Tag Archives: classical music

Armel Opera Competition and Festival 2015

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I feel really fortunate that I got to spend the last 10+ days in the U.S. It is always amazing to witness historic changes real time. No matter what your opinion is on the three decisions made by SCOTUS, I am sure you all agree that they qualify most definitely for a historic event.
When not following history in the making I spent my time writing Clarinet Symphony for the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and making sketches for a libretto for a possible new opera.

This week I am back in Hungary. I am honored to be on the Jury of the Final Competition of Armel Festival.
http://armelfestival.org/en/
Five performances from five countries with five you singers in competition roles. The festival starts with The Magic Flute directed by Robert Alfoldi.
http://wikipedia.org
The performance is officially sold out. You can all watch it live on MEZZO TV
http://concert.arte.tv/fr

and you can also vote on your favorite performance after watching all of them. You might be able to catch an interview with me in one of the intermissions.
Stay tuned for more posts on Armel 2015!

Equal Crossing Roads

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I’ve spent the last week at the Budapest Music Center teaching conducting at the “Boulez 90” masterclass for conductors and composers.
The masterclass was organized by the International Eotvos Institute Foundation
http://eotvospeter.com
The final concert of the master class, conducted by select students can be listened to live here
http://radio.hu Just click on Radio/ Bartok and start listening at 1:35PM EST
The Eotvos Foundation printed some great fliers for the master class and the concert as well. They picked traffic signs like “Equal Crossing Roads”
http://wikipedia.org
to represent the main message of the events.
Philippe Manoury
http://wikipedia.org
and
Matthias Pintscher
http://matthiaspintscher.com
are crossing roads for two days here in Budapest. They arrived yesterday, gave lectures and participated in a discussion for the ‘MUSTmeet Composer’ Series with my moderation and will be here for the concert tomorrow. The Hungarian Radio is doing interviews with both of them and the Goethe Institut Budapest, one of the sponsors of the events is making a video about the master class and the concert as well. I will post the video on FaceBook as soon as it becomes available.

Credits to my fellow professors: Peter Eotvos, Jean Philippe Wurtz
http://ensemble-linea.com
to THReNSeMBle
http://www.thrensemble.com
and to the staff of the International Eotvos Institute Foundation for making this master course a success!
I had a lot of fun!

Program, Play, Repeat, Keep It Interesting

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The most difficult set of concerts I have ever done in my life was a 5 day-8 concert series with City Music Cleveland. Coming up with 8 different yet valid versions of Beethoven 8 in just 5 days was an extremely difficult task. The whole point of live music performance is to do things differently from one performance to the next. Whenever one gets to perform great war horses, like Carmina Burana, the pressure is on. You have to deliver your own version of a master piece without losing the true spirit of it. This is the real magic trick!
On Thursday the Rochester Oratorio Society, the Rochester Philharmonic, Leslie Ann Bradley, Anton Belov and Anthony Webb and myself performed a truly operatic, dramatic and at some points extremely funny Carmina Burana. I am looking forward to pulling another and different [!] rabbit out of my hat tonight.
http://rpo.org
I very much enjoyed sinking my teeth into Roberto Sierras eccentric ‘Fandangos’ and Ginastera’s ‘Four Dances from Estancia’ as well. Lots of percussion, lots of groove, lots of energy!

It is a real honor and a lot of fun to conduct the season finale classical set with the RPO! These two concerts also mark the end of my 2014-15 season. No more conducting until a couple of summer concerts in August.

Starting next week I will be teaching a 10 day master class at the Budapest Music Center.
http://bmc.hu

At the end of June I’ll be one of the judges of the International Armel Opera Competition and Festival. http://armelfestival.org

Soon I will be posting about the 2015-16 season, too.
Stay tuned!

Faust, An Eternal Will

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“I, Faust, an Eternal Will” -sings Csaba Szegedi
http://csabaszegedi.com
in the role of Doctor Faust in the unfinished opera by Ferruccio Busoni.
http://wikipedia.org
Completed by Antony Beaumont, edited and cut to 90 minutes by director Mate Szabo
http://port.hu
and myself tomorrow’s performance will be the Hungarian premiere of this early 20th Century opera. As part of the “Faust 225 Festival” I will be leading the orchestra of the Hungarian State Opera and chorus and select principal singers in two performances only.
I am happy to have hundreds of opera lovers join me on Friday and Sunday, along with some of my Huntsville friends to enjoy this unique work at the beautiful downtown Budapest building of the State Opera
http://opera.hu
Both shows are virtually sold out.
Almost two years ago I posted about all the operas and ballets I had the pleasure to conduct during my professional career so far.
http://gregoryvajda.com
As of today I am happy to add the following operas to this list:
Ernst von Dohnanyi: The Tenor
Peter Eotvos: Lady Sarashina
Ferruccio Busoni: Doktor Faust

May, The Month Of Bells

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Two concerts with Symphony Silicon Valley this weekend, one down one more to go. On the program:
Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Overture Fantasy
Debussy: Nocturnes
Rachmaninov: The Bells
http://symphonysiliconvalley.org
This is my second time conducting Rachmaninov’s “choral symphony”. Here is my blogpost from 2013 about my performance with the Hungarian Radio Symphony with an “all about bells” theme:
http://gregoryvajda.com
The sound of the famous “Russian Bells” of course can be found in Tchaikovsky’s Overture Fantasy as well, and also in the delicate sounds of Debussy’s mezmerising Nocturnes, with female voices added to the mix of the orchestra timbres.
More bells for me in the coming weeks. In between rehearsals and performances I spent most of my time in my hotel room while in San Jose, CA. Let me tell you, I was missing out on some beautiful weather. I spent several hours preparing my score and making additional cuts to Busoni’s opera, Doctor Faust. Two semi-staged performances are coming up at the Budapest Opera. The entire opera starts with the sound of Easter Bells and ends with the sound of more bells accompanying the strange and actually pretty blasphemous apotheosis of Dr. Faust.
http://opera.hu
I am happy to have some of my Huntsville friends in Budapest for the second performance. They will be on a cruise ship on the Danube and will be stopping by in Budapest just in time to see me conduct Doktor Faust. I am looking forward to showing them around in my hometown and to spend some fun times together in my neck of the woods.

