
and Amadinda Percussion Group
http://www.amadinda.com
Here is the summary of the story of this Anti-Anti-Opera
http://www.guardian.co.uk
Link to the Palace of the Arts production
http://www.mupa.hu
Now it seems that I could just move into the Palace of the Arts for the next couple of weeks. (BTW check out the architecture on their website. It is a gorgeous building.) After finishing the Ligeti project I dive into a “Real Opera” at last. As part of the internationally known Budapest Wagner Days I get to conduct Lohengrin semi-staged.
http://www.mupa.hu
The great thing about being a conductor, or a musician in general is that you get to wear many hats. From Beethoven through Ligeti to Wagner: one feels like an actor playing different characters. You are only as good an actor as much you can be yourself in the role you are playing. Studying Lohengrin is giving me great pleasure. Just like I re-discovered the operatic nature of Beethoven 9 for myself I did just make a discovery about Wagner’s romantic “Knight on a Swan” tale. Learning this opera made me realize how organically Wagner’s artistry is rooted in German musical theater tradition. It might sound like a cliche or a no-brainer to many (or to all who knows even a little about W) but it is different knowing something from your studies and actually living it as a musician. NOW I see (and feel) that Lohengrin is the “Missing Link” (along with The Flying Dutchman and Tannhauser of course) or rather the straight path between Weber’s Freischutz and Tristan und Isolde.
Ligeti 90
Wagner 200
Vajda 39 and One Lucky Guy with great pieces to conduct between now and mid June.
The Shostakovich-Beethoven and the Ligeti performances will be streamed live by the Hungarian Public Radio at
http://www.mr3-bartok.hu
A personal note on today’s concert
It happened to me again. I created a concert program a year and a half ago, and by the time I get on stage to conduct it, it gets a new meaning. The concert program is “wiser than its creator” and it definitely means more than just the sum of its pieces. Honestly, it is chilling, mysterious and somewhat scary to perform today’s program on the week of the Boston Marathon bombings.
Kernis: Musica Celestis
Bernstein: Chichester Psalms
Beethoven: Symphony #9
As a musician and the Music Director of the Huntsville Symphony I will dedicate this concert to the memory of the victims of the Boston bombings. We will also remember all the heroes of the horrific events. We must remember that there were, there are so many people who helped when it was most needed. We do what we can as musicians. The program is built like a huge “crescendo”. We’ll remember the victims with the slow, celestial opening. Chichester Psalms is a piece of music to help us cope with our loss and to “sing out loud” everything what goes through your mind in the aftermath of the events. And finally Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is our long journey from horrors and doubts to consolation, to hope and to the joy that is being born from the compassionate acts of good people.