On A High Note And More

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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

Musical Metabolism

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Metabolism: the sum of the physical and chemical processes in an organism by which its material substance is produced, maintained, and destroyed, and by which energy is made available.
There is sure a lot of energy made available during the performance of Métaboles by Henri Dutilleux. What a great showpiece for orchestra! It comes second on our program this weekend with the Omaha Symphony. The concert opens with Debussy’s Danse (Tarantelle Styrienne) orchestrated by Maurice Ravel himself. Concluding the first half is the virtuoso Violin Concerto #3 by Saint-Saens. My soloist for this piece is the amazing David Kim, concert master of the Philadelphia Orchestra
http://davidkimviolin.com
After a varied and fairly long first half we are playing only one composition for the second half of the concert. Shostakovich Symphony #1 is a long time favorite of mine. Written by a 19yo composer this symphony has everything we love Shostakovich for without the long shadow of Comrade Stalin over it.
About 9 years ago I was invited to conduct the Omaha Symphony for its last concert in their old concert hall. I was also asked to do a rehearsal in the then not yet finished new hall to help the acoustic adjustments the venue needed. This time I am really fortunate to conduct two shows of a truly exciting program in the Holland Center’s beautiful concert hall.

All About Horns

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No, not about the fantasy-horror with Daniel Radcliffe in the main role. Huntsville Symphony’s 5th Classical concert this season was about different horns like the post horn, a tuba and French horns. Our soloist on Saturday, playing the Tuba Concerto by Williams was my good friend and amazing musician- Alan Baer, Principal Tuba, New York Philharmonic.
http://www.baertracksmusic.com
I conducted this beautiful piece a long time ago, but with a bass trombone soloist. In all honesty, the piece works much better with tuba. I am surprised that it is not on the repertoire of all the orchestras around the world. I guess it takes some courage to invite a tuba player as a soloist instead of a violinist or a piano player :). The audience loved the piece and rewarded the performance with a long standing ovation.

The second half of the concert started with one of my all time favorite compositions, the Sextet from the opera ‘Capriccio’ by Richard Strauss (I rearranged it for a small string orchestra) and ended with Till Eulenspiegel’s Marry Pranks. HSO rocked the piece!

In the first half, as an homage to Richard Strauss’s admiration for Mozart’s music we performed the Posthorn Serenade. I had the flutes, oboes and bassoons seated in the front of the orchestra. This emphasized the fact, that the two middle movements of the Serenade are really a hidden Sinfonia Concertante for woodwind instruments.
Chris Coletti http://www.trumpetchris.com
played the famous Post horn solo beautifully. Other than the famous 2nd Trio of the 2nd Menuet with the post horn in it, the trumpet section played on natural trumpets for the entire piece.

One more casual classic about The Science of Music and a classical concert with Liszt, Bartok and Brahms on the program are in store for this season with the HSO. Visit our website for details!
http://www.hso.org

After Opera High

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What do you do after the successful premiere of your own opera? You start working immediately on changes based on audience reaction and other factors. Mark Childress and I have been on the phone, Skype, and email several times a day talking about additions and changes to Georgia Bottoms, A Comic Opera Of The Modern South. Mark has written a few awesome and extremely funny short scenes already. In short, there are new words now for me to put into music. However I do need a few weeks of time to detach from the highs of the premiere week before I can start writing music again for Georgia Bottoms.

In the meantime I am composing music for a Norwegian full length stop animation feature. The production teaser is due next week. I am receiving the final version of the teaser for a last look before it gets sent out to the distributor hopefuls. I won’t tell you anything else about this project now, not even the title of the film. I promise to give you an update when it is appropriate.

Another project I picked up again (started working on bits of it a few months back) is the English language adaptation of Peter Eotvos’ latest opera, The Golden Dragon.
http://schott-music.com
It is a lot of fun to be able to get creative with someone else’s music and also to brush up on my German a little bit.

Stay tuned for more posts about upcoming concerts and projects! I’ll be back next week!

Georgia Bottoms: A Success

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I’ve been holding off with my blog post about the Georgia Bottoms World Premiere simply because I’ve been working 12 hours last week. It’s been a crazy ride. I don’t think that anybody here has ever done a practically fully staged opera production in just 6 days. We had our first musical rehearsal last Sunday. David Gately finished staging the opera on Thursday, we had one piano run on Friday, orchestra-dressrehearsal and performance on Saturday.
See David’s FaceBook post here:
http://facebook.com

I’ve been holding off with my blog post also because I’ve been living in an imaginary place for the last week. With the help of Mark Childress, David Gately, Vivienne Atkins and the wonderful creative and stage crew Six Points, AL came to life and from now on it is an actual town not only in Mark’s book but also on opera stage.
Read Mark Childress’ FaceBook post here:
http://facebook.com

I would like to thank Everybody: singers, musicians, staff, crew, sponsors and the audience! Having one’s opera performed live is an amazing thing. I am proud of the HSO and thankful for their support and for all their hard work. We sure created something amazing together to celebrate the 60th season of this amazing organization.

At last, enjoy the FaceBook post of Our Georgia: the amazing Rebecca Nelsen.
http://facebook.com